Tin Recovery From E-Waste part 2: Viewer Request Special

In this video I tackle an often asked question from viewers: How to recover the tin from E-Waste? Here I show one way to do it. I show a method for recovering tin from depopulated circuit boards. In future videos we may explore other ways. Please visit the Urban Gold Mining section of my web site at mdpub.com/Urban... for more information.
My other channels: ‪@electrogeek6437‬ Electronics & Retro-Computers
‪@MikesLapidaryFossils‬ Rockhounding and Fossil Hunting.
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[@hpdepasse5997]

In industry, the reduction of tin oxide is done in a reverberatory furnace under a carbon atmosphere at 1400°C for 15 hours. The electrolytic way seems more accessible to an individual.

[@omegageek64]

Yes, that is why I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that the thermite reaction is the best way to do it on a small scale.

[@Vibe77Guy]

It's important to eliminate the tin before attempting any gold recovery, as it causes issues with the gold processing reactions. Anything with nitric acid will create metastannic acid goo. Copper chloride processes will make stannous chloride and will steal gold from the yield. Gold stannate is not detectable in the solution, especially when the green color masks the purple color. Reclaiming gold stolen by tin and chlorine, is a tedious process in itself. Which makes gold recovery from plated phosphor bronze particularly tricky. Phosphor bronze has about 8% tin in the alloy.

[@zero-waste]

Tin oxide can be dissolved in hot concentrated HCl, then recovered as metallic tin by electrowinning; simultaneously recovering all your HCl. Tin is, as you say, a weird element. It's known for shortcutting electrolytic cells due to formation of long needle shaped crystals during the electrolytic recovery process. As precaution I place a frame with a small electric motor on top of the cell. The motor is furnished with a shaft and two blades, called impellers, (all made of plastic) which continuously break the needle shaped crystals off, thereby letting the cell run unproblematic. At the same time the blades/paddles stir the electrolyte aiding to completion of the process. Carbon reduction of tin oxide takes place at 1280 C. Not much carbon is needed. The tin oxide, as well as the carbon, must be in fine powder form (ball milled) to ensure full conversion/reduction. My oil fired metal melting furnace is then adjusted to something like "low" setting; that's still around 1400 C. The reduction process can take up to 15 hours. Usually I start in the morning, let the furnace run the whole day, and turn it off in the evening. Next day the crucible has cooled down so it can be emptied. Any unconverted material is kept and just added to the next batch. I use homemade "carbon black", a biproduct from my four pyrolysis units. Ball milled charcoal is also excellent.

[@Kredo800]

Good addition about stannous whiskers, thank you!

[@pathanshahbaz3925]

Hey man how can I contact you?

[@zero-waste]

@@pathanshahbaz3925. What would you like to know?

[@pathanshahbaz3925]

@@zero-wasteI have an alloy(around 400 kg) that consist 75% tin and 7% antimony and rest is copper.I want to recover all the tin from that alloy with the purity of 99% through electro winning or electrolysis.

[@zero-waste]

@@pathanshahbaz3925. So far I have not encountered an alloy like that one. It's most likely used for some kind of "hard soldering" due to the high content of Antimony. The only Antimony I usually handle is in the alloy I get in form of spent lead bullets from shooting. However, I don't have any reason to recover that Antimony. I just cast it into small bars for sale to reloaders as the Antimony is needed to maintain the hardness of the "new" bullets. I'm not a chemist but a scrapper, so I have no idea if the Antimony will have any influence on the Tin recovery process. It seems to me you have two options: Either: Cast flat "dirty" anodes, then run them through an electrorefining process. The other metals should end up in the bottom slime to be recovered later. Tin is higher on the metal reactivity scale than the other, and Antimony is higher than Copper. Or: Dissolve the alloy in acid, then electrowin the Tin. The other metals should remain in the solution for later recovery. The latter method might not be economic feasible, due to the cost of acid. Contrary to you, I presume, I have an unlimited supply of totally free acid, as all of my main acids (HCl, HNO3, and H2SO4) are homemade at no cost. Notice the info I gave in my previous comment, how to avoid the long needle like crystal of tin shortcutting your cell. An alternative would be to simply sell the alloy directly to reloaders, as it can be used to cast "hard" bullets. Sportfishermen would also be interested in using this alloy for casting Jig Heads or Lures, especially in all those countries where Lead is prohibited to use for fishing, due to environmental pollution with toxic heavy metal. I would have been interested in buying all 400 kg, but freight costs kill all profit.

[@tomokovlog8567]

Now I know why scientists go mad

[@electronicscrapper4956]

I look forward to future videos on this subject. Up to this point ive used carbon to turn SNII into tin. Looking forward to new ideas and processes

[@rockman531]

Hi Mike, Great video! Thanks again for all the time you put into your educational videos! Learn something new every day! Thumbs up! Take care, Jim

[@keithrodman9318]

Very interesting. Don't know that I will be trying this anytime soon, but maybe in a couple of years once I get the silver and gold refining part down. Keep up the great work on our behalf!

