Pure GOLD From Computer Scrap COMPLETE PROCESS

[@paulabraden974]

I love the longer videos like this occasionally. It's nice to see the whole process in one sitting. Thank you talking us through what you do. It is greatly appreciated.

[@adws5696]

Yess! Computer scrap again!! Nice little gold bead. Would love to see more of this content coming next 🙌🏻 i learned the hard way not to throw them straight into the aqua regia but it would be a great experiment for another video

[@soothingmusic6857]

Hey sree, I watch another channel that scraps metals. Might be worth it to connect to Mike the scavenger maybe work something out to get a channel interaction. Could boost your channel views. It’s like both sides of the industry connecting. Would be cool to see some of his electronics scrap come through your video to the processing side of recycling the precious metals. Really enjoy your content brother. You are very skilled with what you are doing. I think a lot of people gain tons of needed insights that are lost these days. Hope all is well. God bless.

[@crawdinger]

I've always loved the sight of wet brown gold powder flashing over while drying. Looks like success

[@helpdeskjnp]

It’s very addictive when you first start doing this… when the gold colored water turns brown from precipitation of gold, that’s one of the coolest parts and you know you’re doing it right!

[@SMOBY44]

Thank you Senior Chief! I have wondered about this for quite awhile. The best I have ever done from trimmed fingers was 1.5 grams per pound. Bravo!

[@paulknight1879]

Love what u do with gold and silver, best channel on KZbin. Fantastic work 👏 👍

[@sreetips]

Thank you!

[@CSMMaster]

Yahoo!! Computer scraps. I love these process videos 🙌🏻 Hope you’re having a wonderful week, Sreetips

[@sreetips]

Thank you

[@annikap213]

thanks for another great video Mr Sreetips. I’m a chemist and I love watching your videos.

[@sreetips]

Thank you!

[@robertclark2959]

What about just burning a batch and refining from that? 🔥🔥

[@sreetips]

The fiber board does not burn down to ash very well. Doing it like I did in the video is the easier, softer way.

[@ThePantheistPope]

@@robertclark2959that’s what I was thinking

[@jettamaster3297]

I love these videos and I really love that Sreetips patiently interacts with the commenters here! Cheers

[@kyzercube]

Wonderful video Sreetips! It never gets old. I love how you never let anything go to waste. At the end of the video, using the dilute H2SO4 you used to clean off the gold button to keep your sink plumbing clear. No need to buy Draino. 😆

[@deonp3106]

And just love when the bar is pourd the way the gold look just amazing

[@DavidDavis-fishing]

Gooooood evening from central Florida! Hope everyone has a great night!

[@TheFullmetalwhite]

Polk County here!

[@sreetips]

Goooood evening!

[@DavidDavis-fishing]

@@TheFullmetalwhite Howdy neighbor👋... tell Sheriff Grady hey.

[@DavidDavis-fishing]

@@TheFullmetalwhite Pasco... Dade city

[@billyfuckingjean4581]

lol here ​@@DavidDavis-fishing

[@timvancourt7213]

I focus on this exact process and have learned a TON from this channel. I forgot though that the gold isn't pure when on the fiber card, so no wonder why my yields were smaller than I expected!

[@kennyd2600]

I always love Sreetips and the sweet asmr vocabulary trigger words: Beaker Precipitate Nitric (acid) Gold (foils as well in this case) Solution Dilute Distilled Heat Melt dish Pour I know i missed some lol. Those are always just some of my personal favorites.

[@kennyd2600]

*Filter paper *Sterling *Silver crystal *Aqua regia The world just seems right when I hear these classics.

[@QuivaRPG]

The fact that you use all of this scientific equipment and Corningware to refine gold makes me happy. I have the cornflower blue pattern, btw 😁

[@MrRebar15]

*sreetips* Bravo well done, thank-you sir for taking the time to bring us along. GOD Bless.

