Refining Computer Scrap Using Sulfur???
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 29 авг 2024
- Smelting down more PCB's and computer parts trying to recover the metals. This is part 2 of my experiments trying to recover all the metals, including gold and silver, from electronics. In this video I use sulfur to combine with the more reactive metals in our shaker table concentrates to try and remove the iron and the zinc. This seemed to work and produced a really nice pour where everything was fully molten and alloyed together. I think we are on the right track to be able to alloy and start refining the metals from our mother boards, etc via pyrometallurgy.
Patreon Account: / mbmmllc
Hats, Shirts, & Merch: my-store-c2b49...
AFFILIATE LINKS
What's an affiliate link? If you use our link to buy something, MBMM gets a small percentage of the money you spend. This DOES NOT mean you will spend more money using our link, you will spend the SAME AMOUNT of money while also supporting a small business and channel.
Filming Equipment:
Samsung Galaxy 22 Ultra: amzn.to/3ol4nuM
Long tripod: amzn.to/3WpKWgW
Short tripod: amzn.to/3IVYdZl
Complete Smelting Kits:
Complete smelting furnace kit: amzn.to/3WdvHHS
Cupelling furnace: amzn.to/42ZOWXV
Fluxes:
Chapman’s flux: amzn.to/3Of4JO0
Anhydrous borax: 1lb amzn.to/3M6EhUh 5lbs amzn.to/3pLRx9i
Silica sand: amzn.to/3Mv0TiG
Soda ash: 1lb amzn.to/41Ctg2N 5lbs amzn.to/3BtrhDg 50lbs amzn.to/3oaI6Qf
Lye: amzn.to/3Mx8OvD
Litharge: amzn.to/3OhtHwi
Lead: amzn.to/3MARq9t
Bismuth: amzn.to/45uuSPk
Smelting Supplies:
Crucibles: #4 amzn.to/3M92QQk 10# amzn.to/42XIsIY fire clay amzn.to/42K3laN
Cupel: amzn.to/437F8L6
Electric furnace: amzn.to/430C6cd
Tongs: amzn.to/3BB2dKp
Heat safe gloves: amzn.to/41MxMeQ
Gold pans: amzn.to/3pRIzra
Gold screens: amzn.to/3pTjo7j
Scales: 0.01 amzn.to/3BB2FZ7 0.001 amzn.to/438NrXh
Magnets: amzn.to/42MFLde
Pan for roasting sulfides: amzn.to/3pNGQTN
Respirator: amzn.to/3IqbclD
Microscope for phone: amzn.to/3OsAdQM
Furnace Building Supplies:
Kaowool: 2” x 12.5’: amzn.to/3BB9IRO 1” x 25” amzn.to/3Wd7ktO
Water glass (sealant): amzn.to/45desuv
Fire bricks: amzn.to/3Ogx86v
Shop vac: amzn.to/434rOXV
Propane: amzn.to/3pTj60d
Propane regulator and burner: amzn.to/3pG4p0w
Refractory cement: amzn.to/3Ok75ex
Underground Mining Equipment:
Hard hat with light clip: amzn.to/3Iss7nL
Head lamp for hard hat: amzn.to/433G5US
Hammer drill: amzn.to/3ofHFUM
Hammer drill bits: amzn.to/3MjLf8A
Safety glasses: amzn.to/439w8Fo
Gloves: amzn.to/45ceXoF
Feather and wedge set: amzn.to/3Om1kNz
Respirator: amzn.to/3IqbclD
For more info please email or call:
Email: info@MBMMLLC.com
Phone: 360-595-4445
Website: www.mbmmllc.com/
Facebook: / mbmmllc
Instagram: / mbmmllc
Twitter: / mbmmllc
As promised in response to the previous video I called your office to offer some fully populated unmolested PC boards but, the Lady who answered said, not interested. I now have over a barrel full & they are free but in California. I hope you are working with better boards because the ones before were pretty barren. Great content!
