Smelting Computer Parts
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- Опубликовано: 22 апр 2022
- More computer smelting experiments! In this experiment Jason tries using pyrochemistry and the metal reactivity series to isolate the Coper, Gold, and Silver from the ground up PCB/electronics which were recycled through the MBMM PCB turnkey ore processor.
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6:35 It looks like there is a significant replacement of copper on the nails. If it was merely a surface coating, like it was just plated on there, they would be harder to bend. So I think you are right identifying that as the source of the copper loss. Maybe if you add some metallic copper as well as copper oxide you will be able to form molten copper as a collector earlier in the melt and start partitioning copper earlier as it is reduced, instead of having to build up a certain amount of copper in solution in the melt before it nucleates a droplet of copper. Also the greater surface area of having melted copper early will help with the kinetics of copper migration into the molten copper metal. Another thing would be to use shredded steel wool or iron filings to increase iron surface area and also disperse the iron in the mix, so it is more reactive and mobile. Because the nails, being large, don't move around, they just sit there, and since the copper is metallic it wets the iron and just stays right where it was reduced. It then walls off iron for the reduction reaction - as iron becomes less accessible to the melt, your reduction reaction is slowed. Smaller iron particles will help.
11:45 The rust on your cone mold is iron oxy-hydroxides which can give up oxygen to the glass when the glass is rich enough in iron, because the iron in the glass is probably Fe 2+. Also it is crusty and may have adsorbed oxygen on all the microsurfaces. So when the slag pours in and is rich enough in iron it may yank oxygen off the iron oxy-hydroxides of the cone mold creating a thin film of hematite iron 3+ oxide and reducing the iron oxy-hydroxides back to iron. One evidence this might be the case is that the cone mold is gray where that occurred - it is no longer red iron oxy-hydroxides.
Aslo 11:45 The reason you didn't reduce out a button of metal may be that you didn't have enough of those metals to nucleate a button. It may have remained suspended in the slag as microdroplets, with some weird surface chemistry preventing them from combining into larger droplets and forming a bead on their own. Some lead metal added as a starter/collector might help prompt the accumulation into the button.
hi, this is a great explanation, I am trying to learn this smelting process but don't quite understand what is going on, what are the basic things to consider in the smelting , like other metals mixed will collect other metals and some oxides will oxidize some metals?
Well aware of the irony of language, that shot at 3:25 of the molten mix has to be one of the coolest shots ive seen on youtube ever.
I found your channel through Dan Hurd. I have absolutely no knowledge in this area but it fascinates me to see how it's done. Thanks.
On an industrial scale, it would probably be most cost effective to use selective hydrometallurgy to digest the various metals in stages given the number of metals.
Also, don't discount the tin. It currently trades for 4x the price of copper and represents a significant amount of the contained value of your material, much more than the nickel.
Jason, with the amount of knowledge I have, you wouldn't let me touch a measuring cup. Yet, I too find your videos fascinating. Thank you.
hahaha I was thinking the same. I often wonder when seeing/reading all the comments whether many of them are in the same boat as us but just felt like trying to answer questions anyways. LOL
I'm a micro e-waste scrapping woman from the UK and this is right up my street!! I've joined you 👍
Wish you were in US. There are tons of free E waist here. I work in a scrap yard and it's sort sell and scrap truck. Guess where all e waist goes.
@@charlesinscore4107 I know, I'm so envious, my main content finding ewaste is from commercial pick ups but how I'd love the pickings over there!! And to able to street scrap also....would be awesome! I hate to hear of the e-waste goodies going to waste 😖🙃
I'm the AZ guy. Today I had 4 looks high end tabs, one flat screen and 5 phones come in. All went in the low grade scrap steal. Except the phones. There is a new phone recycle (thing ) @ walmart. One of the workers is taking about 9 phones in.
Hope he gets something. I took home 2 medical one year old perfect condition ,28 volt 10ah lion batteries.
Don't have a use yet. We're getting a new yard. Hope growing means better sort/sell.
