You Sir are the Bob Ross of precious metals refining. I will never try the hobby, but I love watching a masterpiece's creation process. Great video, Thanks for sharing!
Well.. called that on the fine gold suspended in solution on the last video. 😅 If you’re precipitating gold from a very dirty solution, you really should use a fine filter to grab all of the precipitated gold, rinse it well and head right back to AR for a second refine. That gold will settle out of solution for days/weeks. Second thing, the reason why you don’t want to leave the fiberboard in for AR isn’t so much that it’s porous (it is) but that many boards have a copper layer sandwiched between the layers and chances are the acid won’t get all of it. What happens then is that the gold can cement out of solution onto that copper. Based on the color of the AR, there was plenty of base metal still in the fiberboard. Happy to see you using ferrous sulfate! I got into refining and learned how thanks to you and your videos, just melted up a 50 gram button from fingers and none of it would have been possible had I not stubbled across your channel a few years ago. Thank you for sharing!
Now thats what i love most when whole batch is tackled..... Past video portions were small so whatever dissatisfaction i had is turned into full satisfaction from this full batch video.... Loved it
What ever you do dont throw away those board pieces! Grind them up in a coffee grinder after they dry and run another couple hot hydrochloric rinses and press the liquid out under high pressure and you’ll find that there is indeed gold that was trapped in the boards
I’ve tried adding aquaregia strait to the foils with boards after the nitric bath and found that indeed there was quite a bit of gold bearing ions that got absorbed into the wafer bards. Although it’s a pain in the ass, it is worth separating the board pieces before you hit it with the aquaregia for optimal outcome
Something that might be of interest to you. You can take a 3 gallon bucket and drill small holes all over the bottom and about 4-6” up the side to make a sieve. Put all your boards in this bucket. Then fill a 5 gallon bucket deep enough to cover the sieve holes in the 3 gallon bucket. Then repeatedly dunk and swish the 3 gallon bucket in the 5 gallon outer bucket. The gold foils will pass through the sieve holes and collect in the outer bucket. You might have to drain and filter the outer bucket a couple of times to collect the foils, but you can use the same water over and over. Don’t make the sieve holes too big or the foils will be able to pass back in as easily as they passed out. 😊
I've done this several years ago. It works great doing large batches of fingers. I purchased two Halloween trick or treat buckets from Walmart, drilled hundreds of 1/8" holes in one bucket. and went to town on it. Only used it about 5 times though, as large batches of fingers are hard to find these days, I normally just rinse out as many fingers as I can from the solution using Water and the dump the fingers into a shallow bowl filled with water and pick out the boards one at a time with tweezers and inspect them. Any sticking gold gets sprayed off and then tossed out. Pretty much guarantees no gold gets left behind.
You are my mentor. I'm still working on getting nitric acid, because I'm not a company, but after several years of being a faithful follower, I do feel confident that I should be somewhat successful when I start.
Just got a job at a bullion exchange. The owner gave me a jar of 80s military electronics connectors . The assay ton shows great results. I think it was 14k plate heavy 3x
Once you see a saturated solution like that, I’d recommend to decant, rinse, and put new water in and then add nitric. The acid has a harder and harder time working, thus slower reaction times and wasted costly nitric. Think of it like a big parking lot that’s empty at first with clean solution. The cars can all find parking spots easily as the majority are empty. As the solution gets full of base metals( parking spots filling up), less and less parking spots are available and the cars need to use more fuel and takes longer to find empty parking spots, thus slowing down reaction and requiring more nitric.
The only thing that would make these videos better is not mixing the discussion of batches/processes in the same video. One video = one complete process, nothing more. Thanks for sharing.
Senior: that blemish on the top looks almost like one of those mint mark/classification stamps you see on gold bullion. As always, you've put together an amazing presentation from start to finish!
Also not sure if you’ve ever considered it for a video idea and or money saver; 1: take all your nitric solutions from the waste bins after all pms are recovered and filter. 2: allow the filtrate to evaporate and condense into crystals. 3: take a batch of the copper nitrate crystals and put them into a round bottom flask connected to a condenser and with an addition apparatus, slowly heat and add sulphuric acid. 4: the condensate will be concentrated nitric acid to use on future projects to save costs on low yielding materials, as well as easily recovering the copper sulphate waste and converting to copper metal.
I enjoy the work you do in the lab, good video work as well. I worked 47 years in a lab testing water. Only mishap I remember, a small droplet of acid made it past my safety glasses and melted my contact lens. The eyewash was close and no eye damage. AU just another element to me. I have melted a lot of lead to help my fishing addiction.
