Reducing Cu Ag Au Pd and Pt

[Hmm]

I have never done any of this stuff before but have been thinking about getting these metals from scrap electronics for a year. It is hard to find information about getting them all, what order to do it, etc. What I have pieced together:

Put in Sulfuric Acid to dissolve metals like Iron, Aluminum, Tin, etc (I don't care for those, at least right now, but any ideas for these in addition would be cool)

Somehow get Copper and Silver out here.

Take the ewaste out and put in Aqua Regia to dissolve gold, palladium, platinum.

Add Urea to neutralize Nitric Acid.

Use Iron (ii) Sulfate, or SMB to reduce gold powder.

Add ammonium chloride to aqua regia to precipitate platinum as orange yellow colour (and then iridium if it is present)

Add potassium chlorate to aqua regia at a light boil that would precipitate palladium ammonium chloride.

Can someone please fill in missing steps for me. Will any chemicals added to reduction of the next metal (like the chemical added to reduce gold affect the reduction of platinum)? Is their better ways to go about this? Cost is not much of an issue as my chemistry teacher will let me use the school's supply (we have a lot of iron (ii) sulfate). How do I make the powder into the metallic form? I don't have a crucible, the art teacher's my let me use the kiln, would that work? Thanks for the help.

 

[kilo17]

I'm fairly new here but that's definitely abbreviated. To outline all the missing steps would take a lot of time and space. My observation is that each one of the items you ask about have multiple threads. In essence, 90% of GRF is about what you have asked in a few lines.... Keith

Oh yeah, download Hoke, it will answer all of your questions and then some.

 

[AndyWilliams]

Congratulations on your endeavor! I'm sure you're quite excited about this project, and well you should be! This knowledge is quite valuable. The best part is this, all the answers are right here. But because you can read them here or read them in Hoke's book, I'll just give you the link. It's right in my signature line. That saves me the typing and you don't have to wait for me to type those answers. You'll actually get the info you need quicker by reading the book! Hoke has just about everything you'll ever need. Reading this book will save you loads of time, just come on back after you've finished the easy part!

 

[squarecoinman]

I have never done any of this stuff before but have been thinking about getting these metals from scrap electronics for a year. It is hard to find information about getting them all, what order to do it, etc. What I have pieced together:

Put in Sulfuric Acid to dissolve metals like Iron, Aluminum, Tin, etc (I don't care for those, at least right now, but any ideas for these in addition would be cool)

Somehow get Copper and Silver out here.

Take the ewaste out and put in Aqua Regia to dissolve gold, palladium, platinum.

Add Urea to neutralize Nitric Acid.

Use Iron (ii) Sulfate, or SMB to reduce gold powder.

Add ammonium chloride to aqua regia to precipitate platinum as orange yellow colour (and then iridium if it is present)

Add potassium chlorate to aqua regia at a light boil that would precipitate palladium ammonium chloride.

Can someone please fill in missing steps for me. Will any chemicals added to reduction of the next metal (like the chemical added to reduce gold affect the reduction of platinum)? Is their better ways to go about this? Cost is not much of an issue as my chemistry teacher will let me use the school's supply (we have a lot of iron (ii) sulfate). How do I make the powder into the metallic form? I don't have a crucible, the art teacher's my let me use the kiln, would that work? Thanks for the help.

Dear HHM, I was wondering if i should answer your question or not as many people will post a question and then they never come back. However i hope you will come back and read my answer.

If you want to do this for making money , I have the following advice
collect scrap , learn how to sort it, Like in RAM , Gold pins, CPU etc and sell this on Ebay , keep the alu heatsinks and sell as scrap same with copper, you will make money and most likely more then when you try to refine.
for people starting to refine it will cost money.
The things that cost money are, safety glasses, respirator, dust mask, gloves, and much later there is the cost of fume hood, chemicals. and many other things.

The way to process Gold and other metal from a motherboard is as follow
remove the Ram, put in ram pile for later processing, I will process them as fingers in a AP tank and the chips on it with the Patnor methode
the next thing i will remove is the heat sink ( will be sold as scrap )
then i will remove the cpu ( will be split in 2 parts , pins and fiber )
then i will cut the gold pins ( I dont like solder and have lots of time so i cut the good ones and put them in jar )
I will use a heat gun for the less interesting pins ( they have tin on them )
I will use a screwdriver to get the monolithic ceramic capacitors ( in a jar ) these are the ones that have palladium , in most computers you will find lots of them however they are very small and you only want the ones with Cxxx like C234 or C632, from every motherboard you may collect 1 gram, and they have a yield of about
1 % so if you collect 100 gram you may get 1 gram of palladium.
I will also keep the tantalum capacitors as they can be sold
and then i will sort all the other capacitors and resistors
Then i will remove the North and south bridges and the other chips. ( also for later processing )
The reason i split everything is that one does not process everything together.

If you try to process everything together it will be a mess , It is like making food and eating.
Lets say i eat fruit, bread with cheese and a cup of coffee for breakfast, for lunch i would have spaghetti with gravy and a salad, with a chocolate dessert and for the dinner i will have a soup , beefsteak potatoes and spinach and another dessert. plus a few cups of coffee during the day.

I would be happy to eat this during a normal day, but if you would take it all and put it in a blender and mix it, I would not be very happy to eat it, it would become a mess. It is a bit the same with processing Gold and other metals from electronic waste.

as you can see just the splitting of the parts will take a lot of time. The next thing is that you will have to study, The first thing to study is Hoke´s book, If i would be in your place I would download a copy and also give a copy of it to your chemistry teacher so the both of you can read it, and maybe do some small experiments that Hoke writes about in her book. If you at the same time will collect and separate the parts of motherboards that are interesting, you could do some small refining.

If you study the book and use search here on the forum and take safety serious I am sure that you will be able to get a lot of help here.
please read this http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=11957 as it will teach you a little about safety and the risk involved.
other members have already given you the link to Hokes book so you should be ok for now.

scm