[@321ssteeeeeve]

I think this may indeed be a valuable channel

[@Antonowskyfly]

You are welcome. A nice recovery, well worth the time and effort for both you and the fortunate viewers. Thank you Sir!👍👍🤟

[@deonp3106]

Man just love watching these videos so much to learn here

[@ciorchinos]

you perfected teh method of extraction so much , now you create less waste , congrats :)

[@dimorvanerkel2025]

Awesome proces mr Sreetips...that 3.7 grams gold is super cool man! Keep it UP mr sreetips your chanel is geat man 🎉😂i love the science cause i a scientist to haha algebra mathmatics physics are great !👍🇳🇱

[@getprobed838]

i know you've had issues with the fumes eating up the blower in the fume hood. but where on your house does it ventilate to? do you have a pvc pipe that goes up high so the fumes dont eat up the side of your house or roof?

[@sreetips]

Yes

[@alquimiavsmetalica5250]

Hello friend, the RAM or graphics card cinguers are 100% lacquered. Entering the test slot eliminates only the contact area. * The most correct method is with caustic soda, it only destroys the lacquer and the copper comes off with the clean gold, the PCB remains colorless. * In principle, the gold of cards is a hard alloy of industrial carat 20kt and some have triple layers finished in 22 or 23kt, this always in graphics. * attention, the carats described are similar to jewelry but these are industrial and therefore toxic, follow the steps of this channel to always have clean and non-toxic gold With this general method, it is best to first remove the lacquer adhesive, which only takes minutes to separate the metals from the fiberglass and process them later. I process caustic soda with this method and it is much faster since only the washing and direct to the aqua regia

[@DarthBil1]

It would be interesting to use this refining as a control to compare to a bunch of other methods. You said you are going to try dissolving the gold immediately without clearing out the base metals first, but you could also try incinerating all the material, or using the bubbling method, or anything, and, if you use 2 lbs each time, you have a good result to compare it to.

[@sreetips]

That’s my plan

[@EWasteJILL]

I'M looking. To the reverse electrolysis method. Which will be AWSOME for countris where its hard to get Nitric Acid. ​ @@sreetips

[@paulslund1]

At round 18:40 when you start pouring the solution into the filter and said "valuable Liquid" I swear the background noise started sounding like a drum roll!! 😁

[@6000Chipmunks]

I heard that too. I thought he did it on porpoise. I was waiting for the penny to drop, but alas.

[@DetroitSlots]

is there a smell when you are refining or does the fume hood get it out? and if it does smell does it smell like old coins?

[@sreetips]

No smell. The fume hood draws everything away and up the stack.

[@jefferymejia323]

I love watching these videos such interesting time we live in where recycling can profit or bring different forms of value.I’m excited for the next years of innovation and recycling.

[@mauriciocalegaridossantos8696]

Meus parabéns pelo seu trabalho e esforço em passar para nós seu conhecimento, espero ver mais ,até mais caro amigo e obrigado ....um grande abraço.

[@sreetips]

Thank you

[@Alondro77]

Cool experiment to try: iron nitrate (either +2 or +3 oxidation states) in solution decomposes into iron oxide (black solid) and NO2 gas or nitric acid (depending upon the oxidation state of the iron) when heated over 90C (basically heat to a light simmer). The NO2 or nitric acid vapor is easily distilled back into usable dilute nitric acid!

[@ZoonCrypticon]

Would it be possible to cook the goldfingers first in boiling water, then after cooling put them into an ultrasonic bath, and afterwards collect the peeled-off gold films for further processing ? It could save a lot of chemicals.

[@sreetips]

I don’t think boiling water will do it.

[@tookitogo]

Given that circuit boards are designed to handle operating temperatures of 130°C (or higher, in more expensive grades), are soldered in infrared ovens at around 240°C, and are frequently washed in hot ultrasonic baths, I don’t see how that process would cause any of the metallization to release. Despite Sreetips mistakenly referring to it as “fiberboard”, the substrate is fiberglass-epoxy composite. It isn’t actual fiberboard (a wood product). (Very cheap circuit boards are made of paper impregnated with phenolic resin. But nobody would _ever_ gold plate those boards to begin with. And while they don’t tolerate quite as high temperatures as fiberglass-epoxy boards, they still handle hot water and ultrasonic just fine.)

[@Rob337_aka_CancelProof]

I bet you could make a pretty decent bloopers real of your funniest or scariest moments in your career using your many many videos or even a highlights reel just because you have so many videos and so much great content in them and especially any that has never been seen before (for your many Die Hard fans)

[@dbaca148]

hi sreetips. great video. when removing the foils, you don't think there is any silver being dissolved with the copper and other hunk metals?

