Refining materials without chemicals?

[abelleba]

I'm very new and have no chemistry behind besides what I remember from high school. As I been reading and collecting e scrap, I thought I heard of ways of refining silver from e scrap using electrolysis only. If I can do this with my scrap while I build the knowledge and balls to use chemicals, is there a specific way to prep you're e scrap for this method, like scrapping solder masking with a blade?

So far I just been breaking my fingers, HD Plates, and circuit boards into 1 inch pieces into a bucket awaiting for me to refine. I'd really like to start refining without chemicals if it's possible. I know I'll probably lose the gold doing this. I'm not worried about that yet. All I ever used electrolysis was to clean my roman and silver coins before, I'm not sure how it would actually pull silver?

If my answers are already in a book or link, please link and save you're time typing

Thanks,

 

[Harold_V]

I'm not well suited to giving advice for extracting values from e scrap, but I think that a comment in general is in order.

You can not make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.

Likewise, you can not recover precious metals without using at least some basic chemicals, unless you have the ability to recover them with a furnace. That would yield an alloy that would require chemical processing -------so you are between a rock and a hard spot.

Look for posts by lazersteve, one of the moderators. He has a link in his sig line that will give you a guided tour of the forum, and be very revealing to you in the ways of recovering values.

Do not fear using these chemicals----just have good and proper respect for them. They can be perfectly safe to use in the hands of a person with wisdom.

Welcome to the forum!

Harold

An added thought. You must think beyond scraping masks by hand. The amount of value present is incredibly small---far too small to use that kind of processing. You would find yourself working for pennies per hour, and throwing away as much value as you keep. It is clearly not a good idea.

 

[abelleba]

Thanks for the reply Harold. That was what I was looking for pretty much. I'm not afraid of chemicals themselves, I'm afraid of what is created when they combine with specific metals or plastics. It was to my understanding that nitric acid (main component everyone seems to stand by) can become so combustible with mixed with the wrong things that it becomes as sensitive as nitro in regards to sun light and friction.

I don't know if this is true, but I want the knowledge of what happens when it turns this color, what happens when it reacts this way, etc, before I start using them. Maybe through the information provided, I can start with a few not so hazardous ones to gain one of the metals and work my way up. I'm still trying to figure out how to organize my e scrap. Got the fingers and PCI/ISA teeth clippings in a bag. I guess this is considered the goods. The Mobo pieces that I broken up, I don't know if they could be used in any first tries or not. Thanks again!