Take care Chuck
@@charlesinscore4107 sounds good to me, most of the stuff I get for the bread and butter is low grade, it's only in my e-waste pick ups from businesses that I get the good stuff, just a real mix really but I will break down anyway to retrieve the goodies inside 👍
Jason. Just keep going deeper with this stuff. I am amazed at how much I am learning about chemistry. I used to dread my chemistry courses. You have made me love it!
Hi Jason, I'm learning with you! I have no one to sell my boards to so I depopulate every board & sort the components into tubs. I depopulate about 350 pounds of boards every month. The IC chips get processed with acids. All the other PM containing components are just being saved until the right process is found. All the clean copper & clean aluminum gets melted in my foundry into ingots. I have the same furnace you do & just had a cone mold identical to yours made. I'm now collecting the various fluxes you've mentioned in past videos. I'm very much looking forward to getting the problems worked out. Thank You for all your effort & time - very much appreciated! Jim in Phoenix
I love how you explain the chemistry of the process! it's so cool to see redox and metal reactivity being used this way
Hi Jason. My guess as to why the copper etc plated out on the nails was that you had an excess of iron in the mix. Maybe by tweaking the number of nails, or using powdered iron in measured quantities you could increase overall recovery. I'm a geochemist of 32 years and the math required would scare me. I'd be more inclined to trial and error. You can always re-melt everything and try again. It could also be due to an overly acidic melt. You could try making it more neutral.
EDIT: Clearly there is a lot of iron oxide present in the material. Maybe that makes up 10% or more of your measured mass before the run. If true, then you are not losing much if any base and precious metals.
I think it's key to depopulate the boards first, and then process the components separately.
I've been thinking even more about this since it first posted. I'm remembering the experiments that a good friend was making with billon, a silver-copper alloy with minority silver content. It's greatest purpose was to mint coins that looked like silver, but were mostly copper (a time-honored government tradition).
In his trials he often encountered melts that gave chunky, crumbly, and irregular results. As he studied the problem, he discovered that metals are like other chemical solutions. They do not always dissolve into one another cleanly; they usually are not infinitely miscible.
Silver and copper they are about 8 percent miscible. This means that up to 8% of copper added to silver will completely dissolve into the silver. The resulting alloy will look like silver and maintain silver's good mechanical properties. That's the reason that "sterling" silver is 7.75% copper; any more cooper content would make it look and act wrong. The same thing happens at the other end, below 8% copper, it acts and looks like copper. Both alloys are uniform at the molecular level.
However, when the admixture exceeds 8%, it can no longer be taken up into the solution and starts collecting into tiny pockets of pure metal that are surrounded by the alloy. When it's solid, it's a disorganized mess that he described as frozen peas in congealed gravy.
As complicated as the phasing is for an admit of just silver and copper is, I'm thinking that the structure of all the various metals in unknown concentrations you're making is an absolute hell hole as one preference is counteracted by the next.
So, what I think you try is this: take a sample of the material off the table and add a lot of pure copper. By "a lot" I mean like five times as much copper to drive the admixture percentages WAY down to the point where all the metals are completely dissolved into the copper. Then, you could try pricing the copper via electrolysis, hoping that the other metals would fall off as sludge for further processing.
I also think that you need to supply plenty of carbon to your melt (floated crushed charcoal) to reduce the oxides completely.
Continually fascinating, thanks Jason!
Always interesting.
Thank you Jason. 👍
When it comes to anything you're doing... I'm a complete idiot. That's why I watch. So I can learn something new. You have shown me, and a lot of the rest of us, some stuff I've seen before. Thank you for the lessons.
I would go all the way with the process as there as more value. Of course the possible addition of more needed equipment would eventually cut overhead once paid for. Plus it's fun to watch all your experiments. Great videos!!👍😁
I find the whole process fascinating but I have no knowledge in this to offer any advice. Great video though! Cheers from Down Under
For myself, I generally remove the higher precious metal content parts and then sell the remainder to a refiner. I only bother going after the gold and silver. Cement copper is generated as a waste product of the chemical processing to get the gold and silver. I sell that as well, though I am experimenting with electrolytic refining to get the precious metal containing anode slimes.
Have you ever XRFed the slag?
