I have to give you props for hanging in there and getting what you could get out of it. I admit I would've given up the first time the gold precipitated back into solution. Good job.
That was a amateur mistake you cannot precipitate out of solution without denoxing any leftover active acids first. Urea should have been added slowly till it stoped reacting. Only then can you add percipetant to drop your metals out of solution.
You actually explained everything thoroughly. Other videos used text, or robot voices. This was a very entertaining, and educational experience, watching this, and I would like to say thank you. I was rooting for you, the whole 47:39 mins. Did not skip any of it. Again thanks alot.
I can appreciate all the time you put in this video..chemistry like all science is trial n error over n over.as for myself ..the whole process just sends my committee into OVERLOAD.
I'm curious how you might approach this differently now with the lessons learned from this batch? Would more initial mass make the time & material investment more worthwhile (4lbs? 5lbs?) Also, if you started with incineration, would you follow that with the aqua regia right away or still wash with nitric acid to dissolve the substrate metals first, then AR etc? I'm fascinated by the chemistry and I really enjoy watching your work. Thank you!
Great job with the video. Putting the filter on the camera. You are a handful of only a few who go above and beyond for your viewers 👍👍. I've tried BGTs and ICs but have found the manufacturers are VERY skimpy on their precious metals. I'm in the process of extracting silver and palladium or platinum (I hope) from old radio crystals. I'm dealing with a LOT of quartz debris that is being a bit stubborn. We'll see how "skimpy" the manufacturers were back in the mid 90s😁. Keep recording, we'll keep commenting 😁👍❤️🙏
I bet you get more yield on copper and tin on your waste bucket, than on gold out of these simcards. You'd need a shitload more and a more efficient process to make a profit. But hey, it's a learning process, very informational and great fun to watch! Keep doing this!
I enjoy your knowledge sir. I take my sim cards and place them in a pan of ALL purpose sand and place the pan on a burner so I can control my heat. Put small amount of sim cards on top of the sand. Mix with sand it takes about 10 mins and it will steam the plastic off my cards. U have to watch because they will stick together. Not the gold but the plastic
In your case, I think Patreon wouldn't be charity. I think lots of your viewers would like to chip in a couple of bucks for these excellent lessons. I would, but I can't afford to buy gold and I don't want any jewelry. If you feel strongly about not taking any charity, you could do give-aways of gold buttons or whatever when the experiments have been thoroughly paid for. I supported a miner and he sent me a little rough gem as a thank you and it was so much fun.
Thanks for the Video! Excellent Quality like always. As you showed in 2016 already, SIM Cards are not worth the effort, even if you get them for free. But ist a Gold refiners challenge :-) Your actual yield is lower than expected in respect to your 2016 Video. I calculated a 2g yield from the roughly 1200g of SIM Cards. I think incineration from the beginning would have been the optimal approach. But we wouldn't know for sure without this Video of yours. Thanks again.
I can watch this stuff all day. My daughter showed me that I can watch you on my flatscreen tv it's only a 55" but it's going to be cool to watch your vids on it instead of my little phone. However it won't allow me to comment on it, at least I don't think it will. Have a GREAT Day My Friend!!!
I’m amazed that your yield was so low from the SIM cards. I wonder if it’s due to the foils on the SIM cards being so thin. Also, any idea why the acid bath was not successful to get the foils to release? Thanks for this great video!
I wonder if using something like a wiper motor from a car, you could create a agitator that would keep the product moving and perhaps friction might help to remove the foils more quickly
Awesome video, i love the content and learn heaps. I have used ammonium perchloride for removing gold foils. Now i nedd the nitric acid to purify them.
At 39:04 you said "boy this is going to be fun" , and i thought i was going to fall out of my chair from laughing so hard !!! Up until then i was thinking this poor man has spent hours working on this and i already would have given up if it was me , but in the name of science you stayed in the trenches , good man !!!!
You should try dissolving simcards in acetone or paint thinner. Paint Thinner is better because it dissolves slower than acetone, and after about 30 minutes you can take out chips and plastics, and reuse the thinner, While 30 minutes in acetone and it is quite polluted with liquid plastics (but maybe its cheaper way, I must test it more).