[@sreetips]

No, I checked for silver and there is none.

[@hansmaier608]

I'm wondering if you could speed up the base metal solving process by using ultrasonic (combined with heat).

[@allanwood5775]

I would like to see you try the process of using tincture of iodine to remove the gold foils.

[@Alondro77]

Gold fingers are one of the few e-scrap parts you can dump into nitric and not end up with horrid metastannic acid (a tin complex), which is 'grey goo' that's god-awful to separate out. For most parts, a long soak (about a week in warm conditions) in HCl with some copper chloride mixed in gets rid of the base metals. Even plated pins will give you grey goo, because the soldered end ALWAYS has a lot of tin, and often the core of the pins is tin-containing brass, which created HUGE amounts of goo in nitric acid.

[@dawnjennings4864]

Love watching you work! Thanks

[@michaelfreeman2885]

Good evening from SC really wish my AP chemistry teacher did this would have enjoyed a lot more

[@michaelfreeman2885]

Would you be willing to give classes lol

[@DanSchneider-iy6hz]

I enjoy watching the recovery process. I am interested to see what the cost of the process is compared to what you extract from the boards. Thanks for the great shows

[@sreetips]

Not counting the scrap, I’d estimate about fifty bucks.

[@gordonhancock6030]

Do you salvage the copper that comes out of solution on the iron in your waste treatment?

[@sreetips]

It’s considered waste.

[@CraigMacdonaldAeon]

I appreciate for someone who would normally use Freedom Units in their daily life that you use metric measurements in your videos. Us metric natives generally call milliliters, "mills" though.

[@brianevans1851]

Nice looking forward to seeing how well the aqua rega works for 1 step

[@Ddamien-th8nh]

Question: would a square, wider base more surface area or rectangular casserole dish be more effective than standard beaker shape.

[@sreetips]

Don’t know. I’ve never tried that.

[@ctvxl]

I wonder if incinerating the pcb would work? It seems like it should be possible to incinerate it, then dissolve the remains in nitric, leaving behind mostly just the gold??

[@sreetips]

It doesn’t burn well

[@ctvxl]

@@sreetips Ok gotcha. I guess you've already tried that then :) The method you used of going straight to aqua regia without removing the pcb material seems to have worked really well anyway.

[@apveening]

@@sreetips Most PCBs have a fire retardant (mostly bromine) in them. But I wonder about how it would hold up in a piraña solution.

[@sameven5118]

@@apveening this guy knows what’s up

[@razaliyusof8861]

Some gold will be trap in the carbon.

[@Steven1Cicero]

Couldn't you put these in a 5 gallon bucket with the delute nitric acid and let them soak ahead of time to remove the metals, Or does it require heat to get the metals removed?

[@bygdaddy6143]

Introduction of heat speeds up the process

[@sreetips]

Heat makes it go fast

[@fieldie]

I was also thinking, if this is the only way to get the foils off, can you put the lot in a tumbler device to agitate and shake off all the stubborn foils still stuck on? Or maybe boil it and let the bubbles get all the foils off?

[@sreetips]

After being loosened with hot dilute nitric boil, any remaining foils will easily dissolved from the Aqua Regia. Even if they are not in contact with the liquid. The fumes will be enough to cause them to dissolve.

[@fieldie]

@@sreetips excellent, thanks for the reply 👍

[@SergeyPogreban]

For such a thin gold foils you can use "Gold leaching method". You may use chinese reagent "Jin Chan" in combination with Ferricyanide (K₃[Fe(CN)₆]) to wash off the gold.

[@JacobMendez-lo3tp]

I really enjoy your videos I wish I could get you to refine some of my stuff

[@Mike-METALS]

Are ever going to Write a book on refining that would be great 👍

[@CuttinEJ]

Pretty good yield for escrap fingers. I have an off topic question. When you refine silver with lye and sugar, do you use hot or cold water to do the rinses? 😊❤

[@sreetips]

Hot water always works better than cold.