Knowing what is in the slag after each melt, would help narrow down the problem and help diagnose why you didn't have an expected button of metal.
I love these vids, Jason. You show us a lot more than what we normally see about mining and e-waste processing. It's really interesting to also hear about your ideas and learn a lot about the chemistry involved in smelting everything.
I also have to give you HUGE props in your efforts and attempts to keep things as environmentally friendly as possible.
I'm curious about how much energy input all this processing takes and the cost of energy and materials used to process a ton of material. All those machines look like they use a lot of energy.
Here's a question: Do you think at some point in the future, it'll become cost effective and environmentally beneficial to begin "mining" old landfills to recover more common, but useful metals such as iron/steel, aluminum, copper, etc.?
I am confident that mining landfills could already be profitable. A pyrolisis reactor would process the organics first into fuels and lubricants, carbon and metals as by-product. Mill and separate the metals from the carbon, to isolate the metals for refining.
@@macoppy6571 *Palpatine: "Dew-it."
I'm not smart enough to help, but I enjoy the crap out of these videos
Благодарность за то что делишься знаниями.Не все так могут.
I don't know much about the chemistry, but I love these videos.
Hi Jason, the copper oxide idea was a good one. The recipes for pyrometallurgical purification of (precious) metals talk about oxidizing flux. This is the way to get rid of all the less precious metals. There KNO3 - potassium V nitrate is used as the oxidizing agent. In my opinion, you should try the following method - In the first step, you melt the "ore" with an oxidizing flux. Having the results from XRF, I calculated that to fully oxidize all metals less noble than copper you need 11g of KNO3 per 100g of "ore". To be sure you can add 10% excess. Mix KNO3 with 200g of borax. It is important to use a ceramic crucible for the oxidation melting (exactly as you are doing at the moment). If oxidizing fluxes are used in graphite crucibles, the flux will oxidize the carbon from the crucible and cause the crucible to fail or at best wear out much faster. Unfortunately you will oxidize some copper in the process, but you should get a relatively pure copper button along with the precious metals. Metals less precious than copper in oxide form will dissolve in the borax.
In the second step, you melt the non-metallic residue with reducing flux. As others have commented, ground charcoal is best for this. It has a large exchange surface area and is relatively cheapest (compared to nails). However, you may as well use flour, sawdust or other finely ground, dry organic waste. For the reduction of metal oxides should be enough about 10-20g of charcoal (difficult to count, you have to try). In theory, all previously formed oxides will donate oxygen to carbon and reduce. This will give you a button composed of tin, lead, nickel and some copper. Zinc will most likely evaporate because of the temperatures involved.
I keep my fingers crossed for success :)
Thank your for this. It is a great explanation and idea for going forward
@@mbmmllc
You can also try different melting times. E.g. 15 and 45 minutes.
In theory copper oxide decomposes at this temperature giving oxygen (to atmosphere) and pure copper, so hypothetically extending the melting time should result in better recovery of copper in the first stage. On the other hand, increasing the time may also prove to be less economical than using reductive melting with carbon.
In the second stage - reduction melting, the "non-metallic residue" should be ground up if possible and mixed with charcoal. If you put big chunks of glaze in the bottom of the crucible, the carbon will float on the surface after melting and oxidize with oxygen from the air rather than oxides from inside of the "liquid". Crushing and stirring before melting should remedy this.
For industrial melting, rotary kilns mix the raw molten metal properly. So they don't have the same problems as in amateur melting.
I still keep my fingers crossed for success :)
@mbmmllc Regarding the question: what to choose? Sell the intermediates or purify everything yourself?
It all depends on the scale. On a scale like the one in the movies, you have to count the cost of your man-hours, gas for the burner, crucibles, chemistry and all the additives. Most likely, it will turn out that by doing "your job" and selling "semi-finished products" you will earn more than by selling separated metals.
Looking globally, it makes a lot of sense to diversify your income by investing in a large scale and then taking profits. The financial markets are entering a "resource time", and the prices of agricultural commodities, fossil fuels and metals - precious and less precious - are expected to rise significantly in the near future. This is compounded by the promotion of recycling (being green, zero waste, carbon footprint) and problems with supply chains from other countries. This makes thinking about this business a very good option at this time.