Not on this video , but related . I searched you channel and found a couple videos dealing with you stock pot - getting more out of them . Also looked with waste , but didn't find if there was one , on dealing with options of eliminating chemical waste . I have not seen much , but many seem to ignore lesser metals , at least copper and maybe lead & tin , should be a lot percentage wise . Still trying get enough volume doing electronics repair , scrapping has become a side line . With gold silver etc. being a hobby ;)
You Produced $90.99 worth of Gold. (Price per gram $50.55 * 1.7g). Total EBay Cost $126 A week of work and chemicals. I admire what you did, but won't be doing it myself.
That's the reason I created the video. So people have a place to look BEFORE they go out and spend their hard-earned money on this kind of over-priced scrap.
I love watching your stuff but cant get over the loss you absorb in your experiments! Spent close to $225 on the chips for about $70 in gold, thats rough!
Xtreme Performance very true! I avoid buying any sort of scrap from ebay. Even the gold filled stuff that one used to get good prices on has skyrocketed in the last few years. People paying well over spot for the stuff.
Awesome video thanks, could you please estimate how much materials cost you expended. I would love to know how much it cost you to produce the 1.7 gram of gold.
The pot transistors that are raised above the circuit board base . They look like steel buckets about a quarter inch square . They typically have gold plating bottom plates . Gold plated on both sides. You have to pry off the steel buckets to reveal the gold plating or detach from the circuit board and look on the bottom side where the naked wires come out
If you could figure a way to put a big massive magnetic stir bar in there to keep those sim cards heavily stirring that would likely speed the stripping process up significantly.
To get them to strip completely, it takes a couple of days in A/P. I don't process anywhere near that amount, but I use a 1 litre beaker with A/P at about 70-80c, with a bubbler, for about 3 days. All are as clean as a whistle.
Great video ! Getting better every time. Idea: write 'sreetips' backwards inside the corningware. It'll reflect the right way round off the big beakers ;) Who said denox ? wasn't me ....
The 40% peroxide is probably way less than 40% because it degrades into water at room temperature. We keep high strength peroxide in the refrigerator to prevent degradation. We also start with freshly manufactured product. If you consider that product from a beauty salon will probably sit in a warehouse somewhere unairconditioned for who knows how long, then it goes to the salon where its stored at room temperature for who knows how long. Its easy to see that the purity will be greatly affected.
@@sreetips it could be even less. You would have to titrate it with KMnO4 to know for sure. We get 50% and after a month in the refrigerator it's already about half strength.
@Elektra Delphi the phidelphia refiner would incinerat whole backplane and circuit boards then dump the ash and metals in a ball mill. And from there I don't know what he did. Sounds very messy when it comes time to separate the metals . I'm thinking there is more value in the solder than the precious metals
I have watched most of your videos. Very informative! You know your craft well. I have some metallurgical background but not in this style. I am genuinely curious if anything is actually profitable from buying bulk and refining from a small perspective. I do have a question, have you tried to refine the computer part "gold" bars from eBay? Would it be something to look into? Most look like brass to me.
Drop melt bars various computer parts melted together. I’ve got a video on it. They are a total ripoff. You pay $29 for $2 worth of brass and get just a trace of gold - almost nothing.,My experience. Please see my video titled “how to make a profit refining precious metals.”
I came across this video today and I was wondering why it didn't work out. I am thinking that if you had burn it first and then did the process, might have been a different outcome. Not sure if you tried this again, if you did can you supply the link so I can watch that version. Thanks for giving us a great video and some great information. Stay safe and see you on the next video
accetone would melt the plastic right off and shouldnt damage the gold or the underlying circuitry. aggetate it. scoop plastic off of the top then drain and dry it then blend it. most of ur issues are solved with just that alone
What happened with the water used to rinse the sim cards? normally there were some flakes in it? I also had a doubt about incineration because some gold was maybe gone with the smoke. Thanks for your videos.
Boil the sim card to separate the metal core from the shell, waste the shell and process the metal core with aqua regia. It's a lot less chemical and time needed.
