Precious Metals in Scrap?

[icekila]

Hi to all, I have been surfing this forum but I finally registered, excellent forum. I have a question can precious metals be harvested from scrap electronics?, like gold, silver and platinum.

 

[cobra1]

Gold is the only metal i know of, its used in gold plated PCBs, harvesting it would not be worth it IMO.

Maybe precious metals would be more likely found in older components, modern day components i would doubt.

 

[icekila]

I have a ps2 and I was wandering is there gold inside or any other precious metals?

 

[ghostman11]

gold and other metals includeing copper are harvestead from scrap such as mother boards, it is BIG BUSINESS worth many many millions a year. the process is complex and involves some increadiably nasty chemicals. you would be amazed the quantity of gold that can be reclaimed from a relativly small amount of scrap.
have a search online for a tv program called bang goes the theroy, they did a program on reclaiming gold from old phones and tried it out, they did infact recover a fair bit of gold!

 

[Sceadwian]

ghostman11, I would disagree with that statement, gold is only used on interconnects and even then it's so small an amount that the worth is difficult to calculate, I would ask where you found that large amounts of gold could be recovered. 'fair bit' is a useless value, especially if the cost of the process isn't taken into account, I would figure there were be a far greater recovery and value rate for things like lead, tin and copper, don't forget the sludge left over is considered hazardous waste still and has to be legally disposed of which again costs lots of money.

Such recovery programs don't work unless they are incredibly large in scale as well.

The amount of gold even on electrical interconnects is INCREDIBLY small, a few microns thick at best usually.

 

[ghostman11]

you can dissagree all you want! the program was actualy a science based program where they explain stuff by doing experiments etc. for this one they didnt try and get all the other metals just the gold. they basicaly did a manual lab version of what is done on a large comercial scale. the presenter got a whole load of scrap mother boards and mobile phones vut them all up into small bits and then subjected them to a bunch of chemical process. from what i would say was half a wheel barrow load of scrap he reclaimed around £130 (from memory) of gold in the form of a small nugett.
now this program you should be able to find on the uk BBC iplayer website its not a spoof program more of a science explained type program. i did have a brief look for the show with the item in but didnt find it (i didnt spend long) i think the show was september or maybe beggining october. from what was said there is actualy alot more gold and other metals in scrap and the machines normaly used to recover are very exspensive but apparently it is well worth it. do some reasearch this isnt something i got from a wikipedia or web source it was a serious TV program i saw from a respected source (BBC)
still looking for the BBC program but came across this that is about the same way they did it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3yxYYaQQy8 i will keep searching for the show tho

 

[ghostman11]

tell you what Scead even your CNN channel has a vid of them at a plant in tokyo that recycles the gold and other metals from pc's!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bU-NwowzVE

now if you could please post the links you used to show that it wasnt worth doing... or did you just jump in and decide i was wrong without actualy bothering to find out??
and YES iam GRUMPY as Hell TODAY thank you for asking

 

[Sceadwian]

[moderated: Off topic]

 

[Sceadwian]

If you look at the energy required to recycle these materials you'd understand they only work at FULL SCALE, and gold is the LEAST profitable of their recovered metals, even if the raw material is the most valuable, copper, tin, lead. The mass is dramatically higher even above the cost of the raw materials.

 

[ghostman11]

The vid although on you tube is from the bang goes therory show a few weeks later where he mentions and shows the gold he made (getting closer to finding the vid i want) pay attention to the start of this one he mentions what parts of a phone etc are gold https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMq2Du3B69Y erm also incorrect there is a whole cottage industry of people doing it and making money! do the research first

 

[Sceadwian]

Yeah.. pay attention to the fact that the coating of gold is a few microns thick.... Do yourself a favor, research the chemical value required to recover the metals. Gold is the least valuable by content of what is recovered from these types of mass recycling operations.

[MODERATED: This thread has parts removed due to them being off topic]

 

[ghostman11]

episode 2 series 5 is the one i am looking for, try and find it and watch carefuly. then work out what it actualy cost him for the chemicals (i tell you now they arnt that exspensive!). modern electronics are covered in gold especialy mobile phones. the process is more than economical.
or better still watch the vid then post your costings explaing the costs relating to what they did! otherwise your just arguing for the sake of it. i dont see there is anything else i can add.