The most important investment would be electrolysis baths and a place for "wet chemistry" (+ knowledge of "know how"). As for the furnace and melting, initially with quantities of a few, several tons of "ore" I would think about outsourcing. Maybe there is a small smelter nearby that would melt the "ore" into bars, taking small money for it. And with the "industrial" melting they would get rid of the least valuable components - iron, sulfur, silicates type.
It is an interesting topic with good prospects for the future.
I love everything about all these things
Jason the sreetips channel might be able to work out the solution with you.
He is a chemist genius.
Sorry brother I haven't a clue why I'm still learning this stuff that's why I watch this channel thank you for sharing five stars
I am a hobby gold recovery guy. I remove the gold fingers from cards and ram boards and use acids to process those into pure gold. the remaining boards I sell as low to mid grade boards to Board Sort. I do a little better than break even with about 1/2 troy ounce a year.
Your wife’s scale is holding up great!!! Lol. Thanks for another great video.
Don't know, but agree with those asking about the nails. Assuming they are steel nails, they are probably alloy 1018. This means they have as much as 1% manganese in them. According to a source that I highly respect, manganese is "a royal bitch."
I've been thinking about this since it first aired. One possible way to remove the more active metals down through zinc would be too run a caustic solution in your slurry and shaker table.
I'm wondering if a strong lye solution would break down the aluminum and zinc and the products of that reaction would wash completely off the table.
It so, it would certainly make the metallic soup you're dealing with much more simple.
You should find Sreetips and talk to him about chemically refining this stuff. Looks to me that you could run the #1 and #2 concentrates with hydrochloric or nitric acid, pull the base metals off, then put the precious metals into solution with aqua Regia. I’ve never refined metals before, but it seems like you two could be really good for each other!
my friend Thanks for the interesting video Separation of copper and precious metals Assuming it is complete (in the analysis image) For the separation phase of lead and ... Instead of iron, if you use wood chips or if it is economical to use flour and for At a high level the use of metallurgical coal powder is my suggestion. I have been working in this field for 32 years
4:10 That is so cool!
Also vibration under the pour and a similarly heated mold to liquid metal will help resolve phases and give better buttons I speculate.
As a metallurgist, and having experience with extractive metallurgy, I think you need more oxygen in the system to fully oxidize the system. there is already considerable plastics in the melt that should react and remove carbon by forming either CO or CO2. That is the source of the gas bubbles in the resulting melt. For a large-scale process, it would probably be cheapest to dissolve the charge with acid. If you want to dissolve everything, you could use hot aqua-regia (the precious metals will then dissolve). Alternatively, you could use other acids like nitric, and dissolve the non-precious metals. The plastics and precious metals would not be dissolved, and report to the bottom of the beaker or vessel. The precious metals would then be concentrated, and readily melted or plated. The remaining metals in the acid can be recovered using mixer settlers and stripped. You can control which metals you recover with control of pH, and the organic used in the mixer settler. I used this to process pickling sludges from stainless steel to recover chrome/nickel/molybdenum and iron to be used for making ferro-alloys.
20% effort for 80% recovery is the rule of thumb for the business end.
Hello there, after removing the aluminum, then your crushing and concentration. Take your concentrates and use very low doses of cyanide for gold and silver recovery. For health and environmentally issues, substitute cyanide with gold max. I can supply and walk you through it if interested
In my opinion from what I have seen on other RUclips refining channels, I would say using chemicals to break down the precious metals is the way to go. Then use aqua regia to recover the gold. Then use copper metal to cement the silver out of remaining refining solutions. Doing that seems to have the best recovery rate for the precious metals.
I’m not a refiner but I watch some videos and the best I’ve seen is with chemicals. Now if you have the resources that’s the way to go you can separate all metals and cement them out and sell separately for maximum profit. If you stop at let’s said after shaker table you get less money because product is dirty and still needs to be cleaned but maybe the best option if you can not afford to utilize a lot of acids and know how to use them effectively. There’s a guy on here named sreetips he has a lot of good info on the chemical side of refining you may find the answers you seek there hope this helps
I significantly large percentage of your ewaste will be steel from the pins so that is a source for your losses, try taking 100g and see what percentage you pull out with a magnet.