Youngin, that is way too much trouble for 1.7 grams. You spent more than that on the cards, not to mention the chemicals. You did recover the gold. I just grind that stuff in a rock grinder down to 120 mesh, then put it in a tumbler, half full or so, 3/4 full of water, add 1 teaspoon of lye and 3 tablespoons of charged mercury and tumble for 4 hours. Then chamos off the mercury, put the sponge in a test tube, pour a bit of distilled water and a pipet of nitric. That eats the quicksilver and leaves the gold. I can easily get my mercury back, and there is my gold!! It ain't fancy, but it's been working for 6000 years ;)
I think you lost much of your gold on the burn. That ash is very lightweight and can be carried away easily with tiny flecks of gold on the ash. But overall I think you did as best of a job as possible. My question is; Would it be possible to dissolve and separate via gravity (the plastic that dissolves floats on the top of the acetone and metal sinks) the plastic components away from the metallic components using something like acetone before using aqua regia to dissolve the metals?
I would hav stuck with the concentrated hydrogen peroxide in 100ml incremental doses every 24 hours. You would have had a much higher stripped amount to start with. Your result of 9 days and I could clearly see several cards untouched when you rinsed them is far too long with little result. this should have only taken 72hrs +\- 24hrs with only 400-500ml of the hair salon h2o2 (dosed at 100ml per 18-24hrs ) if you do this again try what I suggested and I guarantee you do it this way every time. After continuing on watch if you would ha dissolved the “S and B” in warm water stirring until it won’t take anymore Sodium and Bi.... let it settle then use the concentrated solution to precipitate the gold to avoid contamination of excess powder.
Great video, I was not surprised on the yield, it takes a lot of sim cards to produce a small yield. I have played around with them a little my self. One question though, was there a reason you did not denox the excess nitric with urea in lieu of saturating with SMB?
I just checked ebay prices for sulfamic vs SMB and just looking at the first listing, SMB $20/lb. with Sulfamic Acid @ $6/lb. And then not those SMB crystal ppt. to deal with. Again, your videos are outstanding, this one showed your problem solving abilities and experience.
I saw this thing on Cody's Lab where he had an issue with rinsing out the gold solution with Muriatic acid and then precipitating it with SMB because the acidity was too high , so he added some hot water and the gold dropped right out with the addition of hit water.
wouldn't it be quicker & more cost effective to just burn up sim card casings under controlled temp. under melt point of gold, shift out foils from ashes and then process ???
My thoughts also, but great representation Sreetips! We used to burn huge piles of wire for copper extraction prior to chem bathing, cut our time consumed by like 70%.
Thanks Sreetips. It was a tricky one but a good lesson all the same. Any thoughts on getting a small kiln in the future so you might do as our metallurgical forefathers did, and reduce such things into a button and then use a bone ash cupel and Pb to remove the base metals? I wonder if there would be losses that way also. The obvious gains would be the ability to complete the entire process in a matter of hours, as opposed to many days.
Awesome video, I have been recovering silver from unused large Ag+/AgCl batteries. These are hard Ag+/AgCl and Magnesium plates that are easily separated. The best method of conversion is a work in progress. Any suggestions?
when you have excess nitric like this, you could heat the solution to reduce it to maybe 5%-10% of the volume. that should greatly reduce the amount of nitric and speed up the process.
@@sreetips that's probably the best way for sure. There's so little gold it's not worth the trouble. Out of 1200g scrap you only got $100 of gold. It probably cost half that in chemicals.
Coolnventions computer scrap has a lot better content than regular ore, I saw another video of a facility that processes scrap by the ton. Pretty cool.
Go for it then , launch yourself in sim cards recycling lol , looks to me like you ll waste a lot of money on products for a less than appreciable result . He doesn t even get 2 grams of gold from more than a kilo of simcards. So basically can't even pay for the cads he bought with that gold , not to mention all the transformation :) Go and melt some copper you ll earn more coins from this .............
christophe Dohet were talking about the company that buys computer scrap by the ton and processes it at their facility, not these small mom and pop recoveries.
Just watching this and have a question. Would pulverizing these cards or any PC scrap I guess, in a ball mill be more efficient than burning? Thanks for sharing your work.