[@CuttinEJ]

@@sreetips, thanks 🙏

[@MonasteryofLaRabida]

Mr. Sreetips, there is another method easier to release the gold foils of the fibreboard by using the heat gun, I wish you’d try it once, your channel is my favourite one ever

[@sreetips]

I’ve sat and went through an entire batch scraping the foils off one finger at a time. I’d rather let the chemicals do all that work.

[@anonymouschatlurker3556]

Didn't you used to use Peroxide for these trimmed circuit fingers?

[@sreetips]

Yes, but hot dilute nitric is much faster.

[@reallifeistoflat]

I realize that this might also be a bad idea but i can't help but think that running the entire bulk material through something like a ball mill to break down the material might be a better way to process the trimmed fingers. Since the fiber board is basically non reactive you could treat the powdered fingers with nitric and then aqua regia no?

[@sreetips]

No

[@lylestavast7652]

vibration table -- the friction between the card clips will knock a lot more loose...

[@Pablo668]

That was very easy to watch. Good result too.

[@josephcormier5974]

Very nice sir very enjoyable thank you for sharing this with us six stars

[@TheLug_]

Love it. Thanks Chief!

[@TheLeadShed]

Damn...close to being first People are fast to watch your videos Cheers Brother

[@TheLeadShed]

First to Bid though lol

[@sreetips]

Thank you!

[@Alondro77]

When I did a batch of fingers, after rinsing, I put all the pieces of board into a plastic tub and scrubbed off every last speck of gold from every tiny piece of board... I'm kinda obsessive-compulsive like that. ;D I just hate having to wash the board pieces over and over to recover all the gold chloride bound up in the fiber board. Creates a lot of waste solution.

[@MADDLADO1]

You make it look so easy.

[@andrewrossi7164]

Very nice turnout from that scrap sreetips 👍

[@empirefinds]

Awesome vidography in this episode brother. Have you hired a camera man. Nice to see another method with a different result. Great show brother looking forward to the final results

[@Mike-METALS]

Super valuable info sreetips amazing 👏

[@youssefzouine8191]

Good job love what you do ❤

[@anthonyrstrawbridge]

Considering the labor time, energy, chemicals etc. I wonder if pulverizing and gravity separation should precede refinement. Pulverizing probably would take minutes and gravity probably under an hour lending to 3.6 grams 525 / hr.. Not sure?

[@xredhead7135x]

The nitric solution at the beginning: is there not any chance of silver in it? Wouldn't it be better to drop as waste into he copper bucket just in case?

[@sreetips]

I can check for silver. But I don’t think there will be any.

[@coreymckenzie8945]

After watching you for the last year or so I've learned that sulfuric acid is what's used to keep lead out of the gold when refined. My question is how does it remove the lead ?

[@sreetips]

It reacts with any lead that’s in solution to form insoluble lead sulfate. It can then be filtered out.

[@greenzorse]

if this batch was only 2 pounds, you get to run this process about 6 more times to do all 15 pounds :p you got way better at processing these circuitboards, i remember the first try you had it bubbling outside for like 9 days. looking forward to the next vid as always ^^

[@SpartanONegative]

Excellent Chemistry Sreetips 🏴‍☠️ Thanks for sharing with us 🙏 God Bless

[@zognaldblormpf5127]

Is there a way to mechanically remove the foils like with a blade or bash them with a hammer? Would be tedious work but I'm sure the yield would go way up.

[@sreetips]

I’m fine just letting the chemicals do all that work

[@TxStang]

I need to do something soon with all of the computer cards, memory , motherboards & chips I have saved up over the years . I'm interested in what it will be like going straight to the aqua regia .

[@lordpepe2927]

so would you say you came out on top in terms of overhead cost + scrap cost + labor?

[@sreetips]

Absolutely. You can’t go wrong converting cash to GOLD.

[@ArielleViking]

A beautiful button, with 15 Lbs of computer scrap there’ll be lots of great videos to come. 👍🏻

[@UncalBertExcretes]

Always wondered the fineness of the gold foils. If they are really around 50% or 12k thats good enough for me to skip the refining part. I always wanted to just recover the foils then melt them because in my country the nitric acid is so expensive the cost of using it out weighs the value of the yield. But if the foils are around 12k, I could melt them into a bar and still get decent money for it without refining. Like your original video from years ago where you bubbled them off in HCL for 3 weeks, that will be the method I will need to adopt. Wish I could use nitric as its so much faster!