There are a few PM smelters left in the country - Glencore, Colt, Reladan, SiPi, Gannon&Scott. Most recover PM from circuit board fractions, shredded, sample, assay in a copper melt. I know Borax and other additives are used, but I understand the primary homogenizing metal is copper - which was generally 2x the amount of sampled material melted. then the bars were drilled for assay - atomic absorption. I spent 18 years working for such a company, but was on the incoming side knowing enough to be dangerous. I could help you find out more. But in truth, the only thing you need to do is shred to mag out the iron, get ride of any aluminum fraction prior to shred - such as heat sinks (copper melts do not like aluminum) Then you generally reduce everything to a copper bar with PM in it - yes - majority being Silver, Gold and some Palladium. Rarely a payable content on Palladium, which as you saw comes from the tiny capacitors mounted on the boards. Older "green" boards are best. The newer blue and red boards have very low value per pound - $.50-1.25 - if that. When you see a lot of black IC's (or ceramic ICs) on both sides of the board, your good. A lot of open space means leave them alone!! Even the copper content is lower.
I noticed on one board you left the C2032 Lithium clock battery on the board. Perhaps you found out the hard way when they get shredded the explode!!
Be super careful with the older material that might contain Beryllium- that stuff will kill you - slowly - but surely. some older "ceramic" IC's contain Beryllium oxide and Be was also used as a stiffener for copper connectors to make them "springy".
Really cool stuff though. Found you watchin Cerro Gordo vids and your helping Brent. Nice! You can find me - I'll help you. If you don't already have enough help!
The amount of knowledge shared within these videos and comments is amazing
Ya know you can sand blast your cone mold, that would keep the build up down and extend the life span of it as well... One other good tip is to pre heat your cone mold, that in itself will stop a lot of the metals adhering to it.. I found this video very informative and interesting also very entertaining...
After a blasting I would lite some pine on fire and hold that over it and give it a good smoking
We use a coating of lime in our molds to stop the metal sticking
🤔
Thank you Jason 👍
Much better results!
Kudos to the great suggestions from the comments.
I like that you are so knowledgable about the metallurgical chemistry, you do your research, and are learning the whole time. The use of the XRF is helpful to see what is going on and I think it's great you went to the expense to get one of those. Looking forward to following the PCB saga in future videos, as well as your other projects.
As always, interesting stuff, Jason!
I think you're onto something. You pushed the precious metals out of solution and concentrated them into the smallest compound to be further processed.
I'm glad that you didn't take the path of rehashing/copying old videos to make this one. This video is worthy of credit.
Excellent I look forward to next week's class thank you
Excellent mbmmllc, thank you very much for sharing your knowledge, it is very true that other videos or tutorials the only thing they do is confuse or lie because it is not the process. Greetings from Caracas Venezuela. In Spanish: Excelente mbmmllc, muchas gracias por compartir tus conocimientos, es muy cierto que otros videos o tutoriales lo unico que hacen es confundir o mentir porque no es el proceso. Saludos desde Caracas Venezuela.
Absolutely awesome video!! Your research & experimentation is much appreciated. I watch these pcb videos several times & take notes. I just bought a small furnace and had a cone mold like yours made. Next project is to add a blower to my foundry to increase the heat. Thanks Jason!
I have a endless supply of top grade sulphur that I use for work and I have always thought that this should work, thanks so much for giving me the push to get on and try this myself 👍
Did you test sulphur as a flux in E-waste smelting?
Really enjoy your chemistry lectures haha they are the best
Many years ago I worked for a company that refined silver from x-rays , they would burn the x-rays to an ash and refine the ash for silver also the Fix solution from x-ray machines had large amounts of silver in it . The darker the x-ray the more silver it had ! I also purchased a retired dentist carpet from his clinic and cut it up and burned it and recovered dental gold ! I paid $1 per yard of carpet and recovered almost $10,000 in dental gold , this was back in the earl 80’s ! At one point I had over 1,000 oz. Of silver but silver was only worth $2 an oz.
Very interesting results. Seems a good way to separate copper but I still think you're missing out on the vast majority of Ag and Pd from the various smd components. I'd bet they are being crushed to dust and just going out with the tailings. Possibly try to depopulate the boards before going through the hammer mill and then using this same sulfur smelt on the components and compare results?
I really dig the show Jason...wishing you well..KEEP ON ROCKING IT!.......mbmmllc........
Interesting, looking forward to seeing the results.
Nice!
Thanks!
Did you test adding sulphur as a flux in E-waste smelting, is it effective? I wnder how sulphur not evaporate before it combined with base metals, sulphur start burn and evaporate at very low temperature.