Oh btw. seen they guy from Mount Baker mining? He can grind up your slag and puts it on the shaker table to extract the heavy metals from it. Probably your amounts are more efficient to just grind up and pan out. The guy from mbmmllc he also grinds up the crucibles.
So i had done this a while back. I used Peroxide, vinegar, table salt, and put the scrap precise in to a Mason Jar with the ingredients. I actually got a pastel teal green and baby blue liquid with gold flakes floating around there was a bit of an odor So I placed it outside on the balcony. We live upstairs I placed it on the opposite side of people. Well lo and behold, long story short. There's no longer liquid in the Mason jar that I forgot outside it has become a foam like consistency with everything in cased into a pellet the size of the Mason jar. There is visible gold flakes and foiling from all the Excel phone parts and chips different boards and memory cards SD cards and pins. Now with all that said, my question is how do I get the gold out now of my baby blue teal green chalk pellet?
The paste dissolves with muriatic (hydrochloric) acid. Once dissolved and you can see the gold foils filter them out and dissolve with muriatic acid and bleach.
Charcoal lighter fluid is a VERY low grade combustible. Everyone I know has done the exact same thing when grilling. Only dangerous if you are extremely careless.
really excellent business, less company and individuals can't do. now, per grams of gold was up high and more continued to it.. economy is continue crashing,, golds going up more with all metals, iron, copper, aluminium, silver to gold
Good video as usual. I wonder if you got all the gold from the acid peroxide step. I have a bunch of sim cards but i'm not going to rush to process them for the gold. I'd get more money on ebay (thats where I got them) but it feels like I'm scaming someone if I do that.
If I did this again I would skip the acid peroxide and just burn the SIM cards to ash. Then grind the ash up with a mortar and pestle, then hit the fine powder with aqua regia. I might order some more and redo the experiment using that process.
@@sreetips Have you considered putting them into a blender whole to make a granular plastic / gold mixture and then burning them with the torch to fine ash then refining with aqua regia?
Is it possible to lose gold by burning in open air? I know that burning insulated copper wire produces a green flame. That's some of the copper going up with the smoke isn't it?
One of the most interesting channel on UA-cam! Keep it up!
I have to give you props for hanging in there and getting what you could get out of it. I admit I would've given up the first time the gold precipitated back into solution. Good job.
That was a amateur mistake you cannot precipitate out of solution without denoxing any leftover active acids first. Urea should have been added slowly till it stoped reacting. Only then can you add percipetant to drop your metals out of solution.
dude, your channel should have more subs cause the work you do is absolutely stunning!
Appreciate that, thank you.
You actually explained everything thoroughly. Other videos used text, or robot voices. This was a very entertaining, and educational experience, watching this, and I would like to say thank you. I was rooting for you, the whole 47:39 mins. Did not skip any of it. Again thanks alot.
James, if I had to do it again I'd incinerate to a fine ash then hit the ash with aqua regia instead of using acid peroxide.
45:00 That's about triple the return I was expecting to see.
Congratz!
looks like something they would find in a stream
Came along way in production quality since this. No wonder you don’t do the SIM cards anymore. Your on to bigger and better things these days😂😂
I can appreciate all the time you put in this video..chemistry like all science is trial n error over n over.as for myself ..the whole process just sends my committee into OVERLOAD.
I'm curious how you might approach this differently now with the lessons learned from this batch? Would more initial mass make the time & material investment more worthwhile (4lbs? 5lbs?) Also, if you started with incineration, would you follow that with the aqua regia right away or still wash with nitric acid to dissolve the substrate metals first, then AR etc? I'm fascinated by the chemistry and I really enjoy watching your work. Thank you!
I’d burn it first thing. No question
Great job with the video. Putting the filter on the camera. You are a handful of only a few who go above and beyond for your viewers 👍👍.
I've tried BGTs and ICs but have found the manufacturers are VERY skimpy on their precious metals.
I'm in the process of extracting silver and palladium or platinum (I hope) from old radio crystals. I'm dealing with a LOT of quartz debris that is being a bit stubborn. We'll see how "skimpy" the manufacturers were back in the mid 90s😁.
Keep recording, we'll keep commenting 😁👍❤️🙏
I bet you get more yield on copper and tin on your waste bucket, than on gold out of these simcards. You'd need a shitload more and a more efficient process to make a profit.