Might be an idea after first separation and rinsing to pour the fingers into one if the ceramic dishes and remove those that are stripped already, then put everything else back into the beaker and give the solution more room to move, it''ll also reduce the weight a bit making it easier to handle. The main problem with recovery from circuit boards seems to be agitating them enough during the reaction as boiling doesn't seem to be as effective. You are a joy to watch though, I loved chemistry as a kid and this makes my inner scientist happy seeing these reactions.
A little less than midway through, i think the beaker of base-metal-dissolved could use some stirring, some physical agitation. In other finger-recovery videos I have seen, the last stubborn gold fingers needed at least a blast of dist water to come loose. I don't think a stirrer bar would work in there. Something like a lapidary tumbler, or something that would rotate the beaker at an inclined angle to tumble the boards. Except (hopefully) I don't think you'd need any added grit, just the boards rubbing on each other for an hour or two. I'm glad you did the straight-nitric dissolve first to isolate the gold. Good plan.
Glad I saw this video; Was debating on dissolving the whole 1 lb batch in Aqua first or doing the Bleach/Peroxide route. Now I'll use Nitric instead... thanks again Shipmate !!!
I haven't been on active duty since '06, my last tour on a sub was in '04, and when I heard the GQ (over the 1MC)... Well, you really got my attention with that alarm.
Try this again with burning them in big pot and then grinding them. Then nitric acid steps and then aqua regia. Might get higher yields that way. As always great work. Love your videos.
You can wash off most gold foil from fiber boadr cuts by rinsing them in a large pan of water through a coarse mesh sieve (about 5 to 10 mesh per inch). Then, for control washing of the fiber boards, you will need a solution of aqua regia of a much lower concentration. And the foils washed in the pan can be collected in the same filter for rinsing water.
Re: What's gonna be in the waste solutions? Copper? Yes, and comparatively speaking, LOTS of it, since the traces that get gold-plated are pure (or close enough) copper. Iron? Not impossible, but *highly* unlikely - Iron doesn't get used in any significant amount on circuit boards unless they include custom mounting hardware. The "cans" that some components are packaged, or transformer or ferrite cores would change that, but since you're working with cut-off edge connectors that have no components or mounting hardware, I doubt there's even enough iron to be detected, never mind measured, in your waste solutions (before you add the ferrous sulfate in the precipitation step, of course - Obviously, that's going to put iron into the "final waste"). Nickel? Even less likely than iron, and for the same reason - There's absolutely no useful reason to put nickel into the construction of a circuit board. About the only way it's going to be present is as an accidental contaminant. Tin? Yep, definitely gonna be some of that if there's even a speck of solder on the boards. Lead? Somewhere between "possibly" and "quite likely", depending on exactly how old the boards are and whether they're supposed to be meeting the relatively recent "lead free" standards. ("normal" solder typically = 37%/63% Sn/Pb, "Lead-free" solder = Sn/Ag/Cu, usually in unpublished, proprietary proportions that vary from source to source, with Sn/Cu nearly always being the largest part of the mix) Assuming you've got "certified lead free" boards (Newer than about 2006, if memory serves), there MAY actually be a trace amount of silver. Sorry to nitpick, but your repeated mention of iron and nickel in the waste solution(s) kicked my autism into high gear. From this refining, I'd expect you're going to have mainly copper, a reasonable chance of a small amount of tin, possibly some lead, an outside chance of a tiny amount of silver, and perhaps trace amounts of titanium. (WHAT??? TItanium? Yep - sourced from titanium dioxide - the usual pigment in any white screen-printing that might be present on the parts of the boards you're working with) (BTW - I use the same sound for my phone alarm - Wakes ya right up, don't it? :) )
My favorite part of these is Sreetips being 100% ready to show his mistakes. What if you used a baker’s cooling rack in a Pyrex casserole dish to spread out the fiberboard and let the gold flakes drop down. Maybe have some kid of vibration.
Those 10,000 ml beakers are almost 240.00 each. I think learning to blow borosilicate glass is more profitable Mr. and Mrs. Sreetips! Thanks for the video Sir
@@riverboat28 step 1) unmix your components. Hard to duplicate any given mix. If you process one type of component one way you can optimize that one method. Eliminate the variables you can
I would love to see Aquaregia strait to the foils with boards and see how it works out...for shts and giggles.. Happy 4th from your biggest fan to the North (our holiday was a few days ago) Cheers eh
Been enjoying the finger videos. Question, how about burning the fingers first? Some charcoal and an air source, should be able to melt all the metals, and get rid of the boards.
I use this stuff to treat leftover acid from Karat refining. Coat the surface with acid, and leave it exposed to Air. In about a week it all flakes off. It can be rinsed with acid in between. It is better to coat the surface with acid, and let Air get to it, than to leave it submerged in acid.
