Science project: Recovering gold from SIM cards

[lesuth]

Hello guys I need help with the process of recovering gold from SIM cards
I need this for a science project, I've gathered around 100 SIM cards,
The extraction process has to be successful on the first try so I need to get this right please help with the step by step process.
Thanks

 

[MrMylar]

Before you ask for a step by step process, you need to know the basics. If you don't know the basic steps, then you need to keep reading this forum and download Hoke's book.

As far as the 100 sim cards you have, you won't get any noticeable amount of gold out of that. You'll need at least 500 - 1,000 to see any recoverable gold. And even with 1,000 sim cards, you might get maybe 1/10th of a gram. You'll be lucky to get 1g gold with 10,000 sim cards.

I processed them before and you will need lbs of them to make it worth your while.

 

[Smack]

Pick a different project if you want a passing grade this year.

 

[MrMylar]

Pick a different project if you want a passing grade this year.

:shock:

Fingers from R.A.M. or boards would be much easier and faster IF he knows what he's doing. Fingers from 10 lbs of RAM would bring some visible gold.

 

[Darkness Falls]

Is this for a school project? There are some real concerns of how you would go about doing this. If you plan to do this live, do you have the proper fume hood/cabinet setup to handle the toxic fumes? If not, your science fair project could literally kill your entire class.

 

[patnor1011]

100 new unused sim cards will yield about 1 $ worth of gold, could be less it all depend on type. That is if you are lucky and recover it all, based on that you never did anything like that before as you are asking for step by step process. There are few processes documented on forum, you can find them all but in your case and with 100 Sim cards you are going to spend many times more over what you are going to recover.
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=19050

 

[lesuth]

It's a project in a university, I am a chemistry major I will be taking all precautions, don't worry I've worked with chemicals before obviously. I was just interested in the best process so I can get a higher grade.
I don't care about the amount of gold recovered, as long I recover something it will mean my experiment is successful. I'll probably turn the recovered gold in some form of a compound after i extract the gold, but the first part where I recover the gold will be more difficult that's why I asked for your help
I'll download the Hoke's book, thanks for the advice

 

[Darkness Falls]

It's a project in a university, I am a chemistry major I will be taking all precautions, don't worry I've worked with chemicals before obviously. I was just interested in the best process so I can get a higher grade.
I don't care about the amount of gold recovered, as long I recover something it will mean my experiment is successful. I'll probably turn the recovered gold in some form of a compound after i extract the gold, but the first part where I recover the gold will be more difficult that's why I asked for your help
I'll download the Hoke's book, thanks for the advice

It's awesome to here that you have those facilities available to you! Hoke's book is a great resource. If this is strictly for a grade, it may suit your interest to buy some more material to scrap and refine. It would be nice to get a few grams of gold out of this endeavor. Good luck with your studies!

 

[lanfear]

Hi

While you read hoke, you can also look at this process as a potential recovery method. http://goldrecovery.us/goldrecovery/documents/CuCl.pdf
Then you will need to pick a refining method. Good luck


Edit: typo

 

[Harold_V]

I'll probably turn the recovered gold in some form of a compound after i extract the gold,

Hmmm.
Before doing so, check the Merck Index in regards to compounds of gold. They can be interesting.

And lethal.

Harold

 

[solar_plasma]

Though it will be next to nothing, if you reduce and melt it, it will be visible as yellow coloured solution, if you first leached and washed well all base metals from the material. It doesn't need much gold to get a slightly yellow solution and even less to get a purple reaction with SnCl2. Then you will have something to show in a computer aided spectrophotometer before and after reduction and precipitation. Use SnCl2 to confirm before and after. Be aware of any excess SO2 would give a false positive with SnCl2. Use standard gold solutions to check your SnCl2 and to compare gold concentrations with spectrophotometer.

Be aware of there isn't only plated gold, but also bondings and gold solder in the chip. With pliers and a sharp knive you can split the chip from the plastic card. The back is mostly transparant and you can see the gold bonding with a magnifier. The chip needs to be incinerated completely to white ash with absolutely no carbon left (it would adsorb some of the gold).