But hey, it's a learning process, very informational and great fun to watch! Keep doing this!
I enjoy your knowledge sir. I take my sim cards and place them in a pan of ALL purpose sand and place the pan on a burner so I can control my heat. Put small amount of sim cards on top of the sand. Mix with sand it takes about 10 mins and it will steam the plastic off my cards. U have to watch because they will stick together. Not the gold but the plastic
If u try it let me know if it works for u sir. I can send a video
Joshua, I haven’t done these is a long time. The amount of gold is small
Great vid buddy!
Didn't get exactly what was anticipated, but that's science for ya!
Throws us a curve-ball now and again.
Thanx again! :D
Damn. I'm waiting for him to come out of his RV in the Arizona desert in a lab apron and underwear!
lol
SpaXpert that would be a New Mexican desert
@@bobbydigital7482 oh hell you're right! Good catch Bobby!
You watch too much tv.
@@Scapularbore *too
In your case, I think Patreon wouldn't be charity. I think lots of your viewers would like to chip in a couple of bucks for these excellent lessons. I would, but I can't afford to buy gold and I don't want any jewelry. If you feel strongly about not taking any charity, you could do give-aways of gold buttons or whatever when the experiments have been thoroughly paid for. I supported a miner and he sent me a little rough gem as a thank you and it was so much fun.
This is SO cool. Have you thought about having summer camps for teens teaching them this? My kids are fascinated! Thank you!
I think I smoked another half a pack of cig's on this one, had me on the edge of my chair again.. Great video ! Dru
great troll. IM clapping.
Sweet
stop smoking
@@__BERSERKER__ you ready no the aquaridgea is the best way I think brother nice ...
thats alot a cigs bro lol I am in the process of quitting down to just 1-2 a day! I know you were just kidding here a bit, have a great day.
You can use vinegar peroxide and Morton sea salt to extract the gold foils from the SIM cards works really good it just has to set longer
Thanks for the Video! Excellent Quality like always. As you showed in 2016 already, SIM Cards are not worth the effort, even if you get them for free. But ist a Gold refiners challenge :-) Your actual yield is lower than expected in respect to your 2016 Video. I calculated a 2g yield from the roughly 1200g of SIM Cards. I think incineration from the beginning would have been the optimal approach. But we wouldn't know for sure without this Video of yours. Thanks again.
Can you do a video on the waste liquid processing? It would be nice to see the process and the cost to process waste.
just poor it down the drain in the street like everyone else ...
"Why are we all getting cancer?" Oh, that's why...
I believe he made one a couple of years ago...
He just ignore
add sugar and ice! great on a hot day
I can watch this stuff all day. My daughter showed me that I can watch you on my flatscreen tv it's only a 55" but it's going to be cool to watch your vids on it instead of my little phone. However it won't allow me to comment on it, at least I don't think it will.
Have a GREAT Day My Friend!!!
I’m amazed that your yield was so low from the SIM cards. I wonder if it’s due to the foils on the SIM cards being so thin. Also, any idea why the acid bath was not successful to get the foils to release? Thanks for this great video!
I’m not sure. I’ve only done SIM cards this one time.
I wonder if using something like a wiper motor from a car, you could create a agitator that would keep the product moving and perhaps friction might help to remove the foils more quickly
Awesome video, i love the content and learn heaps. I have used ammonium perchloride for removing gold foils. Now i nedd the nitric acid to purify them.
this guy is the most optimistic person on Earth
For future reference, brown bottle 3percent h2o2 is considered ten volume, so 40 volume h2o2 would be fo ur times as strong or 12 percent
I didn't know that, thank you.
At 39:04 you said "boy this is going to be fun" , and i thought i was going to fall out of my chair from laughing so hard !!! Up until then i was thinking this poor man has spent hours working on this and i already would have given up if it was me , but in the name of science you stayed in the trenches , good man !!!!
I’m loving the videos. Funny thing I just realized that I feel like Jesse Pinkman watching Walter White.