I'd like to see some consumer electronic scrap run through a ball mill until it's all a fine powder and then add hno3 until all base metals are dissolved then let that percolate out via iron. You can try to get gold from the scrap if you think it's worth it. Im mainly considering the copper from within multi layer boards and inside ics
SMB could drop other metals, if present, and contaminate the gold. Ferrous sulfate precipitates all the gold and nothing but the gold. Ferrous sulfate is used when there are other metals in solution with the gold.
You'd get a nasty mass of glass fibers, a huge cloud of nasty black smoke, and a god-awful-hideous stench - Circuit boards since about the mid 70s are almost all a combination of fiberglass and phenolic resin. Incinerating them would be hideously nasty, and without a *MAJORLY HOT* fire, with LOTS of forced air or oxygen injection, the resulting smoke cloud would likely have the whole neighborhood calling the fire department.
Great video as always. I use the Karter beakers at home here, but where do you buy those cool convex/concave? beaker cover glasses? I bought a set from Amazon but the heat of just boiling water shattered them. Thx!
Do u think maybe the reason some gold fell out of solution during filtering because of the production of some ferrous sulphate from iron contamination and sulphuric acid maybe ?
Hello Professor, I thank you very much for all the valuable information you provide. I am one of your followers. I ask you to provide a detailed explanation of reffining the metal iridium. think you sir.
@@sreetips ROTFL!!! How fitting that SWMBO gets that tone! On mine, It's the ringtone/text message sound for my boss, and the "Hey, stupid! Something important needs doing!" timers/alarms on mine. :)
@@sreetips Similar - For me "The boss" I spoke of is 85 years old, has been through multiple heart surgeries, and is *NEARLY* frail enough to qualify as a full-blown invalid.
Yes that's probably what's going on. Boiling down the solution to expel any last nitrate ions may force the solution to become fully saturated or slightly supersaturated when boiling depending on all sorts of variables, not limited to concentration, pressure and temperature. When the solution cools the change in enthalpy of the system may force some atomic Au to crash out, which in turn encourages the formation of microscopic crystals. That's the theory of thermodynamics anyway, but in practise it could be something else, but it''s a very good guess.
@@AndyGraceMedia oh nice! glad you think the same. I wasn't sure how all that worked, I just figured a solution can only hold so much solute, and it can hold a lot more when hot. So if you start cooling it down if it's at/near that max occupancy, it's gotta go somewhere right? :-P
@@sreetips Yeah did some rough calculations and looked up the molar concentration of gold chloride per mL of acid but it all hurt my brain too much. Think it's an order of magnitude too dilute.
that plastic stand for the nitric is sketchy af, i'd be nervous using that, a triangular gusset at the front to support the weight would make me a lot less nervous
Have you ever tried grinding the boards up in a high powered blender first to see if that aids in dissolving the base metals and enhances separation of the gold?
Cut open a Cereal box and make yourself a big funnel ( duct tape to size) easy pour into big container. Leave the hole on the bottom big enough so they don't pile up and tip over 😮
You should try making video making other precious metals. Maybe Iridium, Palladium and platinum, but there's more of them in lists. These metals end up in your filters and some waste solutions. Maybe a good investment into knowing how to extract them.
I have several platinum and palladium videos on my channel. But they are far too dangerous to work with because they require special safety equipment. Refining platinum, at my level (the hobby level) is not something that a hobby refiner should try to do in the garage. Now, having said that, I do have a little platinum group metals that I need to process before I get too old.
Hiya professor Tips hope you and yours are well and another great film boss but I notice or didn't see you use sulfuric acid for lead removal is that because of the sulphate? And how you get on with the heat blocks for electric furnace I'm totally hooked on theses films very very good keep it up please
So with a conservative estimate of 1.5g per pound if you processed 1 ton of material then you would clear approx 3,000 grams of pure gold x $76 per gram is $228K. I assume about $500 in electrical costs, approx $5K in materials/gas/waste processing for a clear gross profit of about $220K. Is that math right? Do you find the chemical processing or electolysis plating to be more of a viable process?
Have you thought of removing the fibreglass circuit board by using an alkali solution, then correcting the pH and then dissolving the gold from the other metals? It may increase you yield.
In the batch were you used pure aqua regia on everything, couldn't you possibly start the recovery method the same way you treat your waste but in a smaller scale? Like use copper to precipitate out the silver, then iron for the copper, then try for the gold (If I'm remembering those steps correctly)? If it's all the extra ions interfering with the precipitation then couldn't you remove them first before going after the gold? Obviously the method in this video is the better one but just to make sure you have all the gold out of the other solution. You could run a small experiment to see if this theory is correct by redissolving the gold in that smaller beaker then try removing the other base metals then use SMB and see if the gold comes out much easier. If you already know the answer tho I would love to know myself because if it's not too bad this method could be a very slow but a automatic process and for future refining's could be used to make sure you have all the gold if you think there is too many ions interfering. I know you basically already do this with the waste treatment stockpots lol but would be neat to see if it would work in a smaller scale if you didn't wanna wait till it came time to recover from the stockpot and would only be worth it if you knew there was a good bit of gold still in solution for these special cases such as this.
