Turning E-Waste Into Cash! Smelting Gold & Silver From Circuit Boards

[@busbey61]

I hope he sends this to Sreetips instead of the other Florida guy that complained throughout his video and was condescending about the comments in his videos.

[@drich1s]

Agreed. He needs to partner with streetips. Fact

[@busbey61]

I have yet found a youtuber that is as good as Sreetips. Most have stopped making content or it is very infrequent.

[@PiezPiedPy]

Some really useful info on sreetips videos.

[@dodgeit3014]

I seen that video. Hopefully he doesn’t buy it. I would of loved to see him do something with streetips as well. Maybe we need to start commenting on his videos lol

[@RectifiedMetals]

😂😂😂 Mike’s videos are funny.

[@ronjlwhite8058]

Sreetips is the man for this. You, Dan Hurd, Brett @ Cerro Gordo and Sreetips is my full circle. You 4 are awesome and would love to see y'all @ Cerro Gordo in a vid.

[@djcbanks]

Sreetips doesn’t refine copper though and has zero interest in doing so. Trust me I’ve already talked to him about it many times. I collect the copper from my refining wastes and electrolytically purify it and reuse if for my refining. I’ve tried to convince him to do the same since he’s basically is only two steps away from doing so, but for him, he’d rather purchase new copper then collect and refine new copper. It’s not worth his time, but I don’t think he realizes how much money is to be made with copper and it doesn’t take much more effort than he already puts in to complete the circle of life so to speak.

[@bretcalobeer5152]

@@djcbanks copper is still part of Sreetips process though. to precipitate the silver from the acids.

[@ronjlwhite8058]

@Guilty Pleasures it would be cool if he did. Full circle is right.

[@ronjlwhite8058]

@@bretcalobeer5152 would be sweet to see him pull it from solution.

[@buggsy5]

Correct. He then drops the copper out of solution using iron. But I seem to recall that he just treats the copper sponge as waste. @@bretcalobeer5152

[@PriorUniform721]

I really like your approach to this Jason. eWaste is a global problem and you're willing to work with anyone and share as much as you can with the world. It's just a problem that needs solving, no politics, no borders, no corporate greed, no egos, just a problem to solve and anyone is welcome to participate.

[@BratislavMetulskie]

ewaste is not a problem because it's a resource. to source out material from scrap isn't as harmful for environment as mining I would say.

[@seanjustg5425]

A good way to solve a vast majority of problems. Well stated.❤

[@StevenC.Shoner]

Hi Jason! I've been enjoying your videos for a while now, but this one really peaked my interest. I'm a semi-retired inorganic chemist at UW down in Seattle, and have done some separations of dissolved metals (Cu and Ni mostly). I started looking the chemical literature about e-waste and metal separations and found some recent papers on green techniques involving amino acids to separate copper from the other metals in e-waste. It might save you having to breathe those nasty Nitric acid fumes (I know I've breathed my share) and some of the waste disposal problems. Let me know if you'd like to discuss it sometime.

[@photoadventures]

This is interesting id love to read those papers! There is so much to be learned as this is a new budding business worth billions of dollars.

[@christianabela6405]

Is it the one with Bromine? I have read about the paper but cannot find the paper itself. It sounds highly interesting.

[@TheBussaca]

SREETIPS. He's your man. This sounds like a colab series!!!

[@billwebber400]

I 100% agree Sreetips is the best. A true wealth of knowledge

[@tonyc3858]

Sreetips is the best channel I have seen for small scale chemical refining. Not sure how it will scale up to industrial levels as he uses a lot of Hydrochloric, Nitric, and other acids.

[@lamebubblesflysohigh]

it is done same way in an industrial setting but instead of beakers and hot plates, they are using large reactors and vapor condensers. Alternatively some poor people in China and India do it outdoors in large plastic tubs and no protective gear whatsoever.

[@rockman531]

Hi Jason, Love your determination! Great video! Thumbs up! I've always gone the acid route. Tin is the enemy! It does not play nice with gold! That's why I de-populate the boards, separate the good from the bad components (all the capacitors are worthless) and then soak the good stuff in HCL to get rid of the tin & the steel. I'm currently designing an electrowinning process to get the copper, silver, & gold. Any remaining sludge can be sent to a commercial refiner for the PGM's. Stay safe, Jim

[@garrettmillard525]

This is the way

[@timothygorman2846]

Will it scale up though? Would it be more economical to smelt the base metals out first, or dissolve with acid? I'm planning on making my own nitric and recapturing the off gassed nitric oxide, which should keep the costs under control. But I also have access to most of the smelting chemicals for free or very cheap from other recycled materials.

[@Alondro77]

MLCCs are NOT necessarily worthless. Non-magnetic MLCCs have either silver or palladium electrodes. Some of the weakly magnetic MLCCs do as well. Then there are the tantalum capacitors, which also tend to have silver electrodes. The FOIL capacitors and canister capacitors are just aluminum. I do melt the canister ones, in a cast iron incineration/melt tube (using firewood, which costs me nothing) and recover about 40% by original capacitor weight of aluminum. It's cool when the canister capacitors explode. ;]

[@tommyverducci]

​@Alondro77 do you have a video of your setup

[@rockman531]

@@tommyverducci I do not.