Hahaaaaaa!! Me too! Lol
You should try dissolving simcards in acetone or paint thinner. Paint Thinner is better because it dissolves slower than acetone, and after about 30 minutes you can take out chips and plastics, and reuse the thinner, While 30 minutes in acetone and it is quite polluted with liquid plastics (but maybe its cheaper way, I must test it more).
Another fine video. You are a great inspiration. I was eager to see a good yield and was able to share in your disappointment..
I love your videos you remind me of my geology and chemistry professor faud nobari and Mr Stan..
Not on this video , but related .
I searched you channel and found a couple videos dealing with you stock pot - getting more out of them .
Also looked with waste , but didn't find if there was one , on dealing with options of eliminating chemical waste .
I have not seen much , but many seem to ignore lesser metals , at least copper and maybe lead & tin , should be a lot percentage wise .
Still trying get enough volume doing electronics repair , scrapping has become a side line .
With gold silver etc. being a hobby ;)
You Produced $90.99 worth of Gold. (Price per gram $50.55 * 1.7g).
Total EBay Cost $126
A week of work and chemicals.
I admire what you did, but won't be doing it myself.
That's the reason I created the video. So people have a place to look BEFORE they go out and spend their hard-earned money on this kind of over-priced scrap.
Interesting *says the wireless worker that throws 50 SIM cards away a day.*
Can i buy them from you 🤔
I love watching your stuff but cant get over the loss you absorb in your experiments! Spent close to $225 on the chips for about $70 in gold, thats rough!
Xtreme Performance very true! I avoid buying any sort of scrap from ebay. Even the gold filled stuff that one used to get good prices on has skyrocketed in the last few years. People paying well over spot for the stuff.
ADS! ADS!!!! REPEAT AFTER ME, ADS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@@weatherphobia no shit
Awesome video thanks, could you please estimate how much materials cost you expended. I would love to know how much it cost you to produce the 1.7 gram of gold.
The pot transistors that are raised above the circuit board base . They look like steel buckets about a quarter inch square . They typically have gold plating bottom plates . Gold plated on both sides. You have to pry off the steel buckets to reveal the gold plating or detach from the circuit board and look on the bottom side where the naked wires come out
If you could figure a way to put a big massive magnetic stir bar in there to keep those sim cards heavily stirring that would likely speed the stripping process up significantly.
Really it's very nice video. Waiting 4 your part 2 of catalytic converter
It's coming,mesh ould be much shorter than the recovery video part 1 of 2
To get them to strip completely, it takes a couple of days in A/P. I don't process anywhere near that amount, but I use a 1 litre beaker with A/P at about 70-80c, with a bubbler, for about 3 days. All are as clean as a whistle.
If I had to do this again I’d incinerate to a fine ash then extract the gold with aqua regia
Wow this was hell of the work. Thank you.
For anyone wondering, profit is $90.56 for 1.7g of gold as of October 22, 2022.
Can’t verify that
You're awesome buddy! Breaking Good.. lol
Great video ! Getting better every time.
Idea: write 'sreetips' backwards inside the corningware.
It'll reflect the right way round off the big beakers ;)
Who said denox ? wasn't me ....
Reverse spelling for the reflection, brilliant!
It would make a good joke. Every once in a while it intrudes on the video. If I saw it in a reflection, but corrected, I'd have a good laugh.
I was cracking up when you burned the sim cards. I bet that smelled soooo bad
That is a one of a kind smell. Once you smelled it.... I could smell it even when he was burning them. Lol
Vent hood. :)
This guy got more patience than 20 Saints
I ADMIRE YOUR PATIENCE WELL DONE
There will be a day i watched everything you made. Oh wise one!
sreetips really has nailed down branding.
The 40% peroxide is probably way less than 40% because it degrades into water at room temperature. We keep high strength peroxide in the refrigerator to prevent degradation. We also start with freshly manufactured product. If you consider that product from a beauty salon will probably sit in a warehouse somewhere unairconditioned for who knows how long, then it goes to the salon where its stored at room temperature for who knows how long. Its easy to see that the purity will be greatly affected.
It’s actually only about 12% peroxide
@@sreetips it could be even less. You would have to titrate it with KMnO4 to know for sure. We get 50% and after a month in the refrigerator it's already about half strength.