@@sreetips Would all the gold cement out? Because if so then you could remove the gold and silver powder mix and then it would function like if you mixed silver and gold and use acid to melt only the sliver powder. If not all the gold then maybe enough ions will be removed for the remaining gold to be taken out with SMB? Edit: Sorry ment silver not copper lol, If putting copper in it will cement out the silver and gold then that makes it so much easier.
What a waste of time and expense to "extract" a tiny amount of gold. Actual time, cost of chemicals, cost of equipment, cost of electricity, The cost far outweighs the benefits.
You Sir are the Bob Ross of precious metals refining.
I will never try the hobby, but I love watching a masterpiece's creation process.
Great video,
Thanks for sharing!
Thank you!
Likewise!
I have the unsettling premonition I would likely reduce myself to a skeleton on my first refining attempt ! 😬😅
What Jim said. If I tried it, something would definitely explode. Doesn't matter if there's nothing that *should* react, it *would* react.
Well.. called that on the fine gold suspended in solution on the last video. 😅 If you’re precipitating gold from a very dirty solution, you really should use a fine filter to grab all of the precipitated gold, rinse it well and head right back to AR for a second refine. That gold will settle out of solution for days/weeks.
Second thing, the reason why you don’t want to leave the fiberboard in for AR isn’t so much that it’s porous (it is) but that many boards have a copper layer sandwiched between the layers and chances are the acid won’t get all of it. What happens then is that the gold can cement out of solution onto that copper. Based on the color of the AR, there was plenty of base metal still in the fiberboard.
Happy to see you using ferrous sulfate! I got into refining and learned how thanks to you and your videos, just melted up a 50 gram button from fingers and none of it would have been possible had I not stubbled across your channel a few years ago. Thank you for sharing!
Happy Fourth of July to you and your family! Thank you for helping our country remain free.
Now thats what i love most when whole batch is tackled..... Past video portions were small so whatever dissatisfaction i had is turned into full satisfaction from this full batch video.... Loved it
I enjoyed this. I could tell this was 999 when the melted button solidified with no oxides forming on the finish. Well done sir!
This button looks exceptional.
What ever you do dont throw away those board pieces! Grind them up in a coffee grinder after they dry and run another couple hot hydrochloric rinses and press the liquid out under high pressure and you’ll find that there is indeed gold that was trapped in the boards
Wow!
The gold trapped in circuit boards is huge. People don't know that on certain boards the whole circuit board is with gold connectors, even tiny.
Many boards are multi layered but the metal in them is only copper..... gold was used on exterior connections for corrosion resistance
I’ve tried adding aquaregia strait to the foils with boards after the nitric bath and found that indeed there was quite a bit of gold bearing ions that got absorbed into the wafer bards. Although it’s a pain in the ass, it is worth separating the board pieces before you hit it with the aquaregia for optimal outcome
I’ll try that with the next batch.
@@sreetips good talking with you again Kevin
Something that might be of interest to you. You can take a 3 gallon bucket and drill small holes all over the bottom and about 4-6” up the side to make a sieve. Put all your boards in this bucket. Then fill a 5 gallon bucket deep enough to cover the sieve holes in the 3 gallon bucket. Then repeatedly dunk and swish the 3 gallon bucket in the 5 gallon outer bucket. The gold foils will pass through the sieve holes and collect in the outer bucket. You might have to drain and filter the outer bucket a couple of times to collect the foils, but you can use the same water over and over. Don’t make the sieve holes too big or the foils will be able to pass back in as easily as they passed out. 😊
I've done this several years ago. It works great doing large batches of fingers. I purchased two Halloween trick or treat buckets from Walmart, drilled hundreds of 1/8" holes in one bucket. and went to town on it. Only used it about 5 times though, as large batches of fingers are hard to find these days, I normally just rinse out as many fingers as I can from the solution using Water and the dump the fingers into a shallow bowl filled with water and pick out the boards one at a time with tweezers and inspect them. Any sticking gold gets sprayed off and then tossed out. Pretty much guarantees no gold gets left behind.
That’s time consuming but effective. I may resort to pick and squirt for my next video. I’ve done that before.
You are my mentor. I'm still working on getting nitric acid, because I'm not a company, but after several years of being a faithful follower, I do feel confident that I should be somewhat successful when I start.
Thank you. MR. Sreetips.
We wish you and the MRS. A belated happy
and careful independence day & holiday weekend.
Thank you!