[@johnmichaelcousins9403]

Sreetips is a good shout, he is familiar with acid baths and the science behind it. Love the videos you do keep it up mate.

[@davidpatry4195]

Hello Jason, I am an electrical engineer who design PCBs. I just wanted to thank you for your work and hopes you becomes very sucessful in this endeavour.

[@saintlygator1274]

Sreetips on KZbin does a great job of explaining refining gold and silver. He would also help with copper when he is dealing with cleaning his waste solutions.

[@justinliakos9031]

I've got a bit of engineering background in this field, and from what I know your options are to either incrementally heat the crucible so that certain metals melt while others remain solid, or to look into leaching. There may be other options involving floatation and gravity separation but you'd have to grind much finer which is challenging when dealing with native metals

[@timothygorman2846]

The problem with melting at different temps is that liquid metals tend to dissolve other metals. There is some new research on leaching using calcium chloride I'm interested in looking into. But I think electrowinning the copper from a smelted mix will make the precious metal refining easier.

[@justinliakos9031]

Timothy Gorman and alienrocketscience, you both bring up great points I hadn't considered! My only experience with incremental heating systems are with lead and zinc systems which there are industry applications for. Perhaps electrowinning the copper and then cyanide leaching the gold may be the best option. Though I'm unsure if the cyanide will interact with other metals. Suppose if the cyinide is selective to both gold and silver you could still sell that product. Let me know your thoughts.

[@timothygorman2846]

@@justinliakos9031 I'm just starting to get comfortable with the idea of smelting and using acids, it would take me some more time to consider using cyanide leaching. I have done a little reading on calcium chloride leaching, but the paper was a little too technical for me. It sounds like a high copper content is a good thing for calcium chloride leaching, and it can be done fairly quickly at room temperature. I think processes requiring the least amount of safety measures and containment would be the most attractive for a small to mid-scale processor.

[@hpdepasse5997]

The largest part of your pyramid, 80-85%, is copper, and the easiest way to remove it, for the most part, is by electrolytic transfer in a copper nitrate bath on a stainless steel cathode. Then remove the iron and nickel from the mud with a magnet. Then nitric acid for what's left, tin lead zinc etc, but also silver. Silver in nitric can be precipitated with copper. White metals can be recovered with sodium or by evaporating nitric. Gold and PGM is not dissolved by nitric and can be recovered with aqua regia. What remains at the end is inert ash.

[@quagmier3]

Nice video Jason. My best guess for the color difference in the melted samples is that copper melts at 1984 F and zinc boils at 1665 F so one sample was heated up and exposed to the air longer so that more of the zinc boiled off. Which is why it is so important to use a respirator while melting this stuff. Have a great day.

[@haiceid]

All of these processes are viable depending on your energy abilitys. In my case processing 100 lbs a week of high grade Ewaste. Even with the price of pure copper silver and gold it's hard to achieve any cost benefits without a method that includes chemistry and smelting. As you are aware these are achievable but need scale to achieve benefits that out way the costs... Thank you for everything you do for us

[@John.Flower.Productions]

@@haiceid Are you being limited by energy consumption or sourcing of the ore?

[@scottjeppesen7389]

Seperate the metals when removed from the boards.. by hand. It'll still need crushing of CPUs etc to extract the gold etc, but that's the easiest way to avoid having to go through all that time separating after crushing.. most is done by government companies that use court ordered community service to do the labour at no cost..

[@golder70]

My suggestion: 1) Remelt several times with KNO3 qnd borax to get rid of Sn, Zn, Pb and other base metals to get an alloy of Cu, Ag, Au and PGMs 2) Pour shots out of this alloy ->surface 3) Construct a copper cell similar to the silver cell from sreetips but way larger 4) you get pure copper and the residual "slimes" are a high grade mix of Cu, Ag, Au and PGMs 4) Treat these with diluted HNO3 to extract Cu and Ag, filter and cement out the Ag with Cu. Some PGMs will follow the Ag. 5) Melt the cemented Ag into shots and run through a silver cell *-> see sreetips) to get pure Ag. Collect the residual slimes and treat them with HNO3 (step 4) 6) Treat the residual solids from step 4) with Aqua regia, drop the Au with SMB and pour the residual liquid into the stockpot (see sreetips) to recover all traces of precious metals 7) Refine the Au with Aqua regia and drop with SMB. Take care to remove as much of AgCl with cooling and diluting (with ice) before filtering and dropping with SMB (see my videos or sreetips). Never do acid washes on the product of step 2). The precious metal are to low concentrated and will result to go colloidal during an acid wash and will be lost. AND....! You loose Au on your shaker table. Gold foils which defoliated from pins or plastic surfaces when shredding are just some microns thick and have a huge surface and will be washed away. Remedy: shred the already shredded material again and use a much finer screen.