Thanks for sharing your methods.
wouldnt a vibration table or ultrasonic work better at keeping it agitated ?
Is it possible to Pyrolytic incinerrate the sim-Cards and desolve the Ashes? Edit: nevermind, just 30 secs later you dit it.
@Elektra Delphi the phidelphia refiner would incinerat whole backplane and circuit boards then dump the ash and metals in a ball mill. And from there I don't know what he did. Sounds very messy when it comes time to separate the metals . I'm thinking there is more value in the solder than the precious metals
For the sake of learning it’s a great video
But it seems like a whole lot of work for very very little gold
I guess it depends how many sim cards you have.
@@charliecash8661 and how cheaply you can get them.
5 years later and sellers are still pushing these low yielding SIM cards on eBay. I’m assuming the buyers did not watch your video.
I have watched most of your videos. Very informative! You know your craft well. I have some metallurgical background but not in this style. I am genuinely curious if anything is actually profitable from buying bulk and refining from a small perspective. I do have a question, have you tried to refine the computer part "gold" bars from eBay? Would it be something to look into? Most look like brass to me.
Drop melt bars various computer parts melted together. I’ve got a video on it. They are a total ripoff. You pay $29 for $2 worth of brass and get just a trace of gold - almost nothing.,My experience. Please see my video titled “how to make a profit refining precious metals.”
I came across this video today and I was wondering why it didn't work out. I am thinking that if you had burn it first and then did the process, might have been a different outcome. Not sure if you tried this again, if you did can you supply the link so I can watch that version. Thanks for giving us a great video and some great information. Stay safe and see you on the next video
A lot of contamination
accetone would melt the plastic right off and shouldnt damage the gold or the underlying circuitry. aggetate it. scoop plastic off of the top then drain and dry it then blend it. most of ur issues are solved with just that alone
i am Excited for the next video i hope it will be the catalyst recovery..good work
I just finished part one of the cats video, it should be posted by tomorrow..... finally!
What happened with the water used to rinse the sim cards? normally there were some flakes in it?
I also had a doubt about incineration because some gold was maybe gone with the smoke.
Thanks for your videos.
I just love watching your videos vary cool processes to extract the metals love the silver ones cant find your store on ebay
My eBay user name is “sreetips”
Boil the sim card to separate the metal core from the shell, waste the shell and process the metal core with aqua regia. It's a lot less chemical and time needed.
If you melt the SIM cards in acetone first would make your life easier
Youngin, that is way too much trouble for 1.7 grams. You spent more than that on the cards, not to mention the chemicals. You did recover the gold. I just grind that stuff in a rock grinder down to 120 mesh, then put it in a tumbler, half full or so, 3/4 full of water, add 1 teaspoon of lye and 3 tablespoons of charged mercury and tumble for 4 hours. Then chamos off the mercury, put the sponge in a test tube, pour a bit of distilled water and a pipet of nitric. That eats the quicksilver and leaves the gold. I can easily get my mercury back, and there is my gold!! It ain't fancy, but it's been working for 6000 years ;)
Nice!
I think you lost much of your gold on the burn. That ash is very lightweight and can be carried away easily with tiny flecks of gold on the ash. But overall I think you did as best of a job as possible. My question is; Would it be possible to dissolve and separate via gravity (the plastic that dissolves floats on the top of the acetone and metal sinks) the plastic components away from the metallic components using something like acetone before using aqua regia to dissolve the metals?
I don't know. I don't have much experience with this kind of material. The yields are too low.
I would hav stuck with the concentrated hydrogen peroxide in 100ml incremental doses every 24 hours. You would have had a much higher stripped amount to start with. Your result of 9 days and I could clearly see several cards untouched when you rinsed them is far too long with little result. this should have only taken 72hrs +\- 24hrs with only 400-500ml of the hair salon h2o2 (dosed at 100ml per 18-24hrs ) if you do this again try what I suggested and I guarantee you do it this way every time. After continuing on watch if you would ha dissolved the “S and B” in warm water stirring until it won’t take anymore Sodium and Bi.... let it settle then use the concentrated solution to precipitate the gold to avoid contamination of excess powder.
How clean was your fume hood those days.
