Precious Metals in Scrap?

[bryan1]

Back many years ago when I first started playing with electronics one of my favorite haunts was a scrap yard that a mate showed me. Basically he had a contract to scrap the govts old E-waste. My mate did say the $$$$ he's getting out of melting down the stuff the place is an urban goldmine. Now for a yard that wasn't there that long and my mate did say before he started he was close to broke, at the rear of the yard was a brandnew BMW 6 series. It was a cheap source of DC motors and metal frames BUT any board with an IC on wasn't for sale as the lot got melted. As far as members saying theres no use getting precious metals out of E-waste maybe they should get out of the closet and look at the real world......

 

[ghostman11]

apparently the most prized e waste is from the 70's and 80's as they had a thicker layer and higher amount of gold! its only when you look into it you realise how much precious metal gets thrown away!
in the past my first reaction would have been it isnt worth the effort. but as i said before i watched a science program and was uterly dumbfounded by the little gold nuget they got from very little scrap, they didnt even attempt to recover the other metals for the program. i am well known at the local recycle centre where i often go on a scavenge i hadnt paid much attention untill now but it seems every time i have been there has been a man collecting cpu's and mem chips out of computers, i had assumed he was merely selling theese on, so this morning i rang the manager as i know him well and asked what the deal was with this guy.
low and behold this guy buys the mem chips etc and pays around 30p lb for it. all this stuff he picks up is then sold on at a premium for metal recovery and the manager gets a kick back. i had always assumed the manager must be on a large wedge for his job as he always drives a very nice new shiny car!!! i guess my grandad was right when his fave saying was weres there muck theres brass! or in this day and age wheres theres waste theres gold

 

[4pyros]

E waste is bad;
**broken link removed**
https://sometimes-interesting.com/2011/07/17/electronic-waste-dump-of-the-world/
**broken link removed**
Some of these dumps are so big thay can be seen from space.

 

[ghostman11]

just about all waste is bad! is it any better to put e waste into into landfill? not recover the metal and tear apart more of the earth to mine more?? there is no easy answer to any of it. untill you and the rest of mankind are prepared to move out your houses give up your cars and go back to living in caves and foraging, we will have toxic waste greenhouse gas and all the rest of the nasty stuff that people like to jump onto the bandwagon with.
my number one bigest grip at present is the arm chair activist that assume they are doing there bit by posting this and that on the net advising people that such and such is killing the planet. it is hypocritical in the exstreme. they use a pc to post wich by default is wasteing resources. we must excep modern living involves a great deal of waste, what would you sugest we do?

 

[duffy]

@duffy, I think your math is off. at 2*10^-8 cu in...

Thank you. You are correct, I made a mistake with the math. I used volume oz instead of weight oz.

So, the density of gold is: 19.3 g/cc

.00000002 cubic inches of gold = .00000033 cc = .00000637 grams

1 oz = 28.34 g

28.34 g / .00000637 g = 4,448,979 bonding wires

Still a huge number of chips to get an oz of gold - something like a hundred thousand, depending on the type of chips involved - but certainly not in the millions. Question remains if the time, energy and chemicals to process a hundred thousand chips, subtracted from the $1,800 you would net, leaves you with any profit.

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

Here is an article of interest: https://www.electro-tech-online.com/custompdfs/2011/11/Alch59Corti.pdf

 

[BrownOut]

Here is an article of interest: https://www.electro-tech-online.com/custompdfs/2011/11/Alch59Corti-1.pdf

fascenating!

 

[ghostman11]

i couldnt get it to load

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

Ghostman:

Do a right click, Save as and then open in Acrobat Reader.

 

[Sceadwian]

ghostman, you failed to read your own links...

https://www.finishing.com/0600-0799/771b.shtml
Is a shop that does intentional plating of electrical interconnects, the waste they reclaimed was from within their own process stream and has nothing whatsoever to do with recycling boards, they 'made' no money even if they got something for the metals they recovered, they simple recovered money they'd already spent, no profit at all.

The second link that did the feasibility study only tested to see if the process of reclamation was POSSIBLE, not profitable and no real numbers were discussed as to the amount of materials recovered vs the cost of the process itself.

These types of recycling facilities will become more common because of the pressure from environmental groups to eliminate the landfilling of these types of waste, and government mandates which is great, but the financial viability of recycling junk PCB's as an income generating source is ludicrous on the small scale, and might at best be possible but with low returns on a larger scale.