[@RedneckEngineerMakerDude]

I would not shred at all, nor would I process the entire circuit board in the mix. There's a lot of junk metal on circuit boards that just creates a big mess and adds extra, unnecessary steps to an already laborious refining process. I'm 100% in agreement with 'golder70' on the shaker table thing! You're likely losing a lot of gold, just like panners lose gold simply looking for nothing but shiny gold particles in their pans and tossing the rest aside. Not all gold looks shiny like gold! I would first remove the 'fingers' from the circuit boards, along with any 'other' obvious clean looking gold-plated items for the first run of refining... saving the really nasty, curious, copper and other non-gold/silver looking junk, on the rest of the board, for a totally different method(s) of processing... if you later feel as though it is actually worth your time, effort and expense to mess with. I personally stay away from computer scrap because the yield of Ag and Au are extremely low, and I personally have no cheap source from which to obtain such cheap, profitable electronic scrap. The best 'average yield' you can expect from gold fingers alone will be about .001 grams of pure gold for every 1 gram of unprocessed finger, give or take. That being said, it would take on average, about 70 pounds of good, clean fingers alone to extract an average of one ounce of gold... plus the cost of the chemicals and lots, and 'lots' of labor required if done in small batches. If I had a really cheap source from which I could obtain this kind of scrap, Sure. I'd go for it, but most folks currently want to sell their electronic scrap for waayyy more money than it's worth. More power to them!

[@timothygorman2846]

From what I've read, you use acid to break up colloidal solutions. And the amount that you would lose to suspension would be so low, it wouldn't be worth worrying about the loss. As for foils, I think he's had his tailings analyzed in one of these videos, and didn't have any precious metals in them.

[@ayhamhafez285]

Usually gold foils plated on kovar or copper, so I don't think it will be lost during crushing and shaking table process, it will not come as foils with large surface it will come as copper or kovar density, kindly correct me if am wrong

[@wildwisdom56]

Sreetips says on avg he gets 1.5g gold per pound trimmed fingers without trying to get old ones. Just asked him yesterday.

[@hiddentruth1982]

I would suggest smelting it in the forge after the first step. then cornflaking the smelted metal. That will get rid of the steel and plastics. then use nitric acid to get rid of everything but the gold. You then put the imbedded acid in a put with copper plates so any silver falls out. If you want the copper then replace the copper plates with iron so the copper falls out.

[@RejonMunchausen]

what I came here to say

[@Landogarner83]

That would be too expensive because it takes loads of nitric to get all the copper. Dissolving copper takes 4 times as much nitric as dissolving silver and there is a lot of copper in that mix. Better to get all or most of the copper out with electrowhinning before starting with acids.

[@Alondro77]

@@Landogarner83 First depopulate the boards that don't have any obvious gold flashing on traces. Basic motherboards have virtually no PMs at all on the board itself. Any PMs will be in the components. Saves a HUGE amount of resources processing only the components.

[@timothygorman2846]

@@Alondro77 depopulating by hand reduces the cost of refining, but adds a lot to the up front labor.

[@Alondro77]

@@timothygorman2846 Eh, I do it while streaming shows. Keeps the mind active while watching schlock. ;D

[@laughingachilles]

If the bar you have is mostly copper then removing that and leaving behind the other metals is probably a good start. I would think an electricity based process would be clean and efficient compared to pure chemical processes. Set up a cathode and anode with copper sulphate as the electrolyte. You'll end up with pure copper and whatever is left at the bottom of the cell will be precious metals, base metal contaminants, and various rare earth metals. From there a small scale chemical process could separate the PGMs.

[@stephensteele3553]

I think you do so electromechanical separation even before then. Most of those metals can be somewhat separated using Eddy currents. Once you have your factions, then on to your described method. All of the refining methods work so much better with a cleaner product.

[@electronicscrapper4956]

I was going to leave the same comment but see youve already left it.

[@christianabela6405]

After some tries, since this video was posted, I can safely say that removing the copper from the contents takes an aweful lot of time through electrolysis. Since there is so much of it, I am exploring electrowinning other metals and LEAVING the copper behind. In theory should be faster but also has more chemicals involved (vs Copper , which needs a medium strenght electrolyte).

[@laughingachilles]

@@christianabela6405 Definitely interesting and I appreciate the update.

[@christianabela6405]

@@laughingachilles I am currently studying and trying some stuff written in the book: "Practical Methods of Electrochemistry - byF.Mollwo Perkin It sustains that the amperage employed on electrolytes is of fundamental importance since different metals will deposit at different amp settings. Thats promising so far. will keep updates...

[@torchandhammer]

On a small scale, it might help a lot to depopulate the boards, which you can do really fast with an air chisel. Then, depending on how detailed you'd want to get sorting things you could really get some results. Most of the lead/tin would stay with the board I think. Some people say there's some silver in that solder. If you had a big pile of IC chips, you could really get some nice results. Big pile of tantalum capacitors, Big pile of plastic holders full of gold plated pins. Pick out all the extruded aluminum heatsinks and such and those have some decent scrap value on their own. Don't forget, with acids, there's no face mask that will protect from nitric acid fumes. Permanent lung damage.