Just got a job at a bullion exchange. The owner gave me a jar of 80s military electronics connectors . The assay ton shows great results. I think it was 14k plate heavy 3x
I bought ten pounds of military grade gold plated connectors. I was able to recover 22 grams of pure gold from them.
Love that little indentation (beauty mark) that formed as it froze. Gives it a little extra numismatic value on top of the troy weight
You are welcome. A great production with a stunning result from the refine. Real fine! Thank you Sir!👍👍🤟
Once you see a saturated solution like that, I’d recommend to decant, rinse, and put new water in and then add nitric. The acid has a harder and harder time working, thus slower reaction times and wasted costly nitric.
Think of it like a big parking lot that’s empty at first with clean solution. The cars can all find parking spots easily as the majority are empty.
As the solution gets full of base metals( parking spots filling up), less and less parking spots are available and the cars need to use more fuel and takes longer to find empty parking spots, thus slowing down reaction and requiring more nitric.
The only thing that would make these videos better is not mixing the discussion of batches/processes in the same video. One video = one complete process, nothing more. Thanks for sharing.
Oh hell yeah, Friday night Prime Time viewing. A little Heaven Hill Bottled in Bond and some Aqua Regia and I'm good.
I dont know why i read this comment in the Stoned Cold Steve Austin voice!😂😂
It's always extra special when you're delighted with your result!😁
Senior: that blemish on the top looks almost like one of those mint mark/classification stamps you see on gold bullion. As always, you've put together an amazing presentation from start to finish!
Also not sure if you’ve ever considered it for a video idea and or money saver;
1: take all your nitric solutions from the waste bins after all pms are recovered and filter.
2: allow the filtrate to evaporate and condense into crystals.
3: take a batch of the copper nitrate crystals and put them into a round bottom flask connected to a condenser and with an addition apparatus, slowly heat and add sulphuric acid.
4: the condensate will be concentrated nitric acid to use on future projects to save costs on low yielding materials, as well as easily recovering the copper sulphate waste and converting to copper metal.
There's only one Sreetips! Good job.
Wonderful video! ❤ the way you answer incorrect hypothesis. We use muriatic for etching. Looking forward to your next video.
Also wanted to tell you I'm a huge fan and admire the work you do.
Thank you
I enjoy the work you do in the lab, good video work as well. I worked 47 years in a lab testing water. Only mishap I remember, a small droplet of acid made it past my safety glasses and melted my contact lens. The eyewash was close and no eye damage. AU just another element to me. I have melted a lot of lead to help my fishing addiction.
Teach a man to fish, feed him for life
@@sreetips Teach a boy to fish, he will cast over your line! lol
Good one
I am always absolutely mesmerised and fascinated by your videos
Thank you!
Might be an idea after first separation and rinsing to pour the fingers into one if the ceramic dishes and remove those that are stripped already, then put everything else back into the beaker and give the solution more room to move, it''ll also reduce the weight a bit making it easier to handle. The main problem with recovery from circuit boards seems to be agitating them enough during the reaction as boiling doesn't seem to be as effective.
You are a joy to watch though, I loved chemistry as a kid and this makes my inner scientist happy seeing these reactions.
Thank you so much. I appreciate your reply. You saved me from making a big mistake and buying more
Excellent
0:10 It looks interesting. I enjoyed this video. Very nice and skilled fisherman. I caught some fish♥️
GREAT! I missed half of this after General Quarters was sounded. Spent the rest of the time at my duty station. :( *Brought back old memories.)
That’s my wife’s ring tone on my cell phone!
@@sreetips 😄
Awesome video ab beautiful gold button thanks for sharing sreetips
A little less than midway through, i think the beaker of base-metal-dissolved could use some stirring, some physical agitation. In other finger-recovery videos I have seen, the last stubborn gold fingers needed at least a blast of dist water to come loose. I don't think a stirrer bar would work in there. Something like a lapidary tumbler, or something that would rotate the beaker at an inclined angle to tumble the boards. Except (hopefully) I don't think you'd need any added grit, just the boards rubbing on each other for an hour or two. I'm glad you did the straight-nitric dissolve first to isolate the gold. Good plan.
Glad I saw this video; Was debating on dissolving the whole 1 lb batch in Aqua first or doing the Bleach/Peroxide route. Now I'll use Nitric instead... thanks again Shipmate !!!
Loving all the new big beakers and flasks. Maybe they are not new and im just now noticing them either way its an upgrade! Thank you
"Let me see your gold shine" - Project Pat
🤣🤣
I haven't been on active duty since '06, my last tour on a sub was in '04, and when I heard the GQ (over the 1MC)... Well, you really got my attention with that alarm.
It’s the same surface ships.
Try this again with burning them in big pot and then grinding them. Then nitric acid steps and then aqua regia. Might get higher yields that way. As always great work. Love your videos.
Grind each piece? I’d rather let the chemicals do all that work for me.