If really sulphur effective as shown in the video it will be the best way for e-waste precious metals recovering even better than using copper electrolysis cell since we can reduce copper content and push it in slag, maybe we can add some silver to make sure that we collect all gold beads, kindly inform me if you have any experience with it
Good job ,coming with new technic every time
Not to be that guy but its actually "sulfidate", sulfidation, 'ed , 'ing. ect... Thanks for the videos you do, very informative 👍👌
THANK YOU JASON VERRY INTERSTING, LOOKING FORWARD TO THE PROGRESS ON THIS ONE. REGARDS RICHARD IN THE U.K.
5:58 "so I don't know how exciting this is gonna be" to describe a potential explosion is the mating call of a fun material scientist.
Very much enjoyed that one thanks,
I accidentally tapped dislike but corrected it immediately.
This must be the most entertaining & practically informative precious metals refining channel on RUclips thank you very much appreciated.
Thank you for the share ,the ringing of those which hertz sounds YIKES
Great stuff Jason, I find the parallels working with heat and gravity vs chemistry very interesting. Meaning fire vs acids etc. The same characteristics show up in the reactivity of the various metals. I am wondering about why no Tantalum shows up in the XRF. It is present in the PCB's for sure. It is hard, and has a melting point of almost 5500F. not sure if sulfur, or even any acids dissolve it, it is highly corrosion resistant. Enjoy all the vids, keep up the great work!
You made a decent bronze on the last one. The bronze is valuable in its own right.
One suggestion is try to seive out 1kg material of slot 1 , this will drop out much smaller size will prevent copper and base metals , the rest noble metals and platings try to cupel the rest
Seiveing should be done with water to prevent loss of dust particles sticking with copper
You are really on to something here! It would be interesting to see how this process would work with higher grade material.
Another great video
Bead blast the cone mold with Glass beads
Always enjoy and learn from your videos over the years Jason! Keep up the awesome work and wishing you good success! "It might explode" lol but true. Nice results!
Very cool 😎 Im moving away acid refining and doing cue paling, thanks friend 😃
Really cool getting to watch your experiments...
You're definitely on to something! However, I wouldn't add extra iron with the low sulphur smelts because then you'd just reintroduce more iron to the mix and you wanted to get rid of that... Just letting the sulphur react with the more reactive metals in your source should work just fine and it's fine if you have some unused sulphur left over at the end; no need to try and react all of it as it'll probably end up in the mat and slag anyway. ANYWAY just my $0.02
I agree with Moonchild here. Don't add any extra iron. If you at some point have too much copper in the sulfide mat, then reuse that sulfide mat instead of sulfur in your next melt, or re-melt a large amount of sulfide mat with a few nails in order to reduce out the copper from that.
This guy is funny man he burns himself and don't say nothing like he's used to it. I seen other video where he picks up hot stuff with gloves you know that hurts lol awesome stuff thanks for education and entertainment.
Thanx,very educational. Learning alot from you
I think with your idea to reduce the map bead of concentrated noble metals is a great idea. Deserving of a part 3 video if you still have it handy.. great experiment, thanks for sharing 👍
the only true way to refine it to pure elements in to dissolve it all in acids. you can then refine it to pure gold, and use the electrode to get the copper out of the solution. plenty of videos on youtube to show exactly what you need and how to do it. trinity gold recovery shows great examples!
Glad to see u working with Cerro Gordo. That's awesome .
Hey Jason, have you thought of writing a book on all aspects of processing, smelting, and refining? I think it would be a great read like Chris Ralph's 'Fists Full Of Gold.' If you two did a video together that would rock.
I have been wanting to scrap computers forever. Well I dont have much just 30 grams of cut fingers to melt in boiled down vinegar... anyhow I should end up with like 0 01 grams or something but videos like this make me want to try to badly to care
Definitely an insightful test. Looking forward to see the electrochemistry setup
Nice job Jason , who would have thought !!! Sulfur !!! , Before they invented Dynabolts my Dad used sulfur to fuse bolts into concrete or rock , from memory it worked a treat .
I can remember using molten sulphur to secure handrails & balustrades into concrete. I am a boilermaker & used to make a tonne of wrought iron.
I would scan the flux for valuable metals like nickel and cobalt. depending on the concentrations, it could make recovery monetary sense. contact Tesla and Apple with those results. Upscale you designs to handle three tons of E waste an hour.