[@spitefulwar]

Today's lead-free solder have a varied percentage of the following: Copper Tin Silver Nickel Zinc Bismuth Antimony

[@lukethedank13]

there are some specialist gas mask filters for NOx

[@timothygorman2846]

You can recapture the nitric oxide and flow it through water to make nitric acid again.

[@creativestudios3d]

I just wanted to add: If you take the board and heat them with a hot air gun and then whack them against something, all the components will fall off + a lot of the solder. The solder can also be scooped up and refined for tin + lead + silver.

[@markae0]

THIS

[@chuckcrunch1]

small cement mixer and a blow torch

[@chuckcrunch1]

or an old washing machine drum .you could spin out the solder

[@tireballastserviceofflorid7771]

A friend of mine used to work for a company in California that recycled e-waste. He told of literal rivers of pur gold. Explained that the process had to do with precise melting points and super fine powder feeding the system. This was back in the late 80s. Always thought it sounded really cool to see rivers of metal.

[@markae0]

Maybe he was selling a pyramid scheme.

[@tireballastserviceofflorid7771]

@markae0 He wasn't selling anything. I even saw some pictures of him and some other people with several metal bars in a jail cell looking room. This was back when Americans did their own dirty work and kept all the money and assets. Now we ship it out as trash and let other countries make the money and gain assets. California in particular shut his facility down because it emmited too much co2 or some other shit. So several hundred people lost thier job and the e-waste went to south America where kids pick through it for pennies of value to eat.

[@andrebalian6072]

Pyramid of gold

[@uncommonlogic1698]

Selective melting process, it is difficult to do with e scrap.

[@Roadiedave]

@@uncommonlogic1698 Sounds like a high...very high temp fractional distillation

[@328.Gaming]

Jason, i think this is going to piss off those big time recycling companies. This is absolutely how they do it. Thank you for taking the risk and showing us all.

[@ProspectorTripp]

I high grade everything before refining.. clean in clean out is obviously much easier than a mishmash of metals that need to be likely chemically separated then refined to purity. I believe you hit most of the methods small timers would use. One thing for sure.. the Electronic Recycling Gold Rush is ON! Thanks much Jason Peace Prospector Tripp

[@xyzabc4574]

I like how this channel is all, "I'm gonna try something new and refine my metals." And then all the sudden chemistry is just part of the normal process. Props for learning new stuff and immediately applying to reality.

[@timothygorman2846]

I tried more physical separation, the specific gravities of the non oxidized metals are too close for a blue bowl to effectively separate. I was reading up on another system that uses tubes with upward flowing water to separate different materials. I'm planning on making my own nitric acid with the high voltage process that takes nitrogen out of the atmosphere, converts it to nitric oxide, then you flow it through water to form nitric acid. Cody's Lab has a video on that process. Then I'm planning on using the electrowinning processes, and make multiple cells. But I've also considered selling dore bars to refiners.

[@jeffgrill7214]

I think what your doing as a think tank with the community working together to find the best way to refine this material is amazing. You have a great channel, and I truly believe you're into conservation as much as the thrill of prospecting. Im sure you make your money off selling your grinders and shaker tables. But you have a knack and passion for showing the world your passion of prospecting and refining. Especial refining! Good luck with your future, ill keep watching.

[@TheBlessedMeek]

Mr Sreetips. He's so polite and knowledgeable . I sure hope he can at least give advice. He's very busy as it is but he seems like a helpful guy

[@zanderboy]

the shaker table of your channel is so satisfying. i wonder how many times you have explained how the table works? thousands! love this channel

[@busbey61]

Sorry for all the comments, but i think you should send the bar to Sreetips as a surprise! And tell him to open it in a video! I want to see his reaction and process of recovering and refining.

[@StratRider]

Streetips was one of my first thoughts also when I saw where Jason was going with this. 👍

[@busbey61]

I know Sreetips isnt a fan of low yields, blah blah blah, but it would make a good video or series.

[@djcbanks]

He won’t mess with copper.

[@jasonjobe6245]

Sreetips is the biggest boss that ever won and will be. But why don't you Cupel with lead

[@ericmcc75]

Sreetips might be willing to talk this over with you. He is a precious metal-refining wizard.

[@haiceid]

All of these processes are viable depending on your energy abilities. In my case processing 100 lbs a week of high grade E Waste. Even with the price of pure copper silver and gold it's hard to achieve any cost benefits without a method that includes chemistry and smelting. As you are aware these are achievable but need scale to achieve benefits that outway the costs for small batch... Thank you for everything you do for us

[@wambsganz8]

I am Seriously impressed! This is alot harder than people think.

[@donttangowithrango3890]

Super helpful, I have been collecting gold fingers (trimmed) & CPU’s (p4 pin/pinless, green fiber, amd, ceramic) ect. In all I have about 80 lbs collected, I’ve been looking for ways to extract.

[@williammiller6110]

I believe your #1 concentrates from the shaker table should go through another round of grinding to achieve the finest granule size possible, followed by another separation on a secondary shaker table that is calibrated for much finer and DIVERSE density separation. Once you start smelting, separation becomes much harder.