[@andrewh3141]

Happy to see you doing an ewaste video! I’m just about to finish up 30+ lbs of fingers, about 160 grams of foils. Couple thoughts… 1. Would have been nice to see you show people how to denox solutions using sulfamic acid! That 1 lb of SMB isn’t cheap where I’m at! 2. The average yield for fingers is 1.8 g/lb, which is right in line with your results! Love watching your videos when I’m not out doing it myself, you should try and source some gold cap ceramic ICs to do on the channel. They contain farrrrrr more gold per pound than fingers do and are fun to process! Thank you for the video, look forward to the next installment!

[@Rob337_aka_CancelProof]

Can this be done using unsaturated used Nitric from nitric acid boils previously used on enquarted gold?

[@sreetips]

I wouldn’t. Due to silver content of the used nitric.

[@rom65536]

Hey Chief, I've got an idea - it may be stupid, and if it is just let me know. Jason over at MBMMLLC has done experiments where he runs whole computer boards through his hammer mill and recovers all the metal on his shaker table. It's mostly copper, with lead and tin solder - but there's a surprising amount of gold and silver in there. He's asked for a cost effective method of getting the precious metals out. What would happen if he melted all the metal into a bar and use that copper alloy bar to cement out metals in a stock pot? Shouldn't the base metals go into solution and the precious metals drop out in the mud at the bottom of the stock pot?

[@sreetips]

Sounds right. But I’ve never tried it.

[@Failandy]

I would think if this was your main source of gold, you could do a two step process. Do the primary with nitric/AR and jave a secondary AP bucket to nibble off the residual over time

[@OneOfDisease]

Back of the napkin math says you should get 1 troy ounce that entire box if you processed all together. I wonder if the seller knew that and thats why they sell in batches of 17 pounds?

[@LimitedState]

Wow that little bead on Ebay is WAY over spot price on gold per gm rn on the market. That is insane how many bids it has tbh and how many folks are willing to pay an 80-100 $ premium. Good job lol xD.

[@LimitedState]

@@drcurioustube Who said it's "just gold" beside you? I was simply congratulating the guy for making more off the thing than it's worth. ;)

[@jasonsherlock7480]

Dang that bead sure was bright! 😃

[@timsmith9645]

Awesome video nice gold button thanks for sharing sreetips

[@kanedytham4597]

when it comes to precious metal recovery and refining your channel is the one I truly trust, so I'm going to ask you if you could do a 2024 test to see if you can still get platinum group metals from mlcc I ask this as a big favour as I know you hate doing computer scrap please

[@sreetips]

I bought some mlcc material several years ago. I’ll give it a shot one day.

[@kanedytham4597]

@sreetips ohhhhh thank you the only reason I ask is because I have about roughly 5 large mason jars filled to the top withheld mlcc's

[@TechneMoira]

Have you ever considered precipitating gold with stanous solution? And why not use normal (table)salt instead of borax during melting, which is less expensive and less toxic? Nice result by the way :)

[@sreetips]

I’ve never used stannous to precipitate. Borax is the way I learned it from some pro refiners.

[@StillFunBrewing]

I am interested in going straight to aqua regia and just dissolving all the metal all at once. Then boil down to syrup to remove nitrates, rehydrate with hydrochloric acid and then get the gold out. Really what I want to see is a method of dissolving computer scrap that may have silver and gold, but dissolve everything without hydrochloric acid. Then how do you separate the gold, silver then base metals all in one solution.

[@sreetips]

Going straight to AR is a giant pain.

[@lylestavast7652]

so cool watching the time lapses...

[@FiveStringCommando]

0:21 “I ordered some computer scrap” [opens box] …it’s a water pump for a 2012 Chevy Traverse. 🤔😂 That would have been just awful. 😂

[@DonnyHooterHoot]

If we could just flood Fort Knox with aqua regia and collect the runoff. Ah, dreams! Great video!!!

