Gold Recovery - Yield from Ceramic EEPROMS

[@haydesgraham138]

oh wow,got a hold of several thousand eproms and had to come back to your video from 2years ago for a refresher!👍👍

[@successfulengineer]

Nice score, usually pretty easy stuff to process and can get very good yields with the right parts!

[@toomuchdebt5669]

Cool

[@haydesgraham138]

through the magic of television,that was easy to follow and very informative! as always,your the best my friend😎👍

[@successfulengineer]

Thanks for the comment, appreciate it!

[@nickyaero]

I have processed just gold base alone without crushing came out with 5.5 grams per kg , but i didn’t leach with HCL but instead nitric , it took out silver and Kovor copper then washed with distilled water and added HCL and nitric as usual..👍👍 good job

[@nickyaero]

Can I have your mail I’d sir I have. Some thing to discuss mine is [e-mail]

[@timvivoda5208]

Fantastic result Tim from Australian

[@floorskin1]

Didn't realise you were in NZ. Yay.

[@successfulengineer]

Yep, blue blooded Kiwi :)

[@gold999gang]

Nice video!

[@successfulengineer]

Appreciate the comment!

[@bsplayer9116]

Like always a very nice and informative video. What about the bonding wires. I always check the bonding wires through the glass and the never are gold. I know they are there but I never came across. That is why I always dropped them together with the low grade boards. Must there be gold visible under the die or contain the IC’s without visible gold under the die gold as well?

[@successfulengineer]

Hi Bob, As far as I can tell they either used a Gold based braze or Silver based braze to attach the die to the ceramic. I have a box of Silver ones that I haven't bothered with since Silver is not really valuable enough to warrant the effort. The bond wires seem to almost never be Gold in these ICs, I have heard people say that they can be Pt or Pd, but my understanding was that they are just Aluminium. I would definitely not sell them as low grade boards, if they have Gold braze showing, they are very easy to process, even if the yield is not that high, still much better than low grade boards!

[@paulmace7910]

Since the copper, tin and other metals are basically free is it worth going after them? It would require more crushing to fully liberate everything. Does the chemistry allow you to copper, steel, gold and silver all at the same time?

[@successfulengineer]

If your main aim is to make a profit out of the processing, then you will most certainly want to at least get all the copper you can. Unfortunately I found almost all the legs in ceramic ICs to be made of Kovar, so basically worthless. Where ICs have a obvious big chunk of Copper, I will often include that in the "per IC value" calculation.

[@unclebobsbees4899]

Vacuum filtering? Sorry somewhat ignorant about that. Do you have a setup/operation video? Really nice work.

[@successfulengineer]

Hi, sorry, yeah, some things I just assume everybody is familiar with. Vacuum filtering is where you use a Buchner funnel + vacuum filter flash + vacuum pump to speed up filtering. It basically seals the funnel into the flash and when you apply a vacuum it "draws" the liquid through filter paper into the flask.

[@55goldrecovery61]

👍

[@bruceraplee4959]

Well done and very informative! Do you have a summary of gold yields (mg/k) by component type that you have evaluated in the past?

[@successfulengineer]

Hey Bruce, I don't have a complete list online anywhere, but that is a very good idea, will look into it. Thanks for the comment!

[@bvscrapper772]

Very nice and informative video, thank you!👌

[@successfulengineer]

Thanks for the comment :)

[@macfixer01]

Very nice video!

[@successfulengineer]

Thanks for the comment!

[@jeanwyngard3478]

Also please confirm the gold is around the dies and not the bond wires because all the Eproms I have only have silver coloured wires?

[@successfulengineer]

The majority of the Gold is often in the braze that is used to "solder" the die to the ceramic substrate. The bond wires are often Aluminium.

[@Yummychannels]

Hey man , do you have any list showing the ranking of these escrap components come with the most gold ? Like top 10/15 parts come with the most gold of escrap recycling . Thx

[@successfulengineer]

Hi there, sorry, have never really made a specific list like that, but I'm sure there are bound to be a few videos around. I love anything ceramic, then black-top BGAs, then high-yield thin square flat packs and lastly probably Gold fingers and good quality plated pins.

[@successfulengineer]

Also, if you ever want to know the yield of any specific parts, feel free to just ask on any of my videos, always happy to help where I can.

[@shaneyork300]

Is there gold bond wires in Eproms? Have a GREAT Day My Friend!!!

[@suhailab3634]

Yes in some

[@successfulengineer]

Yes, as per the previous answer, I have definitely seen some, but it is less common than Aluminium for sure.

[@suhailab3634]

@@successfulengineer sometimes you could get copper or palladium bond wires bur they are quite rare

[@OwlTech333]

Lovely!

