This Should Be Fun

[kurt]

Like the title says – This Should Be Fun :shock: :roll: :lol:

Wellll – OK – its going to be a heck of a learning experience :roll: :lol:

I picked up 6 buckets from a guy the other day - of who knows what (it was his attempt at recovery & refining of PMs from electronics)

The CPUs (in the left bowl) are what I fished out of a couple of the buckets – all the buckets have been sitting around for about 8 months with out lids so have the kind of mess in them that you see in the bowl on the right.

The one good thing here was that he could (for sure) identify one bucket as AR that would not drop his gold with SMB – the bottom pic is the Ag (&?) that I have recovered so far (by cementing with Cu)

Guess my next step is going to be to see how much of the mess will dissolve in hot D-water (so I can test for PMs in solution) then deal with solids

The only real question I have (at this point) is – any ideas on what the “black” crystal formations mite be.

Yaaa – I know – I must be NUTS for taking something like this on – but I’m going to blame it all on you guys for getting me started :lol: --- (that’s what you call a dam good job of blame shifting) :lol: (oh ya – I posted this in “help needed” cause I think I finally went over the edge & need mental help) :lol:

Kurt

 

[maynman1751]

Hang loose! Wait for someone to direct you on this one. It's beyond my skills.

 

[Geo]

the bottom picture looks more like cemented gold than silver.

 

[niteliteone]

Looks like you got a mess on your hands, I'm outta here :!:

Sorry I couldn't resist
Not sure where to begin. I would try adding a little HCl to the solutions to be sure they are acidic. Filter off all liquids and add copper, let stand a day or 2 to make sure all are free of any values. Then dispose of the liquids properly.

With all the solids I recovered, I would incinerate to remove all traces of acids and organic material. Then run a magnet to remove unwanted ferrous metals.

Seperate into like materials and follow standard processes used here on the forum.

Hope I got this right. Never dealt with a mess like this before
Tom C

 

[nickvc]

Well the top two containers I would just add water to to dissolve the crystals of what appear to be copper nitrate and then test the solutions with stannous to determine whether they contain any values. If they are barren of values syphon off the solution and dispose of safely and if they contain values cement the values with copper. The remaining material I'd be tempted to try and dissolve the base metals with nitric and test the solutions before disposing of. The remains should be your gold and the plastics or ceramics which I'd remove and rinse off any foils or powder stuck to them back into your container, give the powder several rinses in water and dissolve the powder in AR, if you encounter the dreaded tin in your sludge incinerate it first and wash with hydrochloric to remove it before going onto the AR dissolution.
The bottom container looks more like gold precipitate to me than silver have you tested it?

 

[kurt]

Opps - my bad - I actually meant to say Au (not Ag) cemented from the "one" solution he was sure to be AR.

Nick - your instructions are close to - if not on the nose of how I intend to tackle this one - & yes - I expect tin to be a problem here.

The guy made "all" the common mistakes we see so often here.

Its actually part of why I took this on. Its in part to document "how to fix it" when someone starts by doing "everything" wrong --- & at the same time it will be a heck of a learning experience.

It dosen't get much worse then this - but what ever values were put into the buckets - are still in the buckets - so I see it as an opportunity to put into practice the edvice we give to recover & refine the values when doing everything wrong to start with - ends with a mess like this.

I will do my best to keep posted on this - but there is going to be some time laps in postings as I am gearing up to do maple syrup - along with my normal scraping (every day cash flow) & other refining projects in the fire --- so I am "really" busy these days

Kurt

 

[kurt]

OK – here are the cleaned up CPUs I pulled out of this mess & here is my question

I have never processed any ceramic CPUs – I have processed both the green fiber & Black fiber CPUs – so I know the black ones (stack on the right) need to be incinerated to liberate the Au wires incased in the epoxy center.

I did some research on the ceramics (read till my head hurts) & I am a bit confused as there seems to be a debate on wither to crush (fine) or to just brake them up (it seems to be a matter of type)

So – with these Cyrix GX – do I need to crush for an AR leach – or – just brake up to expose the center cavity to the AR?

I guess my real question is – are the PMs in these CPUs only the Au wires inside the center cavity – or – are there PMs imbedded in the ceramic as well (like the Pd in mono caps)

Kurt

 

[niteliteone]

The PM's are located on the pins and under the lid.

Tom C.