Good show.
Another very interesting video 😊
Very interesting Jason
Thanks
✌️PT
I think you may find some interesting info looking back on the old sulfide refinery plants regarding refining-recovery of particular metals. You may have issues commercialising your process due to heavy regulation of sulfides btw. One or two of the platinum group can be recovered this way, my memorys hazy but rhodium im fairly sure of, if palladium also its worth you testing a gasoline catalytic convertor, @90% palladium 10% rhodium PM content. Rhodiums difficult to extract via wet chemical leaching and standard smelting. Diesal cats are 90% platinum, 10% rhodium btw. The rhodium extends catalyst life.
Im trying to figure out with your current material if youd be better off with further mechanical separation ( if possible) before you smelt to reduce further steps down the line in the electrolysis-electrowinning youll be doing of your recovered metal button.
I think the sulfides attacking your mold btw, its worth noting the sulfur may be corrosive to some crucibles and reduce their lifespan
People who cast bullets from lead are interested in alloys of lead that are hardened. Antimony and tin are the two most common metals that are alloyed in. HOWEVER a small amount of Copper in the lead is being found to be ideal because it adds "toughness" to the lead which keeps the bullets intact at very high speeds and rotational force. It is hard to get copper to smelt into lead though. It would seem that if there would be a way to combine the copper with tin and antimony and alloy that into lead it might be viable. A good combination of lead-antimony-tin-copper might be perhaps 6% antimony 2% tin 1.5% copper with the rest lead. ...Just a thought.
thank for this i really hope you get it right
I hope you have good ventilation! Keep up with these informative videos
Hey, Jason! Melting and reaction with sulfur is a really good pyrometallurgical method of refining precious metals! It is very interesting what the result will be. I am waiting for your next video after the process of electrowinning of the resulting alloy.
According to the electrolysis process, my little advice is to flatten the anode to a thinner and larger plate area. To increase the working area of the electrolysis. You can also roll the anode plate into a roll like a cathode, that is, coaxially to each other. Then the electrolysis time will be significantly reduced. Well, accordingly, there will be less electricity consumption.
Best regards, Nick.
Looking forward to next week. Wonder what would happen if you refired the brittle "metal". That tin is my biggest concern.
You made a variant of speculum metal (what telescope mirrors were made from before glass became easy to get in large sizes) in the first pour, true speculum is nearly 50:50 copper to tin.
Wear a face screen while pooring lead mate. My father lost a eye that way really.
And don't grab the cone mold with a gloved hand when its just out of the furnace.
THANK YOU. You answered a big question!!!! I'll post with my results!!!!!
Ever tried coating your mold with a graphite powder slurry?
...make a thick slurry with gum cellulose and distilled water add graphite powder till it's a tad thicker than toothpaste and paint it on. To dry it out just set your mold on the kiln for a couple min during your smelt. Might be a good idea to sandblast the iron oxides off the mold .Might work better with a fresh surface
That was an awesome adventure! Very interesting.
Love your videos ! IMO ... to turn e-waist metal recovery into an economically viable business you will need to cook the waiste first to burn off the plastics and other junk, reduce it to a fine carbon black powder, then run it accross the shaker table. The way you're currently doing it by grinding up then smelting, there's still residual plastics and toxins stuck to the metals and little particles that sneak in. You will need to deal with any toxins, you can't just open air burn plastics, not environmentally good, probably the best bet is a pryolysis machine, which is basically a still for plastics, burns off the junk, while procesing bio fuels, afterwards the carbon black could be turned into another product, like maybe crucibels and cupels, there by creating an added savings, you would have 0 toxic waiste to dispose of.
I really Enjoy these videos. Good work :)
This looks accessible to a regular guy with a small furnace. I don't have the hammer mill but I think I can get around that. We'll see where it lands.
I don't doubt sulfur will react with many metals and may ultimately be a tool in your toolbox. Have you ever heard of a jewelry compound called Niello? It is a compound formed by mixing sulphur, silver, copper and lead. It forms a black material that can be broken up and remelted to fill and decorate silver with a black color. It sounds like it forms a black matte.
Buy bulk, elemental sulfur or elemental sulfur for gardening to save money. A lot of times it comes in the for of flat, lentil shaped grains. Its super easy to crush up and way cheaper than buying fungicide, in the long run.