I love the new hammer!
Why is this so satisfying lol
Very good video in answering my question on how to keep the the precious metals off the iron
Use shavings instead of rebar 🙌🏻👊🏻
Now its how do i get the gold off the rebar lol
You are an amazing person to allow is to be a part of your process. My input, is to keep going down the path of full circle. As I ponder, elementary thoughts, could you use a ceramic crucible? Mayne play with heat, and quick cool maybe? Try those transitions.
Thanks for the video.......
I personally separate precious metals first with soda ash borax lead and kno3 then I recover copper and other base metals
How thick is the steel plate for your table? Your videos are great, BTW. Thanks for sharing!
I wonder how much tantalum is in the water from the pcb grinding.
Having an outline / and like a trouble-shooting tree for decision making seems to be the question .
Classifying the electronics , suggestion - if there is precious metals / or not - might be 1st ?
Then surface mount vs. through hole - different processing streams .
Have to keep in mind there are a lot more elements in electronics --- than what you are mentioning !
And some of those have very high values , like tantalum capacitors --- and these can create chemistry issues --- WE HAVE TO KNOW WHAT'S GOING IN --- IN ORDER TO GET WHATS COMING OUT ;)
Should state up front the FIRST / #1 is profitability [ a big contributor / or detractor to be considered is waste / leftovers / environmental / legal ] all this I would consider the same .
This makes for a fork in the road --- decision tree , what can we do !
Your equipment business is in the area of main concern I would consider --- avoid chemistry , heating / melting - would be farther down the process .
Example mechanical separation - surface mount components from boards , some type of lower heating and shaking to remove components - this makes for 2 other / different streams of processing boards - mostly copper , components - identifying / classifying of components , sticking with mechanical processes for easier / less chemical , melting farther downstream - this also helps to make the chemistry less of a issue later .
Anything of values think of as mixed ores separation with mechanical separation ---- this makes the legal / waste issue , mostly a non issue , besides the chemistry issues .
To put it in a shorter terms ;) ;) ;) - physical separation / classification - till you can't .
The down side is labor costs ?
I do not have enough volume , so still a paying hobby for me , in today's environment I am not interested in getting too much bigger - but that has been a personal problem for some time ;)
Thanks again
I really like what your doing here, using the equipment you have to try and get precious metals in bulk. Your taking on a huge project that i would think to be extremely difficult as there are dozens of different materials in boards. One odd ball element can mess up the whole process or random boards could have different things in them. I would think you should depopulate the boards first, then grind, shaker table the rest into powder and sell that to a refiner so they can mess with it. Take those IC chips and capacitors seperately and give those to a refiner. That way you do minimal work and get a good profit.
1:30 After adding 20 gm copper oxide, you now have 20/120 or 16.7% copper oxide by weight,not 20 %.
Consider weighing the nails before and after addition to the crucible?
I really like your channel and what you are doing here to initiate the coming American Renaissance in ingenuity and self reliance. For far too long we have squandered our family’s wealth consuming cheap products from China designed with planned opalescence in mind.
The empty cargo ships were filled with value rich consumer waste such as electronics, batteries, and metal and sailed back to China. Twelve years ago, I would see dumpsters at the scrapyard full of permanent magnet motors pulled off autos, washing machines, scooters, treadmills, etc. Many of these motors were selling on eBay for DIY wind generators, etc. with people paying well over $100/piece for useful watt output, but the scrap yard was selling these dumpsters full to China for 0.25 - .50 cents/ pound! One day, I asked the owner if I could buy selected motors from his dumpster for $2.00/pound. He said no! I said explain because he refusal didn’t make any logical sense. At first, he said it was because his profits were determined by the speed and volume he could move scrap out of the country. I then pointed out that he had hired cheap labor on site to upgrade his scrap for increased profit margin, for example, by separating aluminum from steel, copper from coils, and consolidating permanent magnet motors which are rich in rare earth elements like neodymium. Thus, if his business was truly driven by speed and volume, why take the time to upgrade? Why not just throw it all together and let the Chinese sort it out? He finally relented and told me the real reason that he couldn’t sell me the motors was that his company had signed strict contracts with Chinese companies that he would sell 100% of his scrap to them and no one else. My sense is now that those days are over. Americans are finally waking up the fact that we need to fall back on what made us great to begin with. That is our ability save money by repurposing our waste. There is a whole younger generation now teaching themselves how to find used lithium batteries for building batteries banks. Many start out doing this for a diy project like electric bikes, etc., but then realized that they have learned a skill that can be used for off grid energy storage in times of crises when traditional energy costs are high or nonexistent.
