Recovering gold from telephone connectors paper

[Chumbawamba]

I stumbled upon this paper on the internet:

Gold Recovery from Used Electrical Contactors
http://www.goldbulletin.org/assets/file/goldbulletin/downloads/Niederkorn_4_17.pdf

It discusses the recovery of gold from 50-pair telephone connectors. They went with a nitric acid bath and claimed success. Theoretically, sure. However, me thinks the amount of nitric needed to do this would be unwieldy and expensive. Maybe things were different back in 1984 when the paper was written.

The yield data is probably the most useful aspect of the paper (~11g of gold from 300 connectors, or 40.1mg (0.04g) of gold per each connector), as well as the data on the amount of gold used in the electronics industry (82 tonnes consumed by the US/Western European electronics industry in 1968, peaking at 127T in 1973, declining to 67T by 1975 and then about 80T per year from 1978 through to when the paper was published).

Worth a read as it's very brief.

 

[qst42know]

I think the yield they provide to be somewhat suspect as they weighed the foils without refining.

 

[Chumbawamba]

Good point, I didn't catch that. But then what wouldn't be dissolved by the nitric?

 

[Harold_V]

Good point, I didn't catch that. But then what wouldn't be dissolved by the nitric?

It's common knowledge that you can't bring gold fine by nitric alone. In spite of one's best care and attention, dissolving, filtering and precipitating the recovered product will, in almost all cases, improve quality.

I agree---if the work required was done well, it should reflect, somewhat closely, the real content, but who's to say that it does with certainty? Strange bits of foreign material have a way of getting included in this process, none of which lends itself to the value. Some folks don't have enough sense to dry what they have, thinking the little water that may be present doesn't matter.

It does!

Harold

 

[Oz]

If someone is willing to buy it that way, I would rather sell my gold by weight while still wet.

 

[qst42know]

I have had a few of the old connectors they show in the photos, to few for yield data. The pins are plated end to end not just flashed at the tips and in most the wires are individually soldered in. There could be some tin gunk left behind.