If I'm wrong, simply link me any site that can fully quantify process cost, input, and output and what type of components were recycled in the first place.

Your comment that copper is much cheaper than gold is totally short sited because of the amount of copper on a PCB is drastically higher than the amount of gold, even given golds increased cost the raw amount of copper is much much higher. So far no real numbers of reclamation cost vs what was reclaimed have been shown.

Scrappers would laugh at you, junk electronics have no established scrap value. Currently it COSTS to have them disposed of properly.

 

[ghostman11]

ok cheers, yeah realy good read! goes to show you that most people have no idea just how much stuff is in a mobile phone!! also saw a program not too long ago , a documentry on a company that makes satalites for space. this was in the UK where we have incrediable gun laws. yet in this place its swarming with armed guards. and for most the program i couldnt understand why!!!! that was untill they got to the assembly clean room...... man o man. turns out all the electronics etc inside them are housed in solid gold box's!! for radiation protection etc etc. and theese babies were thick gold no little smidge of a coating! next time one falls from space i will be waiting with a few mates and a blanket to catch it in

 

[ghostman11]

is ok scead. i conceede you are totaly correct. reclaiming gold on a small scale has zero profit no one can make money from it like that. everyone that is doing it (probaly only 2 world wide to be fair) will be bankrupt by the new year. one small point please do not EVER try and pick me up on something then have the cheek to ask me to prove i am right!!! if you are so damn sure i am wrong then the burden of proof is on you to provide solid evidence that i canot be correct. i am not gonna spend my time proving something i am sure i am right on just to satisfy you. prove me wrong. or just except i have conceeded to you and go away happy

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

We did gold reclamation from electron beam depositions of gold grids for solar cells, but the real incentives was to eliminate the gold altogether in our research. The only real gold depositions that were done later were 1) putting the contacts on crystals etched and reused for thickness monitoring and for decorative pics made with photolithography as trinkets for special people/occaisions. A lot of work went into a 4' x 4" characacture in ebeamed gold. Most of our ebeamed stuff was Nickel.

Spent sputtering targets would get reclaimed by the bonder of he targets. Indium Tin Oxide, Zinc Oxide and Molydium were our targets.

 

[Sceadwian]

[MODERATED: This thread has been edited. If you disagree with something someone has said and want to argue it, have proof.]

 

[Reloadron]

<sarcasm>

OK here is what you need to do in order to maybe show a profit. You will need some basic hardware and household appliances. First you will need a blender but a really, really large blender. I would guess with a capacity of 25 US Gallon or 100 Liters or so. You will also need a super sized washing machine, as in industrial strength and for real heavy loads. Really, really heavy. Next a truck load of Mercury. Mercury is your new best money making friend. Oh yeah a small work of caution:

MAY BE FATAL IF INHALED OR SWALLOWED.
CAUSES RESPIRATORY TRACT, EYE AND SKIN IRRITATION.
MAY CAUSE EYE AND SKIN BURNS.
HARMFUL IF ABSORBED THROUGH SKIN.
CONTAINS MATERIAL WHICH CAUSES DAMAGE TO THE FOLLOWING ORGANS: KIDNEYS, GASTROINTESTINAL TRACT, RESPIRATORY TRACT, SKIN, CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM, EYE, LENS OR CORNEA.MAY BE HARMFUL TO ENVIRONMENT IF RELEASED IN LARGE AMOUNTS. VERY TOXIC TO AQUATIC ORGANISMS.

WARNING: This product contains a chemical(s) known to the State of California to cause birth defects or other reproductive harm.

Don't worry about the California part as California finds everything harmful, so no big deal on that note. Reproductive harm is no big deal. Hell a vasectomy is reproductive harm.

Mow toss a pile of boards, all sorts of old printed circuit boards with the gold and silver into the giant blender and blend well at medium speed. Uh, you may want to wear a respirator and if none available just hold your breath. Bust up the boards laden with gold and silver real good.

Now dump the pices and parts from the blender into the washing machine but... here is the trick. Do not use water. Just machine wash (on regular) using the mercury for water. The spin cycle should be fun. Now the mercury has all the gold and silver in it.