I came here for "specially prepared filter paper"
Same here. I really despise regularly prepared filter papers.
Much better when you do the nitric boils first thank you for sharing this wonderful video with us six stars sir
Sreetips right when you said " rinse water " I blurted out " rinse acid " at the same time you corrected yourself! 🤣
Been watching for a while. Always would have liked for you to do purity tests.
The Shine on That Button ✨️ 😍 🙌
This one is exceptional.
You can wash off most gold foil from fiber boadr cuts by rinsing them in a large pan of water through a coarse mesh sieve (about 5 to 10 mesh per inch). Then, for control washing of the fiber boards, you will need a solution of aqua regia of a much lower concentration. And the foils washed in the pan can be collected in the same filter for rinsing water.
Love this video, I keep coming back to watch it.
I want to drink this forbidden Orange Juice so bad
Re: What's gonna be in the waste solutions? Copper? Yes, and comparatively speaking, LOTS of it, since the traces that get gold-plated are pure (or close enough) copper. Iron? Not impossible, but *highly* unlikely - Iron doesn't get used in any significant amount on circuit boards unless they include custom mounting hardware. The "cans" that some components are packaged, or transformer or ferrite cores would change that, but since you're working with cut-off edge connectors that have no components or mounting hardware, I doubt there's even enough iron to be detected, never mind measured, in your waste solutions (before you add the ferrous sulfate in the precipitation step, of course - Obviously, that's going to put iron into the "final waste"). Nickel? Even less likely than iron, and for the same reason - There's absolutely no useful reason to put nickel into the construction of a circuit board. About the only way it's going to be present is as an accidental contaminant. Tin? Yep, definitely gonna be some of that if there's even a speck of solder on the boards. Lead? Somewhere between "possibly" and "quite likely", depending on exactly how old the boards are and whether they're supposed to be meeting the relatively recent "lead free" standards. ("normal" solder typically = 37%/63% Sn/Pb, "Lead-free" solder = Sn/Ag/Cu, usually in unpublished, proprietary proportions that vary from source to source, with Sn/Cu nearly always being the largest part of the mix) Assuming you've got "certified lead free" boards (Newer than about 2006, if memory serves), there MAY actually be a trace amount of silver.
Sorry to nitpick, but your repeated mention of iron and nickel in the waste solution(s) kicked my autism into high gear. From this refining, I'd expect you're going to have mainly copper, a reasonable chance of a small amount of tin, possibly some lead, an outside chance of a tiny amount of silver, and perhaps trace amounts of titanium. (WHAT??? TItanium? Yep - sourced from titanium dioxide - the usual pigment in any white screen-printing that might be present on the parts of the boards you're working with)
(BTW - I use the same sound for my phone alarm - Wakes ya right up, don't it? :) )
I will test the solution to see what’s in it. Copper in solution is blue. Iron in solution is yellow. Blue and yellow make green.
My favorite part of these is Sreetips being 100% ready to show his mistakes.
What if you used a baker’s cooling rack in a Pyrex casserole dish to spread out the fiberboard and let the gold flakes drop down. Maybe have some kid of vibration.
Those 10,000 ml beakers are almost 240.00 each. I think learning to blow borosilicate glass is more profitable Mr. and Mrs. Sreetips! Thanks for the video Sir
Wish you'd do a mixed component recovery
Look at estate sales and auctions.
@@riverboat28 step 1) unmix your components. Hard to duplicate any given mix. If you process one type of component one way you can optimize that one method. Eliminate the variables you can
working hard man. Take care your health. Keep protection your hard job.
Minute details such as dissolving and removal of the base metals before dissolving and b removing the base metals first make quite the difference.
I know I have said it before, but I friggin love your channel. Maybe I should’ve been a chemist instead of an electrician.😂🧐❤
I love this work. I can work alone, and the metals don’t talk back.
@@sreetips lol!!!! You got a good point there
the analog clock in the timelapse is a nice touch
Thank you
Love your videos they're always so satisfying !
31:30 condition zebra will be set in minutes. General quarters routing is up and forward stbord and down and aft to port.
You got it. That’s my wife’s ring tone.
Happy 4th sreetips
You Kicked the can Kev yeah I like those prices too
Strangely captivating, these videos. :) Excellent work. And thank you for educating me. :)
Glad you enjoyed it!
Maestro assoluto della raffinazione. Il più preciso e bravo su scala globale. Un saluto dall'Italia, maestro.
Thank you Italia!
I would love to see Aquaregia strait to the foils with boards and see how it works out...for shts and giggles..
Happy 4th from your biggest fan to the North (our holiday was a few days ago)
Cheers eh
Nevermind, I kind of jumped the gun on that comment...Next time I'll wait till the video is done until I comment lol
Made about 150 bucks on this one. Mostly academic. Less if you count the cost of electric, gas, and chemicals. Good video.