Now, you and others on YT are making Americans aware that there may be cost effective and profitable ways to upgrade electric scrap for profit here at home. This is great! After all, it was American ingenuity that discovered rare earth metals, most of their valued uses, and most of all how to mine them. China, with its huge population of cheap labor bankrupted our mining and manufacturing by flooding the market with cheap rare earth elements. But, now they have exhausted their much of the own resources and are highly dependent on American waste for mining these rare earth materials. When the world complained of Chinese business practices and the rising costs of these rare earth resources, China said stop complaining and do what America was great for originally - innovating our way forward out of hardship. You my friend, whether you know it or not, in your own way are leading that path forward. Thank you!
Suggestion: If there is a problem with the copper reacting to the steel in the cone mold, would you get ridvof that with a stainless cone mold or even one in graphite?
I was wondering the same thing. Not sure if stainless is the right choice. But is there some other inert material to make the cone molds out of.
Stainless works as mold material. Have lead molds in stainless, and i have used it for aluminium and aluminium bronze casatings.
Oh cool, I was wondering what would happen to the stuff from the last video
I suggest you read about mixed oxides, such as CuFeO2 and CuFe2O4. As I understand, they are more stable than the single oxides (at least when it is copper and iron). I believe you have formed these double oxides and can’t get rid of them unless you introduce something with an even higher reactivity, such as carbon. Maybe use some of your number 4 tailings with plastic and glass fiber. My guess is that it will help you form iron silicate and copper metal instead.
Thank you for that oxide solution to this problem.
Good morning Jason. Great video. Thank you. Have a great day. Talk to you later my friend. 👍👍👍👍☺️☺️☺️♥️♥️♥️❣️❣️❣️
From a hobby perspective I'm thinking Taking it straight to a mix metal Anode bar recovering th pure copper first then go after the slimes you may have better outcome with the lead oxide but the only way to get all the precious metals is with chemicals In my opinion electrolysis is the best way to get pure metals
I'll get back to you soon J, let me think more. We'll get there!
p.s. As always, love your video's. Thank you
Carbon, carbon, carbon. What you're trying to achieve with the copper oxide is reduction, in metallurgy can be viewed as the reverse of oxidation,
You need a reducing agent to release that oxygen from the copper oxide and bond with the reducing agent - which in this case is carbon or charcoal. Use charcoal powder or if you dont have that use flour or sugar, sugar smells better. Or to make it even easier just add copper metal instead of the oxide, that way all you're doing is an inquartation of sorts to achieve the 98% copper for the cell
In pcb components some base and precious metals are already in the form of oxides like palladium oxide in mlccs for example. Adding carbon to your flux recipe will help reduce these. Carbon can be used in other oxide materials you need to turn back into metal like say lead and copper and possible PMs lost in cupels maybe? ;) carbon is quite useful in pyrometallurgy
Also there are other elements on the reactivity series that aren't metals but are used in metallurgy. Sounds like you need a better reactivity series list my friend
I can't help with the chemistry, but I love watching! This might not be your thing, but I am also interested in electrochemistry.
Not sure if you have
Tried just melting down some of the metals without any flux first to see if the loss is just trash like lacquer and other residue that didnt get liberated in the crushing process it's amazing what fine films can be left behind then remelt the button with flux and nails to remove the base metals
I've tried a much more crude version of this. I'll give the copper oxide a go.
