Small set-up

[Maurice]

Hello friends,

I have a made a small test set-up that I wanted to share with you. Below are a couple of images of my set-up. The plastic at the top is called a waterlock (roughly translated from my language). It is filled with tab water and sodium hydroxite. The waterlock is used in the wine making which I have experimented with in the past. The whole contraption is placed on a hot plate set on medium.

The liquid in the bottle is 10% HCL and the material are pins from IC holders

Any comments, thoughts are welcome ofcourse.

 

[nickvc]

I would advise you not to do that in your house as any fumes that do make it out will ruin any metals inside your home.

 

[MarcoP]

Is there any PM in IC holders?

 

[Maurice]

The location is the second floor of a barn at a friends house. He was kindly enough to allow me to do some small scale experiments. The top floor is void of anything valuable safe for a couple of old sofa's and an old TV. It has been used as a place to relax and hang out. Most of the windows are open when the experiment runs to ventilate the room. I can't place the experiment outside as they have a couple of dogs running around on the property and I don't want them to get hurt as they are quite curious in nature.

The small pins consist of two parts. The outer and inner part. The outer part seems to be copper with tin plating for most of the pins. The inner part is gold colourd and might be copper with gold plated on top of it. Just have to see what might come out of it.

I just wanted to disolve all the base metals and see what I'm left with in the process.

 

[nickvc]

Put a fan behind you to blow the fumes away and outside.

 

[g_axelsson]

Is there any PM in IC holders?

In some, just look for the golden color. In the one at the first picture above you can see it as a yellow ring inside the pin of the holder. It is a small inset of a flexible alloy with gold plating on the top. It's only small amounts per pin but it can add upp.

Göran

 

[FrugalRefiner]

Be sure to remove the airlock BEFORE you turn off the heat. Otherwise, your reaction vessel could develop a vacuum as it cools, which could draw your sodium hydroxide solution into the flask where it will react with the acid solution.

Dave

 

[Maurice]

I have been thinking of adding a 2 meter tube to the end of the waterlock and let the tube hang outside of the window. So any vapors will be outside. A fan might on the other hand sounds like a good idea too . I'll experiment with some water that I'll boil on the hot plate to see what might work the best.

The amount of water in the waterlock is less then the total volume of one of the chambers and as such should not be able to reach the contents of the bottle itself. I made sure of that.

Thanks for the suggestions

 

[Shark]

Is there any PM in IC holders?

I ran into some a while back that had some gold inside. From the same board I also found a few that didn't. In that batch, the gold appeared to be plated in some way, and these came from old game room video games. The other day I got a new batch that had something I had never seen, which isn't that unusual. I got two boards from an old Hewlett Packard system that most of the sockets had small gold rings inserted into them. I snapped several of those rings out with an old dental pick. I haven't done anything with them yet, and I am waiting to see if I can run across anymore, which is a fair chance more will be in fairly soon. If not then I will try them and see what comes from them. But yes, a few of them do, and can be seen with the help of a good loupe, or strong magnifying glass.

 

[MarcoP]

I see the plated ring now and I've found a couple on the bucket that I was going to give away to a WEEE company along all depopulated boards.

 

[Maurice]

It is fairly small amount, but they will add up and each IC holder has at least 8 of them.

 

[jason_recliner]

Be sure to remove the airlock BEFORE you turn off the heat. Otherwise, your reaction vessel could develop a vacuum as it cools, which could draw your sodium hydroxide solution into the flask where it will react with the acid solution.

Dave

As a winemaker of some years myself, I suggest there's simply too much solution in the airlock. People tend to fill them to the halfway point. But the total liquid volume should not exceed the capacity of either bulb. That way it can never overflow, in or out. I've seen it happen in both directions.