I'd be curious to see a follow up video on the filter gold and how much it weighs, something tells me you might be curious too!
I am
Been enjoying the finger videos. Question, how about burning the fingers first? Some charcoal and an air source, should be able to melt all the metals, and get rid of the boards.
The fiber board doesn’t burn well
I use this stuff to treat leftover acid from Karat refining. Coat the surface with acid, and leave it exposed to Air. In about a week it all flakes off. It can be rinsed with acid in between. It is better to coat the surface with acid, and let Air get to it, than to leave it submerged in acid.
Nice
I've seen videos of almost 90% recovery using graphene sreetips. Time to learn more.
I'd like to see some consumer electronic scrap run through a ball mill until it's all a fine powder and then add hno3 until all base metals are dissolved then let that percolate out via iron. You can try to get gold from the scrap if you think it's worth it. Im mainly considering the copper from within multi layer boards and inside ics
watching this was fun until the 6 mim mark. Then the lights went out. now over an hour later, I can finish and blow out the candles.
you are my Teacher I learned from you alot thank you so much ❤❤❤
Awesome happy Independence day 😊
The one PITA about all this is washing all the dishes.😂
For that, I wish I had an assistant.
62 👍's up sreetips thank you for sharing 🤗
crazy idea but when you boil the nitric from the gold solution I think you can distill it out by capturing the vapours and condense them
I think you’re right.
Very nice work sreetips 👍
@25:15 - why did you use Ferrous Sulfate instead of Sodium Metabisulfite? I’ve watched quite a few of your vids and never saw you use FeSO4.
Same here, I was scrolling through the comments to see if anyone said anything about it. I’ve always used sodium metabisulfite
SMB could drop other metals, if present, and contaminate the gold. Ferrous sulfate precipitates all the gold and nothing but the gold. Ferrous sulfate is used when there are other metals in solution with the gold.
What if you incinerate the scrap, separate the ash, nitric the base metals and then aguaregia the gold
You'd get a nasty mass of glass fibers, a huge cloud of nasty black smoke, and a god-awful-hideous stench - Circuit boards since about the mid 70s are almost all a combination of fiberglass and phenolic resin. Incinerating them would be hideously nasty, and without a *MAJORLY HOT* fire, with LOTS of forced air or oxygen injection, the resulting smoke cloud would likely have the whole neighborhood calling the fire department.
The fiberboard doesn’t burn down to ash very well
@@sreetips Will it burn off at molten metal temperatures?
Anything will burn with enough acetylene. B) @@Mrhalligan39
When your trying to release the little pieces from the boards wouldnt it go way faster if you stirred it while boiling?
I much prefer a good "taps taps lights out" over the ol' GQ alarm 😄
I think gold corner bgas have more gold then gold fingers
Great video as always. I use the Karter beakers at home here, but where do you buy those cool convex/concave? beaker cover glasses? I bought a set from Amazon but the heat of just boiling water shattered them. Thx!
Those are oil warmers. Got them at the thrift store.
@@sreetips Ah, thank you!
I would use sulphuric acid and some nitrate salt. Save that expensive nitric till later in the refine. But you do what you like.
Gooooood evening from central Florida! Hope everyone has a great night!
Goooood evening!
Do u think maybe the reason some gold fell out of solution during filtering because of the production of some ferrous sulphate from iron contamination and sulphuric acid maybe ?
Who knows? Possibly.
Hello Professor, I thank you very much for all the valuable information you provide. I am one of your followers. I ask you to provide a detailed explanation of reffining the metal iridium. think you sir.
I do not have any experience with iridium.
@@sreetips okey sir، Thank you very much for your response.
Good work team!
I wonder how many guys had flashbacks at the General Quarters alarm.
That’s my wife’s rig tone on my phone
@@sreetips ROTFL!!! How fitting that SWMBO gets that tone! On mine, It's the ringtone/text message sound for my boss, and the "Hey, stupid! Something important needs doing!" timers/alarms on mine. :)
I put her ring tone as red alert because I fear that she will need me if she’s in trouble.
@@sreetips Similar - For me "The boss" I spoke of is 85 years old, has been through multiple heart surgeries, and is *NEARLY* frail enough to qualify as a full-blown invalid.
Could the saturation cause the gold to come out while cooling down the acid?
Yes that's probably what's going on. Boiling down the solution to expel any last nitrate ions may force the solution to become fully saturated or slightly supersaturated when boiling depending on all sorts of variables, not limited to concentration, pressure and temperature. When the solution cools the change in enthalpy of the system may force some atomic Au to crash out, which in turn encourages the formation of microscopic crystals. That's the theory of thermodynamics anyway, but in practise it could be something else, but it''s a very good guess.