[@ram4nd]

Agree, go as small as possible.

[@doggybonz2967]

As a previous compounder I’ve found hot, cold, neutral and electrostatic roller pins will identify the materials by its structure once rolled and sometimes rolled again for more passes if necessary. I hope this helps. Like the WTC’s were brought down by sheets of copper, pallets of portfolios and fire (jet fuel) that melted the copper (cut right through steel like a plasma cutter). Jerry

[@chrisholmes8197]

Please do a follow up to this video. Really interested to see how you get on separating the metals and seeing if it’s viable on a small scale! Thanks

[@busbey61]

I am in the process of collecting ewaste. I live 2 blocks from a scrap yard that buys precious metals. Plus I live at a prime spot within the rust belt to where I have access to ewaste and chemicals.. I am definitely taking all this in right.

[@jaredsmith4894]

I reading these comments and i just feel dumb not understanding some of these words lol i need to go back to school again haha but jason is probably one of the smartes youtubers i have watched like he doesn't know what to do here so instead of using all his money to figure out ways to do these next steps in becoming a very successful business he asks us thats freaking brilliant for sure bravo jason

[@asadhayat3180]

I was looking for metal recycling from PCBs and my search landed here. The pyramids/ bars are direct market (remelt) requirement. Iron can be removed through oxygen purging but as a result you'll lose Al and other oxidation active metals as well. Thank you for sharing, for me it was a good learning experience.

[@brucevanderzanden9638]

Hello Jason. I really like your idea for doing small batches of this e-waste. I do not know enough about smelting to try a sample. Keep us posted please!

[@goldensadventures1229]

Since the majority of your sample is copper you should consider a electrolytic copper cell. This would result in pure copper and leave the PM and junk in the slimes. Then you could move to a acid refining to recover the PM's

[@rogerclaiborne6815]

He could do a silver cell type set up and just take the e-waste directly from the shaker tables and but them in a filter lined basket with a heavy electrode on top of them. Experiment to get the right current and voltage for his cell set up to remove just the copper first such as .33 volts at whatever amps. Then he could use the cheapest solar panels he can find to do most of the work for him over time. Then like you said smelt and cupel the slimes for all the precious metals.

[@dragonseyeaerial2229]

I was also thinking electrolysis would be the best way to get good separation

[@Noswiatel]

Exactly what I had wanted to write.

[@dustintempleton1408]

It's so crazy that this is what your doing I scrap myself and I've been saving mother boards because scrap yards won't pay what I know they are worth. I really need one of your crushers and shaker tables! I save anything that I know has copper or precious metals in them. I think if you could get that stuff grinded down to an even finner powder then extend the length of your shaker table/modify the grooves in the tabble it could possibly work to separate the powder into perfect or nearly perfect base metals. Grinding the metals into powder though would help separate the plated materials better. The smaller the better I believe

[@kleetus92]

Something to be aware of, I believe with Xray scanning gold can sometimes be mistaken for lead and vice versa depending on the concentration and form. You really need a scanner that can display the peaks discovered and see if they really line up with the target metal on its emission scale. As far as separation goes, I have mixed emotions about melting everything into a blob, then trying to separate it chemically. your feed material coming out the mill has enough surface area that if you start with your lower cost acids first, they will chew away at lead, tin, copper, and aluminum, and leave your precious metals alone... with maybe the exception of silver. At least silver if it's in a nitrate form you can recover it by putting metallic copper into it, and it will kick the silver out and complex itself with the copper. at that point all you should have left as solids is your precious metals like gold and palladium. Then after all that, you can move in with aqua regia and start separating those as well. Also another metal you're probably going to see turn up is Tantalum... from ceramic capacitors, that's another good metal. Interesting series you have here, as this will be more of a problem as time goes on.

[@blood_blaaat_slime_slat6313]

@@kwellerfolds but if the copper chewed away he can do that seperate since its most of the material

[@petepal55]

I agree with the people saying you should strip the components off the boards. Isolating the obviously gold-plated parts would help a great deal, I imagine. I wonder what you could find at the patent office? Maybe some patented processes could give you some directions to go. The only thing coming into my mad scientist's mind is a centrifuge that could withstand high temperatures, and good luck with that, lol! Good luck with your efforts, you've bitten off a big one with this stuff.

[@wmenager]

I am a mineral processing engineer. The best next step would be to cast your copper into a bar then elctrowin the copper. your lead tin and presious mettals would then be in the slimes that acumulate in the bottom of the electrowin cell. next you can melt that and cupell to separate the bas metal from the precious next you can separate the gold from the silver. Also the best way to collect the silver from the silver nitrate parting solution is to precipitate the silver using salt then take the silver clorid and put it in a graphite crusible snd cover with soda. you will then redusce the silver cloride to silver metal and end up with a sodium chloirde slag.

[@timothygorman2846]

This would be more economical than smelting the base metals out?

[@jessevennard2640]

I have an idea for you to more accurately sort your concentrates. Add an adjustable diverter to the underside or the shaker table so you can slide it left and right to line up exactly where your separation lines are. I apologize if you already have this. Love the content.

