Letter 771b Reclaiming precious metal from circuit boards, etc. -- I work for a semiconductor research group and we do evaporations of precious metals as interconnects. Periodically, we clean out the evaporator and over the years we've collected several pounds of mixed metal. I'd say it's about 80% Au and the rest is Ti, Pt, Pl, Ge, Ni, Cr, W, and maybe a trace of other stuff. All the metals are from 99.9999% pure sources (not that it matters any more). Anyone know of a place to refine or buy this stuff? Dennis Scott University of Illinois, Urbana, IL -- Dennis, Try -Lea Ronal (Freeport N.Y.) -Johnson Matthey -Hereaus (Search for their exact addresses on the internet. If you use "reclaim" "precious" and "metals" you should find a lot. Success, Bye, Harry Harry van der Zanden - Netherlands -- I was a plating chemist for several years and recently have come into a quantity of surplus Gov. computers.... all out dated. Is it worth the effort to try to reclaim precious metals from them? I am not currently set up with a lab. greg austin toccoa Ga. - I have a set of connectors out of a surplus computer control. They are gold plated with roughly .005 thick plating. I'm trying to find someplace to sell them. Any help would be appreciated. Robert Sawtelle Carlton, OR - That must be an OLD computer, Mr. Sawtelle; the thickness you describe is 100 times today's minimal standards. Behr Precious Metals used to buy such stuff, you might see if they're still around somewhere. Ted Mooney, P.E.  finishing.com Brick, NJ   . As do Greg Austin ( NOV 5 1998) and Robert Sawtelle ( Feb 28 1999 ), I am in possession of a large number of old computers. Can anyone tell me if it is worth reclaiming the gold from the circuit boards and connectors and if it is how do I go about it. Thank you for any information you can give me. Carl Probert - Damascus, Md. USA

Carl Probert,

A lot depends on the age of the computer. When gold went to $800 in the early 80's they started using far less gold. The gold occurs in 4 areas.

1 Gold fingers

2 Edge connectors the gold fingers fit into

3 Connectors

4 Integrated circuits

Silver also occurs in tantalum capacitors and multilayer capacitors.

To refine the boards you must prepare them by removing all non gold material, batteries, steel, aluminum etc, why pay to refine stuff that has no gold.

If you have a truckload, go to Noranda Smelting in Quebec, they are lowest cost. For small amounts materials use Johnson Matthey. they charge $2 per pound, so clean it well.

Do not use any small refiners owned by familis or otherwise privately owned. They usually cheat you since you have no recourse. Make sure you get a referee to get your samples. Make sure he knows what it means when you run the furnace too hot. It means gold sublimes from the melt and condenses on the oxide particles and end up in the air filter....you get no money for that. make sure you sample the waste oxide and crap that floats to the top from the furnace....it has gold in it and the refinery send that out and keeps that credit unless you ask for it.

If you have less than a few hundred pounds it is not worth it....just sell it to a broker. Bill

Bill Jackson
- Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Ted Mooney, P.E. 
finishing.com
Brick, NJ 

how can you reclaim gold from pc? is it hard and costly?

richard owens
- leon,ia

I have a 55 gallon drum with remnants of material obtained in the clean up of semi-conductor machines. Does anyone know what the value of this would be? Is it worth my while to pursue this???

scott miller
- Las Vegas, Nevada

Hello,

I would like to respond too the people interested in electronics recycling, I have been recycling computers and other gold bearing electronics for 12 years, I started out by sending my material out to be refined, after several years of being cheated and sending material from one place too another I learned how to do it my self, I have now been reclaiming the gold and other precious metals my self for 10 years. It does pay to recycle electronic scrap!!!!

Any questions I will gladly answer.

Arnold Hoskins
Hamilton, Ohio, USA

This is for Arnold Hoskins, I am very interested in removing gold from chips and circuit boards, and then refining it myself,, where can I get some more information beside the Shor company,

Thanks,

Tim Hamilton
- Chico, California

Arnold,

I would be interested in your methods. I have done a little with Aqua Regia and the glass/borax finish method, but have not had good luck with electronics scrap. I have monthly access to an average of 3-500 "old" pcs(8086-486) that have no real value other than possible material reclamation. I would like to secure any good methods you have that work specifically with this type of application.

Thanks,

Richard P. Alcorn
- Cordell, OK, USA

Mr. Arnold Hoskins,

I am also interested in learning more about your methods for electronics recycling. There is not much information available for efficient precious metal reclamation. Any information you provide would be very helpful.

Thanking you in advance,

Ed McBride
- Prattville, AL, USA!

Mr. Arnold Hoskins,

I was very interested reading your posting. I have a availability to several hundred dead boards and I have been cruising all over the net and all I seem to find in regards to this is for extremely large corporations. Any information that you could give me in regards to electronics recycling would be greatly appreciated sir.

Thank you,

Regards,

Cassandra Fredrick
- Gilmer, Texas, USA

Any one could help me how to refine precious metal from PCB? Mr. Arnold Hoskins, in Hamilton, Oh, whose story is same as mine. And I like to learn how to do it myself.

Ivan Young, Lee
- Boroung-city, Korea

Mr. Hoskins hasn't been around this page for a while, but maybe someone will help. How much refinery experience do you have?

Ted Mooney, P.E. 
finishing.com
Brick, NJ 

Dear Mr. Ted Mooney:

Thanks for your e-mail and I found out that my letter posted.

Would you do me a favor.

As I mentioned on my mail, I am looking for a person who can show me how to refine precious metal from PCB. I like to build up a Burnout burner(=furnace) can handle approx 2000 lbs a day.

Ball mill for that volume. after burn and grind, electronic refining for Cu, Ag and do Au in this order at last whatever the left over slimes, will do for Pd, Pt. Of course, I understood that it will not be a free.

Please, kindly advise me .

Thanks..

Ivan Young, Lee
- Boroung-city, Korea

Dear sir,

I'm running my own small refinery. Wherein I do refine gold using aqua regia process. After reaction in aqua regia , gold is precipitated by SO2 gas or Na-metabisulphide.

I'm getting the gold in powder form. but the problem I'm facing is I'm not getting the desired output. i.e the problem is if I have 10 kgs of 99.5 gold which is to be refined to 99.99 to 99.9 depending on requirement. By this I should get 9.95 kgs. of gold but I get 100- 150 gms of gold less. I have checked all the process thoroughly several times . But I haven't found anything that is recoverable. Only the thing where I can check is the spent solution and wash water of gold powder. So I wanna to know about this process of recovering the gold from spent solution and wash water. Expecting your kindly answer as soon as possible.

Thanking you, regards,

Suraj Sharma
- Shirpur (Dhule), Maharashtra, India

Suraj, gold does not simply vanish. Possible solutions: The gold is not really 99.5% pure to start with. Not all the gold dissolved and some is in the residue after filtering. The gold drop was incomplete.

Chris Owen
- Houston, TX, USA

I want to follow up on or answer this question publicly

 

I want to post a question or inquiry of my own on a subject unrelated to recovery of values from scrap electronics.

 

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