Success on the first run will be an almost impossible task, so use 12 good ram sticks (~0,1g-0,2g Au) first to get familar with the processes. Always leach base metals first. Read about Harold's washes, use only as much nitric as you need, read about the gold button method or sulfamic to expel any excess nitric.

How much time do you have to finish your science project?

Don't experiment, but tell us, what you are going to do, before you do it.

 

[lesuth]

What I found out so far:
1.treat with hot NaOH to deal with the plastic etc..
2.Dissolve the basic metals with nitric acid
3.Dissolve the remainings in Aqua Regia
4.Precipitate the gold
then i guess decant and a filtration.

This is what I found out.

Btw I have until 15th of April to write the complete process of how I am going to do it.

EDIT: Thanks guys for all the help so far.

 

[Barren Realms 007]

You would really be better off buying some pin's off of ebay to do this project.

 

[solar_plasma]

What I found out so far:
1.treat with hot NaOH to deal with the plastic etc..
2.Dissolve the basic metals with nitric acid
3.Dissolve the remainings in Aqua Regia
4.Precipitate the gold
then i guess decant and a vacuum filtration.

This is what I found out.

Btw I have until 15th of April to write the complete process of how I am going to do it.

1. You can drop 1., if you split the chips from the cards mechanically. I guess this will take 1-2 hours for 100 pieces and can be done while watching tv.
2. Then you dissolve the copper and the thin nickel layer beneath the gold foils. It's ok, but you can also use CuCl2 leach, which has a very interesting chemistry, when you first have understood it. You will be left with solid gold foils, dissolved copper and nickel and the dies with gold bondings covered in plastic. You need to incinnerate the plastic to white ash (no carbon!).
3. Yes. Be sure to understand the usage of AR! We do not use 3:1 for this purpous!! Use nitric dropwise, only as much as absolutely needed. Read what I told you to read in my answer above!
4. Yes. But read Harold's posts about this!

Following your description to the point you can make a mess or you can achieve the result you hope, - depending on if you are listening or not! I have given you all keywords you will need for your search. Ask, if there are topics you can't find.

2 weeks is not much time! You were better off using RAM for your project.

edit: Yes, or pins. I still advise fingers.

I am not sure, if you will succeed in that short time. But as long as I see that you listen I will try to help you to find what you need.

 

[Smack]

What I found out so far:
1.treat with hot NaOH to deal with the plastic etc..
2.Dissolve the basic metals with nitric acid
3.Dissolve the remainings in Aqua Regia
4.Precipitate the gold
then i guess decant and a filtration.

This is what I found out.

Btw I have until 15th of April to write the complete process of how I am going to do it.

EDIT: Thanks guys for all the help so far.

Select good materials so you can skip step one dealing with the solder mask. Get good non-magnetic pins or better yet close cut fingers and go straight to Nitric Acid then A/R and so on.

 

[lesuth]

1. You can drop 1., if you split the chips from the cards mechanically. I guess this will take 1-2 hours for 100 pieces and can be done while watching tv.
2. Then you dissolve the copper and the thin nickel layer beneath the gold foils. It's ok, but you can also use CuCl2 leach, which has a very interesting chemistry, when you first have understood it. You will be left with solid gold foils, dissolved copper and nickel and the dies with gold bondings covered in plastic. You need to incinnerate the plastic to white ash (no carbon!).
3. Yes. Be sure to understand the usage of AR! We do not use 3:1 for this purpous!! Use nitric dropwise, only as much as absolutely needed. Read what I told you to read in my answer above!
4. Yes. But read Harold's posts about this!

Following your description to the point you can make a mess or you can achieve the result you hope, - depending on if you are listening or not! I have given you all keywords you will need for your search. Ask, if there are topics you can't find.

2 weeks is not much time! You were better off using RAM for your project.

edit: Yes, or pins. I still advise fingers.

I am not sure, if you will succeed in that short time. But as long as I see that you listen I will try to help you to find what you need.

Thanks for the help,
I can't seem to find Harold's post about the 4th step

 

[solar_plasma]

Getting pure gold (shining)

About proper washing.

Filtering and Adhesion

How to prevent gold stucks to beaker, prevent cross contamination.

dropping out gold

Harold's one-beaker-style.

light green ar wont drop gold

Testing - the eyes of the refiner.