[@DaleScottMarion]

the tables have that already I own 4 they came with that.

[@mathiasschneider9113]

This method may be completely speculative, but worth checking out. Using a conical basin mounted to a centrifuge, add a sample amount of concentrate with water, and let the basin spin. In theory, the combination of centrifugal force and basin angle will cause the different metals to separate by weight. Whichever metal makes up the outer edge can be scooped out. Critiques or opinions? Please share!

[@robertsmith4681]

I have sometimes wondered if a series of centrifuges could be used to refine things like seawater and try to pull stuff like lithium out of it..

[@smokeyandspikeproductions]

You should manufacture something similar to what they use at Kennecott copper mine. A spray bar system directly above a conveyor belt with a collecting reservoir underneath. Use various types of acid to spray on the material. Kind of like cyanide leaching, instead of cyanide use specific acids to dissolve each type of metal separately.

[@aredditor4272]

Mines often use multiple processes, like flotation as well as heap leach with cyanide as you mentioned. Even goid sized mines often don't mess with final refining, they send concentrates, anode slimes, or dore bars to specialty refiners.

[@smokeyandspikeproductions]

@@aredditor4272The entire point of Jason's video was to figure out a way for a small mining business to do such work without having to use other resources for refining. I was offering my advice as a small scale miner and prospector. Using refinery services can be costly.

[@chrisfrench2130]

I think it is great to see you make the common mistakes that us amateurs would make if we did on own great presentation.

[@williammiller6110]

I think you are losing a lot of gold from the black ceramic microchips. The gold bonding wires in them are EXTREMELY small... you are most likely losing them where ever your ceramics are going. I don't think your hammer mill is pulverizing them enough to liberate all of the gold fibers completely. I think a board stripper and classifying system for components is in order. The chips should go through a much more contained and thorough process. Gold that small is way too easy to wash out with other things.

[@KeiranR]

dude your awesome.. its people like you that advance society

[@matthewkidd267]

Im quite interested in this process and looking at a hydro-metalurgical process to go from table to refining might work well. starting with HCL to remove the bulk (Copper and other base metals) then rinse the rest with distilled water to use HNO3 to remove the Silver and Palladium, after you can use Aqua Regia to get the Gold, Platinum, Ruthenium.

[@mattgraham1983]

I wonder if Streetips would be intrested (he uses acid to extract gold and silver from scrap jewelry and scrap silver, further refines the silver via a 'silver cell') I do believe he's played around with gold plated fingers and pins before but not shredded e-waste

[@tjgatica24]

been waiting for this video! talk about something that grabs my attention. the way u called it ore made so much sense

[@BillMulholland1]

Been fallowing a long time. All respect Jason. Great job on mixing the old with new videos .. for anyone that doesn’t fallow you have to go back to find the videos. Trust me. He’s very smart and business minded. Gotta give credit to him. Again, always a thanks Jason. I live vicariously 🤝👍.. gotta see S&J Forest Products. His other channel

[@paulscottpadgett1996]

Absolutely STUNNING video. VERY much RESPECT..........!

[@philtoth8246]

@10:08... you start tondo real interesting refining of all of the preceeding work. Good job... real interesting stuff.. Thank you

[@JohnnySwedishScrapper]

as a scraper i sugest that you use some acids to refine the material before the melting but some ppl ju melt all material in to bars and sell it as it is but ill would refine it first then melt it great video jason

[@andrewhallam4580]

Street tips all the way he knows what he's doing and it would make an awsome video

[@РостиславГрималюк]

Hi Jason. To reduce the amount of copper in a metal mixture, use the reaction between ammonium nitrate and copper (the reaction requires significant heat). Be careful not to use an open flame.

[@adityadermawan1214]

What tool you use in 19:04 ?

[@StirlingLighthouse]

It’s a handheld XRF gun. A cool piece of gear if you have 10-30K at your disposal. I think Jason uses a friends XRF gun to get the analysis.

[@adityadermawan1214]

@@StirlingLighthouse thanks man, appreciate it

[@offgrid-j5c]

I have been recovering precious metal from e-waste. I use the standard chemicals to release gold coatings and to dissolve gold and precipitate gold. I haven't recovered any other precious metal yet, but soon. Very small scale as a hobby.

[@ayushtenguria2619]

Hi, I really enjoyed your video! I'm currently learning about e-waste management, including techniques for extracting precious metals and other valuable materials. I’m keen to connect with like-minded individuals or professionals already working in this field. Looking forward to exchanging ideas and insights!

[@NOBOX7]

you didnt scroll down on the rxf gun , i only seen 98.35 of the tally , you need to scroll down on the reading to see the other 1.65 % of metal . What was under Lead ?

[@9772783]

Hi Jason, been watching your vids for a while now, ive even bought myself a hammer mill so I can give this a crack!. Admittedly my setup is quite janky, hammer mill is for animal feed so putting circuit boards through it is putting it to the test, also cant afford your shaker tables so im using a gold sluice. very green to it all but im also working on this seperation problem! My latest crack is trying seperation by electrolysis. It reads on paper as being a relatively cheap way to go about it. Will have to give you an update if it works or not Either or, keep up the good work and keep getting more people into cleaning up our tiny little marble by recycling our scrap!

