How Can You Dissolve Gold Without Cyanide
Thiosulphate leaching is a process that removes gold from gold bearing ores without the use of cyanide. Although not as aggressive a leaching agent as cyanide, thiosulphate offers several technological advantages including its lower toxicity and greater efficiency with gold deposits associated with preg-robbing ores.
Is There Gold In Air Conditioners
Gold Is Contained in Circuit Boards
Air conditioners of all kinds use circuit boards that contain recyclable gold. It is found on the contact fingers on the edges of large printed circuit boards. In front-panel displays and the controls that are used in both window and through-the-wall air conditioning units.
Salvaging Gold From Old Electronics
If youre hoarding old electronics like us, theres a good probability you have a decent amount of gold sitting around in cardboard boxes and storage containers. Everything from old PCI cards, IC pins, and even printers have a non-negligible amount of precious metals in them, but how do you actually process those parts and recover that gold? has a great tutorial for gold recovery up on Instructables for the process that netted him an ounce of gold for three months work.
After cutting up a few circuit boards to remove the precious gold-bearing parts, threw these parts into a mixture of muriatic acid and hydrogen peroxide. After a week, the acid darkened and the gold slowly flaked off into dust. This gold dust was separated from the acid by passing it through a coffee filter and readied for melting into a single nugget.
Gold melts at 1064 C, much hotter than what can be obtained by a simple propane torch. This melting point can be reduced by the addition of borax, allowing the simplest tools a propane torch and a terra cotta crucible to produce a small gold nugget.
For three months of collecting, stripping, and dissolving electronic parts, netted 576.5 grains of gold, or at current prices, about $1500 worth of the best conductor available. Not too bad, but not something wed use as a retirement plan.
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Decant The Gold Foils
Once you have a good amount of gold foils in the main bucket, it is now time to decant the material into a smaller beaker.
Pour out all the contents of the bucket. Let the solution settle at the bottom of the beaker. Then, pour out the water, leaving the foils behind.
Pro Tip: Use a pipette to remove any remaining liquid in the beaker containing the gold foils. You want to ensure that the foils are moisture-free before attempting to melt them.
What Are Gold Contact Pins
They are the gold-plated small fingers that you will find on the edges of printed circuit boards. In most cases, these pins are made of thin layers of gold that has been plated over copper. Why is gold used in these places? Simply because gold is an excellent conductor of electricity and adding a thin plating of it over copper pins reduces electrical resistance and allows electrical current to flow more easily to and from the board.
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S To Get Gold From Computer Parts Without Chemicals
Are you looking to mine your old computer for gold? This project will not make you rich, but it is a fun and great way to put your e-waste to use. Gold is used in electronic devices because it is durable, has good electrical conductivity, and is less prone to corrosion. You will find traces of the precious metal on internal modems, drives, random access memory chips, motherboards, and central processing units.
In this article, I will show you how to get gold from computer parts without chemicals. There are other ways to do it but using common household materials is by far the safest method. So, lets get started.
How Do You Separate Gold From Metal
parting, in metallurgy, the separation of gold and silver by chemical or electrochemical means. Gold and silver are often extracted together from the same ores or recovered as by-products from the extraction of other metals. A solid mixture of the two, known as bullion, or doré, can be parted by boiling in nitric acid.
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Keep An Eye On The Apparatus
After 24 hours, check on your experiment and stir the solution. You might notice that the solution has turned light blue, but more importantly, you will start to see tiny gold foils floating around.
Let the solution bubble for an additional 48 hours. I recommend stirring every couple of hours to check that the quantity of gold foils is increasing.
You can sieve and separate the gold foils from the solution, but the longer you soak the electronic parts, the more gold youll extract.
Recovering Gold And Precious Metals From Circuit Boards
Congratulations, you have decided to enter to the amazing world of computer recycling and electronics recycling, recovering gold and precious metals from E waste is one of the most interesting and challenging practice in the recycling Industry.
All electronic devices contains inside of them circuit boards, in this article we will discuss about the most common circuit boards that can be found in a normal computer.
beside the power supply all of the circuit boards in the computer contains some precious metals in them: Motherboards, ISA cards, graphic cards, memory card etc you get the point.
Most circuit boards contain all sort of precious metals: Gold, Silver, Palladium and sometimes Platinum.
All circuit boards contain base metals: Copper, Nickel, Aluminum, Zinc, Tin, Lead and Iron. As well, small amount of hazardous elements like Beryllium, Barium and others that has to be considered while processing scrap circuit boards.
To get those precious metals we first need to identify what component contains each metal, so lets have a look at some of the most common computer circuit boards. Of course there are thousands of different types of components and even more circuit boards types so oviesly we can’t tuch them all, but the example below is sufficient to grasp the general idea.