[@successfulengineer]

Thanks Mr. Owl!

[@cditzler6313]

i want to get a mini jaw crusher just because it sounds neat haha make these monotonous procedures as fun as possible

[@successfulengineer]

That's the way, spend the time building machines that do the work instead of physically doing the work!

[@peteoneill5799]

Would it not be easier to snip the middles out before crushing or is there gold all through the base?

[@successfulengineer]

Hi Pete, those ICs are all ceramic, so basically as hard as glass and quite brittle. All the Gold is in the center, but there is not really any way to concentrate it any more than splitting the chips easily!

[@tonya469]

Ever come by 1990's Atari boards? What's your valuation on them?

[@successfulengineer]

Hi Tony, couldn't tell you specifically, but if they were made in the 90s, then they are probably too new to have any significant number of ceramic ICs unfortunately, so potentially no very valuable from a Gold recovery point of view.

[@tonya469]

@@successfulengineer You're right. I got a pile of them and pretty much all onboard chips are plastic except for eprom plug ins that are all ceramic. Nice solid boards compared to current. Some of them are late 80's. Will definitely hodl em. Thanks!

[@jeanwyngard3478]

Without removing base metals and using the HCL and the 10ml of nitric acid wouldn't this put too much of base metals in solution with the gold since you have essentially made aqua regia?

[@successfulengineer]

Hi Jean, ceramic EEPROMS don't really contain too many base metals (as long as you get rid of the pins). So yeah, I normally treat them directly with AR.

[@jeanwyngard3478]

@@successfulengineer Ok thanks for that info

[@RafalScrapper]

cool one from me👍👍👍😀👍👍👍

[@johnkubik8559]

You give us the price it would worth for a 99.9% assayed gold bar, but how much gave you, your buyer for this un-assayed gold bead?

[@successfulengineer]

When I have sold the Gold, it has always come out above 99.8% purity. The buyer I sell to has a bench top XRF machine that they use to check the purity.

[@jarrodrainsford8296]

Do you know how much silver and copper you get per Kg?

[@successfulengineer]

99% of the time Ceramic ICs use Kovar legs (expands at the same rate as ceramic), so not much Copper in these. Silver I didn't specifically target, but by the low amount of Silver Chloride that came out I would guess that there is not enough Silver to justify the Nitric acid cost to recover it.

[@lucasmayer5809]

Hello I have a question you can create the list in German or as a video with a German title

[@chosen1one930]

Theres no need to ball mill these, these can be added right to Aqua Regia especially if you remove excess ceramic. Saves time requires very little nitric, 15ml or less

[@successfulengineer]

Yeah, 100% agree, the problem with direct AR is that it has to "eat" the Gold out from under the die, so you just speed the process up heaps by breaking them up as fine as possible.

[@raymondreyes8046]

Does it absolutely have to be crushed?

[@successfulengineer]

Depends on the particular chips, they have to be cracked open to allow the acids to work on the Gold at least, but its really just quicker if you smash them up, it can take a long time for the acids to dissolve Gold out of a small amount of space between the dies and ceramic.

[@tonya469]

When gold & silver shoot up in price, you're gonna get heck of alot more for those eproms. That's Why I'm holding my junk boards for a rainy day.

[@successfulengineer]

Yep, E-waste prices generally track precious metals prices pretty well. If you have the space to store it up, it definitely wont hurt holding on to boards.

[@mrgreenswelding2853]

I just finished doing tonne of these, but i incinerated them. Next time i will do it your way.

[@jackcalixt4019]

6mg in each? High grade stuff 😊

[@successfulengineer]

Haha, shows you how spoilt I am, most Gold miners couldn't even imagine getting over a gram of Gold out of a kilogram of starting material! The yield on these is roughly equivalent to ICs like used on RAM, but these take a fraction of the time to process, would love to get these by the bucket!

[@kevinerickson2595]

Ya I like the splitting of the chips, $.36🤔

[@successfulengineer]

Yeah, definitely a little bit lower than I was expecting! But the take almost no effort to process, so I would definitely rather process these over RAM ICs for a similar yield!

[@ahmadalharbi3986]

it,s very nice work but on my opinion about the result of process with all my respect to u... it dose not deserve all this exertion...you west ur time ur money and bott ur health in risk..........thank u and good luck

[@MiguelSierra]

Excelente.

[@costaairaga1786]

Dear EngineerYour videos are very inspiring and enlightning. Thank you very much. I am sorry but I cannot see your name and no contact details. Regards Costa Airaga from South Africa. :):)

[@minirmonedharelaks80]

Like 👍👍👍

[@ematech]

1 kg eprom = 50$ gold, is better sell as eprom , more gain.....

[@michaelbrumfitt]

👍