[@jamestrevarthen6609]

You for sure have probably the best equipment by far to process and refine electronic circuit boards in MASS quanity if you have access to the mass materials to refine on a consistant basis!

[@damic.489]

As a chemical engineer, I've been working on the purification process using nitric acid and spontaneous deposition of metals. There is a cheap and easy way to separate and purify each one of the metals. (I've tryed the process at a lab, not yet at a industrial scale). If you are interested, I could explain you with further detail.

[@buggsy5]

I would expect the quantitative analysis process, or a variation, would selectively precipitate individual metal compounds. However, you would then have to purify the metals. I expect there would be huge amounts of waste that would need costly treatment.

[@camsshaft]

Love it! You continue to bring great content that's informative & clear while raising the same questions I have. 👍 keep up the great work!!

[@RichardTrocino]

Jason, I've looked at a lot of different approaches. I like yours the best.

[@Tim-Kaa]

You can do this: Mill stuff with ball mill into a powder Dump all powder into a huge vat that has a drain with a valve, add water Add solid bleach powder (pool supplies) as a source of chlorine (this is cheaper than HCL acid, then mix, then add nitric acid (technical grade) Mix the slurry then cover with something Chlorine will be formed with acid reaction and it will also form aqua regia Aqua regia will leach silver, gold and copper Wait 20-30 minutes, then drain liquid Filter liquid, then add sulfaminic acid to destroy nitric acid Then add ferrous sulfate to drop out all metals Congratulations, you have copper, silver, gold + platinum group in a cup Take all results from above, add Nitric acid + water, heat to boil, that will leach out silver and platinum group out, filter sediment out and wash in boiling water a few times, the dissolved silver / copper / platinum group will be in the filtered liquid. To extract silver, drop in vat a few copper pipes, copper will dissolve cuz it's more chemically electroactive and silver will precipitate Then take precipitated silver and run through the electric cell (see screetips vids how to set up for like 5$) Alternatively you can precipitate silver (but also platinum which I don't like) using hydrozine hydrochloride N2H5Cl. I don't recommend this method cuz it's very toxic Then you can drop out from copper silver platinum solution platinum group but it's pointless and dangerous cuz platinum group salts will kill you if you work with them without proper protection The washed out sediment that contains gold you dissolve again in boiling aqua regia, then extinguish nitric acid with sulfaminic acid. Sulfaminic acid is not mandatory but it helps to reduce amount of SMB - (sodium metabisulfide) used in the next step. Once nitric acid is extinguisherd, add SMB to precipitate gold. Take gold powder and boil in nitric acid to leach out leftover crap. Then wash and melt precipitated powder. You now have 9999 gold. Please refer to steetips channel, he's the man you want to talk

[@Tim-Kaa]

Another method: Melt all collected metal into huge sheets/bars Stick them into an acid galvanic cell and transfer copper between the anode and the cathode. The gold and platinum will precipitate on the bottom as a sludge. You'll have pure copper/silver sheets which can be further reprocessed using acid method and sludge can be processed using aqua regia

[@ZAPATTUBE]

TOO EXPENSIVE

[@tonopahbarry]

Can you use centrifugal force to separate metals of different density, prior to the shaker table?

[@spacepebble]

Working at a big low grade gold mine that ran a huge semi-autogenous mill and heap leach pads. Watching these videos makes me wonder if these bigger outfits could be using these techniques to bring material into the process to kick up the head-grade a bit and reduce ewaste. How many metallurgist and mine engineers are watching and talking? Great video and thank you for the effort!

[@shawnsmith9512]

The best and most profitable way is to put it in the copper refining process. Mitsubishi materials has it down to perfection.

[@joeyanthony7831]

How does the sifter know how to categorize the metals?? Are they guided by magnets?

[@SirensC3]

Streetips colab! Let’s go!

[@Rorschach1024]

Jason, I'm curious how much this equipment setup costs to get to the concentrated metals.

[@brianmcwilliams3822]

Jason i have had very good results with this. would work great on number two concentrates if you keep the material in motion it will dissolve all the gold then take your liquid and decant it down 95 percent. soak uop the rest with a paper towell allow to dry add 1/4 of that weight with lead and smelt then cupel. dont breath any of the processes

[@mikekeller920]

Sorry Jason did not read all comments, what about all the dust at the hammer mill discharge. Any gold or silver dust being lost ?

[@myleshildebrand81]

Hello Jason. I'm wondering if you ever got the large bar analyzed?

[@johnnyfleck8277]

Do you ever consider there's any loss from when it comes out the shredder and off the belt from the free dust flowing in the wind of fine partials ?

[@josephcichowski5135]

what if you use a spin caster like a centrifuge do you think the would separate????