So the paladium and the gold was in the brittle stuff . Once again, E-waste should go first through the acids, than through the forge so to know what to expect and not to lose it
Can’t wait to see the video with Bret at GTL
I seen a guy try and make a mix of copper and aluminum and it's just a brittle mix of the 2.
I've seen graphite crucibles glazed with Borax before being used to the first time to keep stuff from sticking and I wonder if fluxing your cone mold help remove some of that junk
The brittle metal that you made is what I call “shit brass.” I don’t know if you knew this, but you can make brass by mixing copper & aluminum together. About 85-90% copper to 10-15% aluminum. It makes a VERY strong brass if you mix them together correctly (stronger than the stuff that they use for bells), but if you don’t do it right… it becomes very brittle. Probably as hard as a thin potato chip. So when you’re smelting it… you got to make sure that you’re mixing it right. I don’t know why, but the mixture that you made up reminds me of that.
Looks like a job for "Mr. Sand Blaster"
Awesome!
The viability of processing e-waste should result in more sales of your turn-key system?
Jason, do you know if you can cupel away the tin in that brittle material to recover the PMs? Does tin work in cupelling like lead and bismuth?
No, tin doesnt cupel. It needs removing before cupellation if you want just a precious metal bead at the end of cupellation.
@@geoffc1694 Tin is removed by cupellation.
My thought was how do you know if you got what you should if you don't know exactly what's in it? So I'd say smelt a bar down of just your fines from 1 and 2 and measure those. Then do this and see what results you get... I'd say it would be a little bit more controlled
If you clean the boards you might get better results. Where is the gold? I thought it would have more. Board do not have that much copper.
good stuff!! dude you look just like my twin brother!!!
Somebody send this man some molds!
Really cool process. Interesting XRF results too. Would soaking the crushed and dried PCB’s in HCl reduce the amount of base metals pre melt?. Then precip the base metals from HCl.
Awesome as always open and pointed results. Seperate question, have you considered using a different gas such as electrolytic hydrogen? I only say that because solar could close another loop in sustainable refining.
Nice vid! Always good to Cu.
Thank you
Also making a graphite mold may help your sticking issue alot
You should talk with scree tips about how to separatecopper from gold with acids growing crystals of gold and liquid copper because I knowgold melt temp is 1060 DEG C BUT COPPER melt temperature is 2000 degrees c acid is easy with reperator gravity can it work with them? Sorry august old
I was trying to think of where the tin came from and recalled older solder is 60/40 tin lead.
Great video keep them coming
Going after precious metals with that starter material is a bit overoptimistic. There hardly is any in there. Most of the gold was taken from your scrap before you milled it. You have to make your cut with the copper, or you'll be disappointed...
Is it possible to set up the shaker table to seperate tin from copper?
I'm just spit calling here but, (2 things)
1) I'm sure you could recycle your silver slag.
2) I believe your adding of iron is creating an iron copper sulfide alloy in your slag, so maybe don't add iron.
But I really don't know. I would just use nitric acid myself.🤔
Spitballing
you could try graphite powder in your mold. it should be a bit more heat resistant then WD40.
Jason you might want to heat your mold up before you pour in the molten metal into it.
Great info and video
#1. find out how pc boards are made then you can separate everything off of the pc board probably with a type of acid bath. #2. once things are apart you can separate each component that was on the PC boards to other like components. #3. put each pile of same components in another acid bath to wash them from other plastic or junk within the components. #4. do the research on each components to know what to use for separation then you would know before you do something like heat or acid baths. research will tell you how to heat all the same components together. right now all components are all together = the junk slag mixing with the good stuff. if separated you will put like things all together & not lost on what should be done. knowledge is power. today is 12-13-21
Seems like when he pours there's alot of good stuff at the bottom of the kersivile.
How much did the small prill that shattered weigh?
Brimstone!
Place a piece of cardboard under your crucible. It will eliminate sticking to firebrick in furnace.
good stuff
You need to try that sulfur smelt with catalytic converter
Pre heat your con mold before you pour your eye it's for your batch of stuff to is the stuff to cool down
Cool experiment. Could sulfur be used to purify copper out of brass?
You are going to hit on a high explosive by accident someday! BOOM! lol