Only four examples. Equal posts are spread all over the whole forum, but all of them are worth to read. Sometimes, there are more ways to do things - the discussions between the seniors are PRECIOUS! -, but if you want perfect results in short time without confusion - read, learn, live Harold's style! Don't ask, if you can do it another way (NO! in some month or years maybe you will assimilate some details from the other seniors, that would confuse you right now), but ask if something isn't clear.

And don't use urea, but use just as much nitric as needed and use the gold button method or sulfamic acid to expel excess nitric. Try a search on this topic.

Two other links, that might be of interest (chemical equations):

What drives the dissolution of metals

What is exactly chemical process and why gold drops?

How much nitric:
How much nitric...

How much SMB:
How does SMB work?

By the way, do you have to show the whole experiment live? If so, you either have to prepare all the main steps like in a cooking show, otherwise it would take days. Or you might want to ask the chemists of the forum on how this is done faster with the proper hardware in a analytical laboratory. I have no clue about, how they are working there, if they use centrifuges, expensive analytical glass filters etc.

 

[lesuth]

http://goldrefiningforum.com/~goldr...as+everything+to+do+with+how+you’re+refining.

About proper washing.

http://goldrefiningforum.com/~goldr...9&t=19104&p=193412&hilit=beaker+clean#p193412

How to prevent gold stucks to beaker, prevent cross contamination.

http://goldrefiningforum.com/~goldr...&hilit=one+beaker+dissolve+precipitate#p54346

Harold's one-beaker-style.

http://goldrefiningforum.com/~goldr...216&p=44650&hilit=testing+eyes+refiner#p44650

Testing - the eyes of the refiner.

Only four examples. Equal posts are spread all over the whole forum, but all of them are worth to read. Sometimes, there are more ways to do things - the discussions between the seniors are PRECIOUS! -, but if you want perfect results in short time without confusion - read, learn, live Harold's style! Don't ask, if you can do it another way (NO! in some month or years maybe you will assimilate some details from the other seniors, that would confuse you right now), but ask if something isn't clear.

And don't use urea, but use just as much nitric as needed and use the gold button method or sulfamic acid to expel excess nitric. Try a search on this topic.

Two other links, that might be of interest (chemical equations):

http://www.goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=895&p=10627#p10627

http://goldrefiningforum.com/~goldrefi/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=13278

How much nitric:
http://goldrefiningforum.com/~goldrefi/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=6504

How much SMB:
http://goldrefiningforum.com/~goldrefi/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=15733

By the way, do you have to show the whole experiment live? If so, you either have to prepare all the main steps like in a cooking show, otherwise it would take days. Or you might want to ask the chemists of the forum on how this is done faster with the proper hardware in a analytical laboratory. I have no clue about, how they are working there, if they use centrifuges, expensive analytical glass filters etc.

Thanks a lot man, you've been VERY helpful and that's an understatement

Yes, the professor and the assistant will be overseeing the whole process and will be asking questions about each step and monitoring my work ( Do I handle all the equipment correctly, how do I handle the waste and so on... , obviously if the experiment is more complex you can make more mistakes ),and no the experiment is not limited to a short amount of time it can take up 3-4 weeks if necessary

 

[solar_plasma]

and no the experiment is not limited to a short amount of time it can take up 3-4 weeks if necessary

Perfect. If it were me I think I would spread the process to three days. But as Smack and BarrenRealms already said, you are better off using a better yielding and easier processed material like close cut fingers from PCI cards and RAMS.

Thanks a lot man, you've been VERY helpful and that's an understatement

It's a pleasure to me. I would love to be a student again and choose refining as the examination project in chemistry subject didactic instead of....*thinking back*.... food chemistry if I remember correctly ...or has it been soap and surfactants ...:lol: and getting an A instead of B or C....long ago. :mrgreen:

 

[lesuth]

I might do it with RAMS if I find some on time.
But it's a bit different method with computer RAMS isn't it?
I saw one video on youtube doesn't look hard at all with RAMS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM87TEZXCfg Check it out and I would like to hear your thoughts on this.