Have you considered that maybe they're is some kind of precipitation sequence that puts your precious metal in the middle of the copper bead? The xrf can only read what's on the surface.
"Rookie Gold Prospector" a new recommendation just gave you a shout out Jason on his first video. His channel is new.
Also, have you seen the channel "Sreetips" the guy said he has seen your videos, but he does stuff differently, check him out, both your methods would make a sweet collab or crossover video for sure!
For the direct smelt control on the 100 g. computer parts mixed with 200 g. borax, what temperature did you reach for your smelt?
I will use iron shaving instead of nails becouse of the surface area, i know is messies but REDOX like Thermite need surfare area... Rusted nails and Alluminium shavings will not act as Thermite. Quite interesting stuffs great job.
Hi, using iron nails and copper oxide to recover precious metals is too expensive. The main value in your material is copper. Use copper as the collector. Add a powdered form of carbon and a flux to the mixture. When a melt has formed blow air (it's free) into it to keep it mixed and oxidize base metals and excess carbon from the mix. Recover the copper collector, form it into plates and electro-refine the copper. If there is significant gold in the slimes melt and recover using miller process, otherwise burn slime filters and recover silver using nitric acid.
have you pulled and analized a base sample to see what you are dealing with? enjoy you vids, keep them coming.
So Jason, after your previous response I assume that your mine only has a short window for reasonable access? How many weeks can you typically work it in a season. I mean if you worked it to the exclusion of other projects (i.e. saw mill, etc.)? Galvanic series? Our impressed current cathodes are silver/silver chloride.
This may be Johnny come lately, but, … would it help with the settling of heavy metals to heat the cone mold up before hand?
I believe you need some powdered charcoal to catalyze the Cu20 to metallic copper. The copper won't plate out on carbon like on the steel nails.
Have you encountered beryllium or tungsten in your melts? How reactive are they?
Hi Jason,
I am no where an expert, however-
When I was scrapping electronics, I separated out the boards by low, med, & high density and took them to Tacoma to Simon & Sons., as trying to refine them at home with limited knowledge and limited time was not profitable, IMHO.
That being said;
I think an electrolysis type of refining might be easiest type of recovery. Definitely pulverizing the boards to expose the sealed parts (IC's, capacitors, etc.) to allow the electrolysis to react with the different metals, I think, would be easiest.
Sreetips seems to be the YT wizard on recovery of precious metals, and likely would be up on recovery of other metals. A large scale operation would likely run afoul of the EPA folks, unless you had all the safety stuff, permits, inspections, etc. , and I think not cost effective unless you were doing it on the basis of tons per day. Also disposal of the plastic, fiberglass, and such could get expensive on a large scale.
Now I did query some folks in the scrap biz and they admitted they send their e-scrap to 3rd world countries in Africa and one South American country to let them process the intact boards. (Apparently the people there bid on lots to tear apart to recover every tiny bit of recyclable metals, then dispose of the glass, plastic, etc. by burning or just dumping it. Not environmentally friendly though).
There was- back in the 80's- a company called Kruger Engineering. They had a method of removing the IC's and parts from the boards, testing them, and re-selling them for far less than the new ones cost. I used quite a large amount of their recycled IC's and never had a single bad one out of hundreds of them, nor a failure. The ones I got from them were pristine in appearance too. Looked just like new ones.
Temperature control is the only way to do that. Look at the melting temperatures related to each metal. Tin , lead and aluminum all have low melting temperatures. When they melt the will puddle , pour them off. Increase the temperature, gold silver and copper, pour it off. What's left Nickle and PGMs'
Brother,
thanks for continued Experiments.
what if you use different crucible material, such as the small ones, so metals get in-to clay.
it might be interesting look if you could keep shaking until all separated/reduced, perhaps small table will do ...
Possibly the surface area available for chemistry on nails is insufficient. Try steel wool or steel filings in powder if you can separate it during the pour somehow. ⛏️🐇👍
Are the nails iron, or stainless steel?