[@Rebelz_vault]

Wow, I actually really like that method. I agree with you that there's a massive amount that most people wouldn't rather not bother. I only read a couple comments, but I didn't really agree with the Alan Evans guy I would actually like to be a part of helping in anyway that I can sure I'll buy some but if there's anything else I can do, let me know I live in California and I've recently become kind of obsessed with scrapping PCs, and all electronics for that matter. It seems I have kind of a good supply available to me consistently. I see this as a way of making a boatload of money if the process can be sorted out.

[@DJhunta]

Stuff I never thought about until this popped up on my feed. I am truly fascinated by this video. I new gold was used a lot . Had no idea how many metals went into this process.

[@tonopahbarry]

I seem to recall watching a refining process in which, copper, I believe was removed from the ore in a floatation process where the copper was on top in a foamy state. I think it was a Kennecot process.

[@J-Justice666]

You might be able to use magnetism to pull your ferrous metal out of the molten liquid. That's probably the simplest filter for iron and steel. Different metals have different specific gravities and melting points. They also solidify at different temperatures. You might try experimenting with different temperatures so that you only melt / slidify a specific metal in order to remove it / isolate it. Gradually "crack" the metals by temperature changes. Kind of like the way oil refineries "cack" petroleum into different products using cracking towers. Looks cool. Good luck.

[@stormagorist6129]

Thanks for trying this.. Glad to see it.. I can't help but I can really appreciate the effort and wish you success

[@frasercrone3838]

I was wondering if you put a finer mesh in the shaker table hammer mill if that would help the shaker table separate all the elements better?

[@brankoval4686]

If I had 2 trashcans of circuit boards of all kinds do you think it would be worth doing this myself or just sell the boards as is

[@derekcarter8492]

Quick question, at the end of everything when you got the pyramids, what happen to the gold?

[@paulsouth4794]

Hi jason , great content . Have you tried to seperate using specific gravity and /as well as viscosity. Possibly with an ultra sonic bath including some sort of flow through arangement like a shaker table . Or using more viscous liquid over your shaker table ? . Messing with acids are very bad for your health . Another thought is to use spacific melting points .

[@recuptou6433]

Tu as parfaitement raison il y plus d or dans ces déchets électroniques que dans dans certaines mines . J adore tes vidéos et j apprend beaucoup de chose grâce à toi .

[@james.j1066]

Awesome content ❤ See what streetips does with electro in a gold cell Also nitric will desolve tin and silver and copper . Then cement out on copper pipe the tin and iron and most base metal is cemented into powder in the solution gold will stay in the solution .

[@james.j1066]

The gold can be dropped from the solution later. Filtration is time consuming And DANGEROUS fumes and solutions are produced in these processes

[@buggsy5]

Iron will not cement out on copper, it is the other way around. The precipitation process for silver jar solutions is to cement the silver out with copper (after all the excess nitric acid is used up), the precipitate the copper out of solution with iron.

[@audacyspectrum3612]

Some of those boards and components are actually worth more value at resale to collectors than the amount of minerals you gain! I should know, I collect them :)

[@DustinDeez-z1j]

What exactly do you collect, what are you looking for?

[@lucdaigle2394]

It must be hugely satisfying to see you equipment at work in distant parts of the world. I highly recommend you do a video at a large professional refinery that takes the recycled metal thru to purified and separated metals. I'm in the market for a small shaker table and hammer mill, my attention is tweaked by your videos and system layouts, great for small scale projects.

[@nevilleburley8760]

Just a second thought, I wonder if getting your shot pieces and running them through a silver cell would help or alternatively put the powdered copper etc into an AP solution as this will take away the copper then dry the non copper at the bottom of the AP container and run through the crucible the rest then use the silver cell to get the silver from the shot and use some stainless steel in your AP solution to cement out pure copper. I haven't built a gold cell but I believe you can construct one of those too which may also increase your recovery.

[@ackeragard3128]

I have no idea,,, but what happens if you drip the melt thru your water-hammermill and in to the vibration-table .. Can it be separated in the "mill-speed" to super-small particles which are in the different metalls or dass it go to strait to 😬 (With slow pouring should it not be worse then pour in the water bucket if its enough water-flow to cool )

[@DodRyan]

If any are still available I would love to try one of them... I am currently doing the same but I have the boards set aside while I am doing the gold plated contacts....smelting seems to be by far the easiest, fastest and cheapest way to recovery so far... intrested in ur videos from this one in the future

[@ronsimpson143]

Can you sift it and classify by size? Then you could use a centrifuge to separate by density.

[@TheSummersProject]

what does the smallest complete PCB processor cost?

[@TheSummersProject]

Is there an email i can send my question to?

[@gizmo8076]

Oh Jason Jason Jason... it would be so awesome seeing you doing a collaboration with Sreetips and this product. I dream...

[@RangieNZ]

I wish the XRF would sort the output by decending-percentage - I don't understand why it doesn't?

[@RichardTrocino]

If the concentrate is of uniform granularity, you can separate by density dry. Before they ship to you, Jason, The boards are stripped of high value components such as CPUs that can be sold off and to be reused rather ran recycled. That's why some of the components come separate from the circuit boards. But I don't believe it's necessary to separate components from the circuit boards any further. It seems like if the material came pre-shreaded in a uniform mash it would save you a step.