Amalgamation is a concentrating process in which metallic gold or silver, or an alloy of the two, is mixed with mercury, either in a amalgamation drum, or on a amalgamation table, where the precious metal bonds with the mercury to form the metal laden mercury AMALGAM and the waste (barren) ore pulp are caused to travel different paths to effect separation. The ore containing the precious metals should be ground fine enough to allow the maximum exposure of the gold or silver surface to the mercury (usually between 100 mesh and 325 mesh). Often, water is used as the ore is mixed with water to help disperse the ore and to promote a better precious metal to mercury interface.

Keep holding your breath.

You now have Amalgam so I hope you didn't let all the mercury go down the drain following the wash and spin cycles.

Now build a big fire so we can distill the mercury and get our gold and silver:

The distillation is performed at a very low temperature and heat applied very gradually, until 1,500 deg F is reached.. It usually takes 2 hours to retort the amalgam, once the 1500 deg F temperature is reached.

The most helpful and informative quotes were taken from here.

This is a simple fun kitchen table project that can make you very wealthy. It may have some side health effects. The nice part is once you distill the mercury you can use it again and again, pretty cool huh?

</sarcasm>

Ron

 

[ghostman11]

<sarcasm>

OK here is what you need to do in order to maybe show a profit. You will need some basic hardware and household appliances. First you will need a blender but a really, really large blender. I would guess with a capacity of 25 US Gallon or 100 Liters or so. You will also need a super sized washing machine, as in industrial strength and for real heavy loads. Really, really heavy. Next a truck load of Mercury. Mercury is your new best money making friend. Oh yeah a small work of caution:



Don't worry about the California part as California finds everything harmful, so no big deal on that note. Reproductive harm is no big deal. Hell a vasectomy is reproductive harm.

Mow toss a pile of boards, all sorts of old printed circuit boards with the gold and silver into the giant blender and blend well at medium speed. Uh, you may want to wear a respirator and if none available just hold your breath. Bust up the boards laden with gold and silver real good.

Now dump the pices and parts from the blender into the washing machine but... here is the trick. Do not use water. Just machine wash (on regular) using the mercury for water. The spin cycle should be fun. Now the mercury has all the gold and silver in it.



Keep holding your breath.

You now have Amalgam so I hope you didn't let all the mercury go down the drain following the wash and spin cycles.

Now build a big fire so we can distill the mercury and get our gold and silver:



The most helpful and informative quotes were taken from here.

This is a simple fun kitchen table project that can make you very wealthy. It may have some side health effects. The nice part is once you distill the mercury you can use it again and again, pretty cool huh?

</sarcasm>

Ron

hmmm that wasnt anything like i saw them do on the program! so it apears more than one way to skin a cat! i do like your method tho as i have aquired (in a job lot of other stuff) about 100 mercury wetted relays!!! and i have no idea what to do with them. so i can tick mercury off my list. blender not a problem i have 2 options here. 1) for large amounts i have a very very large tractor with a pulping machine i can attach to the PTO. for smaller scale stuff like knocking up the odd gold bar when short on cash i can use the wifes blender i got her for our anerversary! its been sat in the cupboard for years and never used!
my main sticking point here is going to be the washing machine... man my woman loves that thing. spends alot of time with it, talks to it and i realy am not comfortable taking risks that involve the slightest chance of damage to it.
so would a cement mixer be ok???


ok chaps thats enough for me now, ive taken this as far as i wanna go. i posted origanaly thinking i was posting a snippet of info on something i had seen and thought others like myself just might find it of interest.
i take alot of medication and recently have had a tweaking of said meds, my judgment is clearly not as good as i would like to think it is normaly and i continued to post in this thread long after i would normaly have stopped and walked away. my bad on this occasion.
the above response i have posted to rons post is merely a lightharted attempt at some humour to end my participation in this thread.


some times it pays to step back apraise and walk away

 

[BrownOut]

Mercury amalgamation is a very, very, very old process. We got better technology now.

 

[dougy83]

Mercury amalgamation is a very, very, very old process. We got better technology now.

I believe I heard it's still used in some poor towns. e.g. in Indonesia, with the metal being strewn throughout the village.

If you disagree with something someone has said and want to argue it, have proof

Is this a new rule?

 

[Sceadwian]

The problem is in arguing something that has no valid data set, there is no proof... It's a catch22.

 

[Sceadwian]

I've been able to find one site that actually provide a number for the value of a PC motherboards. This was from a year or so ago though, I'm guessing it's slightly higher or the same nowdays. Note how the profit is actually made on them though, nothing to do with precious metals recycling.