Here is a common circuits boards Pictures with components highlighted:
B Female connector pins, plated with gold.
C PCI and Memory slots, gold plated pins inside.
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What You Can Salvage:
There are endless stuffs you can salvage from circuit boards. But below are the given things which are worth to look for.
MOTORS: Stepper, Servo, DC are some of the motor types you will find while salvaging.
TRANSFORMERS: You will find Step down transformer in almost all Electronic appliances. Step up transformers are pretty rare still handy if you found one.
SPEAKERS & BUZZERS: Found in all audio gadgets and appliances. You might find some top notch quality speakers if you attempt to salvage TV, Old Audio units etc.
SWITCHES AND BUTTONS: This part will be the most reliable one you could find while salvaging. Besides you will find various types of switches in different shapes and sizes, comes in handy always.
LCD AND LED SCREENS: Do not miss these at any cost since its worth quite a money. You could always search for its part number and use it along with your MCU.
MEMORY CHIPS: If you have the chance of salvaging a computer or computing gadgets then smile its your lucky day. RAMs, Hard Drives, Cooler Fans, CPU and GPU units . These parts generally cost quite a fortune and you dont want to miss these out.
CONNECTORS: Simple yet very effective salvage pick you could find in many circuit boards. Find it, take it, categorize it and you are good to use.
Availability Of Trained Workforce
Getting qualified people to join your operation is always a challenge. Recycling and extraction operations are often located in rural areas or areas where such operations can cause the least damage to the local environment. The staffing needed for the extraction process requires qualified labor, including workers with college degrees in chemistry or similar.
Persuading college-educated people to join your operation in the middle of nowhere is a difficult task. Offering higher salaries and bonuses might seriously affect the bottom line of your business. As the operation grows, it might be impossible to scale it in some areas due to the lack of a qualified workforce.
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Removing Gold Using Fire
The Scale Of The Operation
Another concern is creating economies of scale to pay back the investment and run a profitable refining business. The amount of gold to be recovered is tiny compared to the size of the electronic boards being recycled. This means that the extraction plant will need plenty of room for storing scrap boards.
Simultaneously, such an operation would require plenty of worker hours, and it would be necessary to hire multiple people to handle a variety of tasks. All this points toward a large-scale industrial operation with logistics and support.
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Connect The Apparatus To An Air Pump
Take another glass beaker and insert a tube connected to an air pump. This setup will help to circulate oxygen and remove unwanted gas from the stripping solution.
You need enough oxygen to ensure that the solution strips as much gold from the electronic parts as possible. Next, add the e-waste to the beaker to hold down the oxygen tube and keep it from shifting around
What Kind Of Electronic Devices Contain Gold In Printed Circuit Boards
You will find printed circuit boards in:
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Motherboards, graphic boards, modem cards and other parts of big old desktop computers that you already own, or which you can collect from colleges, hospitals and other sources.
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Printed circuit boards that are used in laptops, tablets, old remotes, phones, GPS units, and other electronic devices like PDAs, medical devices like CPAP machines, and even thermostats and old home alarm components.
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A Better Way To Mine Gold From Old Electronics
When you get rid of an old phone or tablet, you’re likely to remove your valuable information from it, but what about the valuable materials like gold that it contains?
Naturally, such substances are too hard for consumers to retrieve, which might be why, according to the University of Edinburgh , about seven percent of the world’s gold supply is currently locked inside of electronics. While removing that gold has heretofore been a highly toxic and inefficient proposition, researchers now think that a new process will make prospecting for gold in electronics heaps more achievable than ever.
Gold is often found on printed circuit boards, particularly under keyboards where its durability is an advantage. According to the UE researchers, about 300 tonnes of the metal are used in electronics each year.
The new process to remove it uses a mild acid as opposed to harsher chemicals such as cyanide or mercury that are currently used to extract gold.
First, printed circuit boards are dissolved in the acid which turns all of the metal in the board to liquid. Then, an oily solvent made from toluene is added, kicking off a process known as solvent extraction. Toluene is an aromatic hydrocarbon commonly found in paint thinners. The toluene solvent pulls the gold free from the other materials in the acid wash where the metal can be recovered and used again. Likewise, the solvent and acid can be reused, cutting down on waste.
Leaching Tests With Sodium And Ammonium Thiosulfate
In this work, different concentrations of thiosulfate, ammonium hydroxide and copper sulfate were tested.
Sodium hydroxide and sulfuric acid were used to adjust the pH of the system during the tests. All tests were performed in an open reactor . As before, the PCB samples were suspended from a nylon wire to prevent contact with the walls of the reactor.
