solar_plasma
Well-known member
fingers of 1kg RAM sticks (60-70 pieces) yield about 0,5g gold
Science project: Recovering gold from SIM cards
- Thread starter lesuth
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solar_plasma
Well-known member
Another small button, gold from one IC : http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=7056
I advice you to precipitate the gold first, let it settle for a day or two, carefully remove any liquid without disturbing the precipitated gold (test liquid with stannous), then dissolving it again to make more pure gold chloride. If you just dissolve your foils you will have cobalt and probably quite a lot nickel as contaminants.
Göran
I advice you to precipitate the gold first, let it settle for a day or two, carefully remove any liquid without disturbing the precipitated gold (test liquid with stannous), then dissolving it again to make more pure gold chloride. If you just dissolve your foils you will have cobalt and probably quite a lot nickel as contaminants.
Göran
Congratulations!
Thanks for letting us know.
Dave
Thanks for letting us know.
Dave
Barren Realms 007
In Remembrance
lesuth said:
What was your grade the teacher gave you?
This may be too late...
I empathize with the student. I too do science projects. I am not trying to make money off of this. Gold is not the only element I process. I experiment with ores of various metals for fun. I would not criticize the young man.
I recently processed some random electronics I was throwing away. Card readers, connectors, etc. it went very very well. No, the gold amount is not huge but that was not my goal. The tenth of a gram or so that I got is real, and proved my process.
So I then bought 100 SIM cards and they all dissolved the metals within an hour or so into my AP solution. No gold foils like from pins and other connectors. Same process. The pads on the outside dissolved in AP very quickly and did not look very “gold” to me. I am following up with the eBay merchant to convince me the gold he claims is there. I am also suspect as the cards appears to have been partially treated in the past. When I agreed to buy “used” SIM cards, I did not take that to mean “used in nitric acid and HCL.” Could the gold have been mostly dissolved to leave mostly copper pads behind and then sold?
Can someone tell me if SIM cards are somehow much harder than pins and gold fingers? Will AP not work for this type of recovery? I read a few threads but there were great differences of opinion and estimations of the amount of gold recovery.
For now I am sticking to pins and ram trimmings and electronics that I recycle myself.
I empathize with the student. I too do science projects. I am not trying to make money off of this. Gold is not the only element I process. I experiment with ores of various metals for fun. I would not criticize the young man.
I recently processed some random electronics I was throwing away. Card readers, connectors, etc. it went very very well. No, the gold amount is not huge but that was not my goal. The tenth of a gram or so that I got is real, and proved my process.
So I then bought 100 SIM cards and they all dissolved the metals within an hour or so into my AP solution. No gold foils like from pins and other connectors. Same process. The pads on the outside dissolved in AP very quickly and did not look very “gold” to me. I am following up with the eBay merchant to convince me the gold he claims is there. I am also suspect as the cards appears to have been partially treated in the past. When I agreed to buy “used” SIM cards, I did not take that to mean “used in nitric acid and HCL.” Could the gold have been mostly dissolved to leave mostly copper pads behind and then sold?
Can someone tell me if SIM cards are somehow much harder than pins and gold fingers? Will AP not work for this type of recovery? I read a few threads but there were great differences of opinion and estimations of the amount of gold recovery.
For now I am sticking to pins and ram trimmings and electronics that I recycle myself.
Martijn
Well-known member
There are several solutions that leach the gold off and leave the copper underneath untouched.
This sounds like a scam to me.
He'll never admit that. Good luck getting convinced but i would consider it a loss.
Sreetips has a good video on it and it shows how much is to be expected.
Almost everything on ebay regarding gold plated and gold 'containing' items is sold for more than the gold value. If any.
Don't buy scrap unless you know the value and yield and you can see it before you buy.
Martijn.
This sounds like a scam to me.
He'll never admit that. Good luck getting convinced but i would consider it a loss.
Sreetips has a good video on it and it shows how much is to be expected.
Almost everything on ebay regarding gold plated and gold 'containing' items is sold for more than the gold value. If any.
Don't buy scrap unless you know the value and yield and you can see it before you buy.
Martijn.
patnor1011
Well-known member
There is more gold "inside" sim card than on the ouside contact area.
Outside contact area plating may even be worn off due to use mainly on used cards but under pads there are couple gold bonding wires going from pad to a tiny IC in the centre. They are visible on some types of simcards but not on most of them but they are there.
If you want to get all the gold from simcards you need to dissolve or incinerate them whole after you stripped plating from outside.
Read forum - most of your questions were already answered.
Processing smart cards, sim cards
Outside contact area plating may even be worn off due to use mainly on used cards but under pads there are couple gold bonding wires going from pad to a tiny IC in the centre. They are visible on some types of simcards but not on most of them but they are there.
If you want to get all the gold from simcards you need to dissolve or incinerate them whole after you stripped plating from outside.
Read forum - most of your questions were already answered.
Processing smart cards, sim cards