I dont know if it work but have you ever try to get xrf results of slag or some of this glassy stuff hopefully you get percentual results of metals
Jason, I scrap ewaste as a hobby. I take off the gold bits that can safely and quickly be processed and the rest goes to a big refiner.
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why can't you electrowin the copper and gold and silver directly from the powdered pc pureé? or acid process it?
Does the reactive list include extra/missing electrons?
I think maybe you'd need a coal source to reduce the copper oxides in the slag. I dont think displacement reactions work with oxides, just metal->metal so the oxide
S would have to be reduced to a metallic state first.
Yes
Hi guys! I'm oddly fascinated by this stuff. Was there a follow-up?
Maybe you could do a collab with Sri tips. He does a lot of acid recovery of metals, so I bet he has a lot of knowledge of the chemistry that could be applicable to pyro chemistry as well?
Jason there is no Au in the XRF readings at all. I think you should be thinking on a Titanium basket system in a filter bag for the bath process, electro winning out the metals from the ground mass.
Heat up your cone mold before pouring?
As a full time chemist, I want to suggest using s mild alkaline flux (sodium carbonate) with some granular charcoal (reductant) to getr rid of copper oxides.
Borax is a good flux for metals, but not for metal oxides or sulfides, oed sand (glass fiber) or ceramics. Sodium carbomnate will work much better. carbon will reduce many oxedes to metal (that you want).
Have you ever tried to dissolve borax slag and melt insoluble oxides?
I know reagents are expensive but the chemical way is the best for me
Hi. Try to heat 100g raw copper 300 celsius for some time and check the weight again. This kind of materiał still contains some moisture, fiberglass, plastic and organic stuff.
About making money scrapping boards. It depends on class of the board.
Low grade ->grinding and shaker table, because most value is in copper. But Al and Fe should be removed before.
Mid grade/high grade - > rafinery or grinding/shaker table or depopulation of good stuff from the boards, scraps->grinding/shaker table[copper recovery] , high grade components hydro or pyrometalurgy[copper+PGM]
Mid grade boards in my opinion are boards with more than 40 grams Au per metric tonne.
Rafineries charging money per kilo of the materiał. So if You have 1ton of materiał with 10g Au per ton and have to Pay 1000$ for rafination cost only You Will end up with no money. Cu about 20% so not much.
But if You grind boards, recovery copper containing precious metals. You Will end up with 200kg copper +PGM and only have to Pay 200$ for rafination and still have 10gr Au but in 200kg of material.
Rafineries do not recovery Al or Steel, Cost of home made zinc/bismuth/tin/lead recovery would be few Times higher than their value. Those metals are recover from circuit boards but in large scale operation with milions of dollars invested in equipment, patents etc.
I use caustic and borax flux in a graphite crucible, and add more caustic once it settled down. Let it boil for 10 minutes before pouring in the cone mould.
I feel that thio-leach is the way to go for e-scrap - it's clean, it's efficient and cheaper than all the other processes. There is a learning curve as will all things, but it's perfect for e-waste, especially since you have a concentrate.
Love these videos Jason, why not just use iron oxide, rather than nails, then there no metal to plate? Thanks for sharing,
Sell as a board seems to be the best to me. I would do a shaker table but it cost to much.
Great video - prospecting time yet?
try arc ionization separation for all compounds inside the source material, put it in vacuum to succ out all gases, including oxygen from the oxides, sulfur oxides, etc
try ethanol-koh electro processing, metals will not react like with salt water electrolyte solution, ie, not making hydrogen and metal oxides
Try powdered iron, such as from break rotor\drum turning.
It look's there is still some organic in the copper granules.
Carbon from epoxy resine can reduce the tin back to its metallic form.
Maybe the temperature in the crucible was too low and the metal became semi-fluid.
I wish I paid more attention to the chemists at the mine. I do know they were prejudiced against acids and it a continuous fight with the smelter to get better prices. But I also know the concentration part only did so well.
Where do I get a cone mold It is absolutely necessary I need one
Hi Jason
Just a quick question
How you separate the gold and silver.
Love your channel really educational and entertaining.
Have you watched the RUclips channel Sreetips? He does that with chemicals.