The parameters used in gold leaching from mobile phone PCBs with thiosulfate are described in Tables 1 and 2.
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Can You Scrape Off Gold Plating
You can remove gold plating on silver. When gold plating becomes scratched, worn or you just want to change the look of your jewelry, you can remove the gold plating from silver. Since gold is electroplated or electrically bonded to silver, there are no chemicals or solvents that will readily remove gold plating.
Availability Of Scrap Metal And Electronic Boards
Perhaps the biggest challenge that an extraction operation can face is securing a constant supply of materials. This can be extremely challenging unless the recycling operation has contracts with factories producing electronic components. Additionally, shipping in electronic boards from electronic waste facilities in the region requires logistics and storage space.
The expensive machinery and equipment needed for the extraction process cost the operation a lot of money when sitting around and doing nothing. Ensuring that the operation runs optimally without breaks is the only way to run a profitable business in gold extraction.
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Prepare A Buffer Solution For The Foils
Prepare a buffer mixture of vinegar and sea salt. This solution will protect the foils from direct contact with bleach and heat when converting the foils into gold particles.
To prepare the solution, mix 120 ml white vinegar with four tablespoons of sea salt and stir until the salt dissolves. Decant the liquid into a separate beaker.
Ensure that the solution remains slightly acidic. Ideally, you should be aiming for a pH of 4.5 to 5. To check, drop a pH test strip into the decanted solution.
If the solution is too acidic, add a pinch of sodium bicarbonate to bring the solution to the desired pH level. Continue adding sodium bicarbonate bit by bit until you achieve the required pH.
New Process Extracts Gold From Electronics
By TONY WU | February 11, 2016
Stokpic.comThis new method can remove gold in a usable form from electronics.
Gold, the precious metal that built and destroyed empires, was the focus of millions of investors for years. Two years ago, gold prices peaked at around $2,000 per ounce. This ongoing interest in gold not only motivated ancient kings to start wars of conquest but also inspired a team of scientists to search for innovative methods of extracting gold.
In late March of 2015, a team of researchers found that human waste contains minute traces of gold and other precious metals. This waste is carried to wastewater facilities along with other metal-containing products like detergents. By taking waste samples from different communities, scientists have determined that the gold level in the sewage is the same as that of a minimal mineral deposit an amount that is commercially viable to extract from rocks.
This is not the most recent advance in gold extraction, however. Recently, a research team discovered an efficient method of stripping gold from electronic wastes. Modern electronics contain very small parts that are powered by low currents. As a result, a reliable, corrosion-resistant metal is necessary for the devices to work. Therefore, most electronics contain trace amounts of gold that are bound to their internal components.
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Dispose Of Hazardous Wastes Properly
In this step, package your etching solution in a bottle with a very tight cap . Label the bottle and make sure it clearly says HAZARDOUS, DO NOT DRINK OR OPEN in huge letters all over the bottle. Tape the cap with masking tape so people, if they get ahold of it, don’t open it. Also, keep away from anyone else, especially young children, or any other bottles of the same kind.
Also, take PCBs and put them in a plastic bag and put into trash. These are fine to put in the trash if you have followed previous step of soaking them in a cup of water. If not, please soak in water before disposing.
After properly packaging, take to your nearest hazardous waste processing facility or H-MRF. These facilities are only by appointment and sometimes, depending on where you live, charge a fee .
DO NOT POUR DOWN SINK OR TOILET. YOU MUST FOLLOW THE STEPS ABOVE, OR RISK BREAKING LAWS WITH HARSH FINES AND EVEN JAIL TIME IF YOU ARE CAUGHT.
Can You Test Gold With Bleach
To check for genuine gold, use bleach. It is unlikely to destroy authentic gold jewelry, but it is likely to ruin fake gold jewelry. Although bleach is quite similar to nitric acid, thats not as reliable as a test. Using standard household bleach as a simple home test for actual gold is a good idea.
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Leaching Tests With Commercial Stripping
The commercial stripper used here for chemical stripping of gold and alloys of nickel involved simple immersion. The product is provided in the form of a yellow liquid containing cyanide that removes a layer of up to 1 mm gold per minute at room temperature .
The leaching tests were carried out using the parameters described in the user manual of the product. The parameters used in gold leaching of mobile phone PCBs with commercial stripping were: temperature 25±2, 2 hours of extraction, pH 12.5 and solid/liquid ratio 1/25.
All tests were performed in a closed reactor. The PCB samples were suspended from a nylon wire to prevent them from being in contact with the walls of the reactor. For economic and environmental reasons, only PCBs of types A, B and C, shown in Figure 2, were tested.