@@AndyGraceMedia oh nice! glad you think the same. I wasn't sure how all that worked, I just figured a solution can only hold so much solute, and it can hold a lot more when hot. So if you start cooling it down if it's at/near that max occupancy, it's gotta go somewhere right? :-P
I don’t think there’s enough gold in solution for that to happen.
@@sreetips oh yeah, that's true! There really wasn't that much gold in solution.
@@sreetips Yeah did some rough calculations and looked up the molar concentration of gold chloride per mL of acid but it all hurt my brain too much. Think it's an order of magnitude too dilute.
that plastic stand for the nitric is sketchy af, i'd be nervous using that, a triangular gusset at the front to support the weight would make me a lot less nervous
Have you ever tried grinding the boards up in a high powered blender first to see if that aids in dissolving the base metals and enhances separation of the gold?
No
Cut open a Cereal box and make yourself a big funnel ( duct tape to size) easy pour into big container. Leave the hole on the bottom big enough so they don't pile up and tip over 😮
Use once, throw it away. Good idea.
You should try making video making other precious metals. Maybe Iridium, Palladium and platinum, but there's more of them in lists. These metals end up in your filters and some waste solutions. Maybe a good investment into knowing how to extract them.
I have several platinum and palladium videos on my channel. But they are far too dangerous to work with because they require special safety equipment. Refining platinum, at my level (the hobby level) is not something that a hobby refiner should try to do in the garage. Now, having said that, I do have a little platinum group metals that I need to process before I get too old.
All of that work and materials for a tiny bit of gold.
Getting pure gold, from any source, is never quick and easy.
Wondering if it would be better to screen out and remove the pc boards just after most of the foils fall off?
Probably
Beautiful lil button
Your videos are awesome. What made you get into refining? And does it take a while to aquire the scrap gold or can it be found pretty consistently?
I had an intense desire to learn how to refine the scrap gold. We buy karat gold at local sales.
Hiya professor Tips hope you and yours are well and another great film boss but I notice or didn't see you use sulfuric acid for lead removal is that because of the sulphate? And how you get on with the heat blocks for electric furnace I'm totally hooked on theses films very very good keep it up please
I added some sulfuric for the second refining.
What a beautiful button. Would have there been close to 3 grams in that filter paper?
👍🏻
Some of it is in the filter, but I don’t think 3 grams.
So with a conservative estimate of 1.5g per pound if you processed 1 ton of material then you would clear approx 3,000 grams of pure gold x $76 per gram is $228K. I assume about $500 in electrical costs, approx $5K in materials/gas/waste processing for a clear gross profit of about $220K. Is that math right? Do you find the chemical processing or electolysis plating to be more of a viable process?
Sounds about right. I’m a wet chemical refiner.
Have you thought of removing the fibreglass circuit board by using an alkali solution, then correcting the pH and then dissolving the gold from the other metals? It may increase you yield.
That sounds messy. I’ve never heard of it.
@@sreetips maybe try with some of the leftovers after you have removed the gold.
In the batch were you used pure aqua regia on everything, couldn't you possibly start the recovery method the same way you treat your waste but in a smaller scale? Like use copper to precipitate out the silver, then iron for the copper, then try for the gold (If I'm remembering those steps correctly)? If it's all the extra ions interfering with the precipitation then couldn't you remove them first before going after the gold? Obviously the method in this video is the better one but just to make sure you have all the gold out of the other solution.
You could run a small experiment to see if this theory is correct by redissolving the gold in that smaller beaker then try removing the other base metals then use SMB and see if the gold comes out much easier. If you already know the answer tho I would love to know myself because if it's not too bad this method could be a very slow but a automatic process and for future refining's could be used to make sure you have all the gold if you think there is too many ions interfering. I know you basically already do this with the waste treatment stockpots lol but would be neat to see if it would work in a smaller scale if you didn't wanna wait till it came time to recover from the stockpot and would only be worth it if you knew there was a good bit of gold still in solution for these special cases such as this.
No, that won’t work because gold will cement out on the copper
@@sreetips Would all the gold cement out? Because if so then you could remove the gold and silver powder mix and then it would function like if you mixed silver and gold and use acid to melt only the sliver powder. If not all the gold then maybe enough ions will be removed for the remaining gold to be taken out with SMB?
Edit: Sorry ment silver not copper lol, If putting copper in it will cement out the silver and gold then that makes it so much easier.
What a waste of time and expense to "extract" a tiny amount of gold. Actual time, cost of chemicals, cost of equipment, cost of electricity, The cost far outweighs the benefits.
Bahut acchi Jankari ji thankyou ji Sar ji🎉
Great job 👍🏻
Dang this is a dangerous UA-cam curiosity.
Yes
Very nice sir