Recovering Tantalum

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hammerdown

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 21, 2019
Messages
77
If one has a few pounds of various epoxy & ceramic Tantalum capacitors, would pyrolysis be the suggested best way to recover the Tantalum vs the laborious task of manually crushing each one? Any possible draw backs to pyrolyzing them? I also figured that by pyrolyzing them, the "waste" , after collecting the Tantalum via sifting, could be processed the same as IC chips on the off-chance that there could be some other PM within.
 
etack said:
hammerdown said:
ceramic Tantalum capacitors

Can you give more info on what you mean by this.

Eric

I believe I wasn't thinking 100% straight at the time of the posting given other things on my mind at the same time. When I said epoxy & ceramic, my train of thought at that moment was the yellow/black/orange SMD epoxy capacitors and the dipped "tear drop" ceramics, which I do know those too are supposedly epoxy as well and not ceramic. I think at that moment my brain was saying ceramic because of the other capacitors that aren't tantalum but are ceramic. I apologize for the confusion.
 
You'd better sell the caps as they are; tantalum in the form found in capacitors (sintered anode) is quite reactive due to the large surface and it would simply burn much like magnesium if heated.
Moreover, you can't melt tantalum due to the very high melting point.

So really, there is no point at all in doing anything but selling them as they are. Less waste, less headaches.
The ones that worth processing are the wet anode types, for the silver case; in that case the anode is a bonus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhAIb6iVyWw
 
a_bab said:
You'd better sell the caps as they are; tantalum in the form found in capacitors (sintered anode) is quite reactive due to the large surface and it would simply burn much like magnesium if heated.
Moreover, you can't melt tantalum due to the very high melting point.

So really, there is no point at all in doing anything but selling them as they are. Less waste, less headaches.
The ones that worth processing are the wet anode types, for the silver case; in that case the anode is a bonus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhAIb6iVyWw

I appreciate the advise & added info, but I'm not looking to sell my tantalum. I was just curious for better, stacking if you will, like other PMs one may do when collecting for investment or whatever desires. I am also fully aware that tantalum requires so much heat that typical conventional means won't even come close to melting it into a solid piece. According to my notes, the melting point of tantalum is 5,468°F (3,020°C) to 9,854°F (5,457°C) for the boiling point. However, I was not aware that sintered tantalum could ignite like magnesium when heated. But, surely the heat created from a pyrolyzing treatment in order to remove the epoxy encasings wouldn't be hot enough to cause that... yes?
 
It will surely ignite and burn; just try with a simple gas torch.

Now, if you use Argon or some sort of flux... that may do the trick, to keep your Ta away from oxygen.
 
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