[@corveramoenglish7275]

Can you try using an ammonia gas chamber and give it low heat to turn it into Tin? 3SnO + 2NH3 > 3Sn + N2 + 3H2O. 3SnO2 + 4NH3 > 3Sn + 2N2 + 6H2O Just do it where you can avoid the stink, in a sealed container

[@corveramoenglish7275]

Also, try the sugar + lye method to convert it to metalic form

[@shaneyork300]

Some cool stuff

[@Alex-kp3hr]

After the drying process of the tin2 oxide, could you then put some into a beaker and add HCl to make fresh Stannous Chloride?

[@omegageek64]

Interesting question.

[@iamthenotbenamed365]

One would Wonder, all this, if Not-for-Experiment ...

[@eddieodwyer3727]

Thanks it will help get more metals from my e waist productions

[@pathanshahbaz3925]

Can you make the video of purifying the tin to 99% through electrolysis

[@Alex-kp3hr]

at 2:58 you precipitated the tin2 out of the liquid with lye. Is the lead component still in solution? How do you get rid of the lead in the tin/lead solder?

[@omegageek64]

Back in episode 1 I added some sulfuric acid to precipitate out any lead as lead sulfate. I skipped over that part in the review.

[@custos3249]

Makes me curious if there's a way to easily make this into a continuous process. Basically like applying a little inertial frames of reference. How to make a stationary/rate stable fuse burn.....

[@patricktrudeau2680]

hi Mike, seems like a lot of work for the rewards. Out of curiosity, would adding sugar not work the same way as converting silver chloride to silver hydroxide then to silver metal? I love the thermite reaction though and it's giving me ideas. Thanks for the great video!

[@joshborchardt5050]

Have you ever thought about electrolysis? You spend the money on buying aluminum powder. But you should just spend the money on electricity for electrolysis and circumnavigate the whole necessity for aluminum powder to start with.

[@daisonkirkbride7205]

I may have something to think on. I may have experienced the issues converting lead oxide back to lead. But I noticed you did something I was doing. I am thinking we are using way more carbon then is really needed for the reaction to take place. it is not allowing the materials to reflux freely and off gas as it would need to for the exchange. maybe the weight of all the extra carbon prevents it. Let me tell you what I observed to come up with this possibly. When you used the new carbon crucible the carbon that was in there was though not to be enough to be a factor in the conversion from 2 to 4 oxide state. You were only looking to get a 50% oxide4 state to 50% tin metal return. However you got let us say a 99% conversion right? With only 2 real differences between the two reactions. The amount of carbon that was available as well the conversion from the oxide state 2 to 4 leaving tin after the exchange. With that said I don't think that is what triggered the full conversation. I think it was the lack of carbon that was present. You had enough to do the job but not enough to stall the reaction from happening in the first place. Try to run the reaction again with the tin 4 oxide. I am sure if you wanted to hunt the mol weights down you could easily know exactly how much was needed for full conversation to take place. You only need one carbon for every 2 oxygen to make co2. Plus you will have some 02 present in the pot from atmosphere to concider. Probably not enough to really care about cause you will probably have more to enough carbon in play. But for every gram of tin 2 oxide it has got to be less .75 of a gram carbon that is actually needed. Try running a mixture with the ratios like 1 gram tin oxide to .75 carbon and see it the reaction is allowed to take place then. The loads of extra carbon that most likely acted as a insulation not allowing the oxide to get hot enough to transform into tin. Just a thought. I think I have been a victim of my own demise from doing the same thing. just realized it from this experiment. Could not grasp why it was not working with something as simple as it was. If you are familiar with how iron was made before modern Time it makes sense why they stacked the ore then carbon ore then carbon. So it could breathe and allow the reaction to take place. Everyone who tried to make iron could. I am sure they did not know why. They were using all the same ingredients. Just not mixing them correctly. Kinda like baking a cake. You would never puts gobs of icing in the flower before it was mixed and baked. Matter of fact I think icing was used to trap the water content inside of the cake to keep it from going stale. Just a thought..

[@PyroRob69]

Could it be that when using charcoal, the burning of the charcoal consumes all of the free O2, thereby making it an oxygen deficient atmosphere?

[@bobsunkees3392]

So you are basically making pewter and burning out the aluminum creating aluminum oxide purifying tin then fluxing with borax.👍.

[@afineliner740]

Hi Mike, here I was thinking you would just react it with carbon, not so fast. Well that was all very interesting. Have you started work yet Mike ? 👍

[@omegageek64]

Can't get the carbon reaction to work reliably. I don't think the propane furnace gets hot enough. Need temps more like for melting steel. Not really started work yet like I thought I would. Most of my work has been pushed off into the the 1st quarter of next year. Company ran out of money in the 4th quarter and can't afford to pay me! Been really busy with other things though. Plus been on the road a lot.

[@afineliner740]

@@omegageek64 I'm sure you won't sit idle, take care.

[@koosduplessis1749]

this might be a stupid question but how will I differentiate between tin monoxide and tin dioxide if they look the same?

[@petevenuti7355]

What about electricly conductive tin oxide?

[@pathanshahbaz3925]

Hey man how can I contact you I know more about the electrolysis of tin.

[@MariuszKen]

Why not to make: SnO+C-->Sn+CO2 ;) Better!

[@loveisalliam]

I don’t understand why you want to recover tin from e waste using chemicals. Or is it your hobby to experiment.