 

[ghostman11]

Yeah.. pay attention to the fact that the coating of gold is a few microns thick.... Do yourself a favor, research the chemical value required to recover the metals. Gold is the least valuable by content of what is recovered from these types of mass recycling operations..

utter rubish copper is less valuable by far. as for the sludge you mention this is melted in the final process and is what recovers the gold! you arnt actualy left with much after its heated. back up what your saying or shut up with pure guess work. you have not posted a single link to your claim that it isnt worth doing small scale you have merely gave your opinion. i have at least tried to show that it is more than possiable to recover gold on a small scale and in reasonable quantities. the other metals share the same starting process although i would have thought the value of gold recovered would more than been enough to make i worth while

 

[ghostman11]

https://www.finishing.com/0600-0799/771b.shtml seems alot of people doing it small scale one guy been doing it and making a living 12 years i doubt he has been loesing money for 12years!! thats from just a quick trawl of the net.
the main problem would be the chemicals and process are nasty but more than easy enough for someone with a chemistry degree i would have thought.... still waiting for any kind of proof i am wrong

take a look here https://www.azom.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=1767 10Kg a day is small scale so is 100Kg a day. also there process yields little toxic waste

 

[BrownOut]

[MODERATED: Off Topic]

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

Gold wires for interconnects within IC's are probably still used for the wire bonder.
Hewlett Packard's early PCB process (copper/nickle/gold) and there was gold to be harvested there.
Tantalum can be found in capacitors.
Silver is used in RF systems.

Recovery is usually profitable on a large scale. In fact there are companies which will recover stuff for you when you provide them a large lot.

 

[duffy]

I have to agree with Sceadwian on this.

Those gold bonding wires are .0005" in diameter, and average .1" in length. From [LATEX]\pi r^2 l[/LATEX] That works out to .00000002 cubic inches of gold. You would need 91,912,057 bonding wires, with 100% recovery, to get just 1 oz of gold.

That's MILLIONS of chips you have to process to net less than two-thousand dollars.

And most of those gold-looking contacts aren't gold, they are just plain old phosphor bronze. The ones that DO have gold are often just gold "flash" - this is a layer of gold .00000014" thick that make those .0005" in diameter bonding wires look voluminous by comparison.

The people making money on this are the ones selling books, "information packages", gold recovery kits, tools, chemicals, etc.

 

[cachehiker]

The place I worked 10 years ago made money on their precious metals recovery program it but wouldn't have if it was just one metal like gold.

They used enough tin, lead, silver, palladium, platinum, etc. to make thick film parts they sent all their scrapped product out to a precious metals recovery firm. Since they already had a contract with the firm, failed motherboards, hard drives, CRT's, batteries from backup systems, controller boards, and similar, easily scavanged items (even large heat sinks) were collected in 55 gallon drums in the back of the machine assembly area. When they were full, they got sent out as well.

If I were an accountant, I would have numbers. I am not.

The place I work now couldn't care less. I think they could do better with scrap controller boards and motors though. They're too lazy and disorganized to do that so they just pay somebody to haul it all away and basically get scrap steel prices for everything. Seriously, copper was $4/pound and aluminum was $1/pound not too long ago and there's a pound or two of copper in every motor and a pound of aluminum in every motor controller. Keep the motors separate and design the controller so it's pop this, unclip that, throw pcb in this barrel, heat sink in that barrel, and somebody will pay for the precious metals in those presorted parts when you've collected enough of them.

 

[cachehiker]

BTW, at the local landfill, county inmates get "paid" and some community service credit for sorting the e-waste. I'm sure that paying 65 cents per hour for labor (haven't exactly verified this) goes a long way towards making that program profitable as well. One of my old friends who went to prison for repeated DUI's got something like $12/week in commissary credit for his work. After working and trying to save for an entire year behind bars, he left with about $65 more than he was incarcerated with, not even enough for week's rent. I expect recidivism out of a system like that.

 

[BrownOut]

@duffy, I think your math is off. at 2*10^-8 cu in, it would take 50 million bonding wires to make 1 cu in. And 1 cu in weighs about 11 oz, and so 50M/11(oz/cuin) ~= 4.5 million wires per ounce. Newer filp chips have 1152 balls, and so if we're talking about modern, high density chips, that's only 4.5M/1152= around 4 thousand chips.

Sure not all chips are going to be high density, but we're talking maybe tens of thousands of chips, not millions.