[@unarealtaragionevole]

Odd ball question, I was just watching your recent .9999 gold video and it made me ask myself, "Does mixing the purity of gold affect final purity or value?" For example, if one created a bar of 50% four nines and 50% three nines; what would the final purity be? Does it lower to the lesser purity, rise to the higher, or truly fall in the middle? I've seen some gold buyers just scrap price the gold so it doesn't matter the purity, and some actually test its purity and then quote based off that. But it is mixed? How would that work?

[@sreetips]

Falls in the middle.

[@hansweichselbaum2534]

You have used hydrogen peroxide as the oxidant in some videos. I've tried it out (thanks to your videos) and it works beautifully! The process is so much cleaner without the nitric. Why do you prefer nitric acid to hydrogen peroxide?

[@sreetips]

Because it faster.

[@parkerottoackley6325]

That was fun. Thank you Sir

[@uncle_thulhu]

If you wouldn't mind, and haven't already done so, I was wondering if you could try an experiment on my behalf, since I don't have your access to the necessary chemicals or equipment - the next time you're doing computer scrap, I'd love to know if PCB fibreboard dissolves in piranha solution. It's a plastic, isn't it?

[@sreetips]

I think piranha solution dissolves organics.

[@uncle_thulhu]

@@sreetips Yes, it does. Aren't PCB fibreboards some kind of polymer? Polymers are organic.

[@sreetips]

I’ve seen piranha dissolve chicken leg, cock roach, and a hot dog.

[@uncle_thulhu]

@@sreetips I've seen sausage, pork, and chicken. Cockroach is a new one! But I've also seen stuff like paper, wood and even nuts. Not sure about plastics, but they're definitely organic.

[@SpartanONegative]

That's the greenest Gold Brew I've ever seen 🐉

[@bygdaddy6143]

Doing aqua regia while the fingers were still present was pretty effective

[@bormisha]

I actually think it was not a good idea. The glass fiber material is porous. Some gold solution may stick in the pores, necessitating a lot of rinsing to recover it. Also, some AR-soluble substances may have gone into the gold solution, making it dirtier and harder to refine. I'd first remove fingers, then go AR. Or even melt and inquart the gold foils, making the whole refining process faster and more efficient.

[@sreetips]

Sounds like you’ve done this before.

[@bormisha]

@@sreetips I don't nearly have as much experience as you do. Sorry if I was wrong. But speaking of separation of Platinum and Palladium: I recently viewed another refiner's video where he successfully gets the Platinum by first adding Ammonium Chloride to his salt mixture. After collecting the Platinum salt percipitate, he proceeds to precipitate Palladium with DMG. Maybe it will be useful. Thank you very much for sharing your refining and chemistry experience with us!

[@ExtractingMetals]

That 10K ML beaker must have raised some eyebrows when you ordered it! 😂

[@MrCoors68]

King Midas does it again ~ ! ! ! Great Video !

[@davestark7880]

I know you don't do this for profit (other than colleting gold) but what is the cost for the chemicals to do a refining like this>

[@sreetips]

I’d say less than fifty bucks, estimated.

[@mfanto1]

Could you do that in a stainless steel sonic cleaner?

[@slipperysam1337]

41 minutes, Sreetips bros are eating good

[@gorauma]

That's a lot of fingers. On one hand I like the idea of recycling but at least some of those original devices could have been godsent for retro enthusiasts and collectors.

[@gorauma]

At least some recyclers are conscientious about blowing off proprietary chips from those boards

[@ClassicallyNamed]

They were already pre clipped and bulk scraped.. can't sell them on a slow retro but type situation without holding a ton of random inventory. No profit.

[@sreetips]

I couldn’t believe my luck when I found them listed. That’s enough to make lots of videos using different methods.

[@uspockdad6429]

I do computer scrapping, but I also keep an eye out for items retro folks are looking for. As long as the components work, I always try to sell them first. If they don’t sell then I’ll scrap them.

[@gorauma]

Most of those fingers look like PCI connectors, from that i would hope any voodoo chips with corresponding memory would be saved, and maybe Yamaha OPL2 or OPL3 chips. thought those were pretty rare on PCI cards. Nobody cares for S3 Virge cards or the like.

[@nightraven9258]

So glad you've never accidentally dropped your hydrochloric acid bottle while trying to show it off lol

[@sreetips]

Me too