It's more experienced and dirty right now in your new uploads.
Because I just replaced the motor last week, it’s as clean as my wife’s kitchen floor.
@@sreetips 😁
can't wait to see that clean hood 👍
Great video, I was not surprised on the yield, it takes a lot of sim cards to produce a small yield. I have played around with them a little my self. One question though, was there a reason you did not denox the excess nitric with urea in lieu of saturating with SMB?
My question as well... I was surprised to not see you deNox with Sulfamic acid ?? But very clear process, per your usual great videos.
Gary, I don't have any urea because I never use it. I did have sulfamic but I just kept adding SMB until all the excess nitric was gone
Karl, I had it, but I just kept adding SMB until all the nitric was gone and the gold came down completely (with the crystalized SMB)
I just checked ebay prices for sulfamic vs SMB and just looking at the first listing, SMB $20/lb. with Sulfamic Acid @ $6/lb. And then not those SMB crystal ppt. to deal with. Again, your videos are outstanding, this one showed your problem solving abilities and experience.
next project... condense your videos down from eternity...
I saw this thing on Cody's Lab where he had an issue with rinsing out the gold solution with Muriatic acid and then precipitating it with SMB because the acidity was too high , so he added some hot water and the gold dropped right out with the addition of hit water.
I’ve never had that happen
thanks again for making your videos.
wouldn't it be quicker & more cost effective to just burn up sim card casings under controlled temp. under melt point of gold, shift out foils from ashes and then process ???
Yes, I concluded that after I seen all the gold foils left in the SIM cards.
Would this also work with CPU and RAM? That would make everything easier.
My thoughts also, but great representation Sreetips! We used to burn huge piles of wire for copper extraction prior to chem bathing, cut our time consumed by like 70%.
April 2020 Value: $91.36
Damn, that little bead is worth more than my 5 bags of recycled bottles and cans!
Thanks Sreetips. It was a tricky one but a good lesson all the same. Any thoughts on getting a small kiln in the future so you might do as our metallurgical forefathers did, and reduce such things into a button and then use a bone ash cupel and Pb to remove the base metals? I wonder if there would be losses that way also. The obvious gains would be the ability to complete the entire process in a matter of hours, as opposed to many days.
I should have burned the SIM cards. Then hit the ash hard with aqua regia
“…Will put a hurtin on your nose.” FINALLY! Some scientific lingo I understand. 😂👍
That first bag didnt look anywhere near 1,500 sim cards....lol
Awesome video, I have been recovering silver from unused large Ag+/AgCl batteries. These are hard Ag+/AgCl and Magnesium plates that are easily separated. The best method of conversion is a work in progress. Any suggestions?
I thought those batteries were silver oxide. Silver oxide should melt directly into silver after removing it from the case
when you have excess nitric like this, you could heat the solution to reduce it to maybe 5%-10% of the volume. that should greatly reduce the amount of nitric and speed up the process.
Jim, if I even try this again I’ll burn the SIM cards first then do an extraction with aqua regia on the ashes.
@@sreetips that's probably the best way for sure. There's so little gold it's not worth the trouble. Out of 1200g scrap you only got $100 of gold. It probably cost half that in chemicals.
Great job with the camera work, real good video
Perodically Dosing the hcl with the stronger peroxide would of made it more efficient at removing the gold and quicker.
You should have used acetone. Most sim cards are made of plastic that dissolves in acetone. Have done a couple times.
Acetone is some liver killing sh*t , wear full haz-mat with it.
good to know
@@rrfields65 WTF?! No it's not! That vodka you're drinking will do far more damage to your liver than acetone ever will.
thats 43 troy oz per tonne. most mines produce .5oz per ton
Coolnventions computer scrap has a lot better content than regular ore, I saw another video of a facility that processes scrap by the ton. Pretty cool.
Go for it then , launch yourself in sim cards recycling lol , looks to me like you ll waste a lot of money on products for a less than appreciable result . He doesn t even get 2 grams of gold from more than a kilo of simcards. So basically can't even pay for the cads he bought with that gold , not to mention all the transformation :) Go and melt some copper you ll earn more coins from this .............
christophe Dohet were talking about the company that buys computer scrap by the ton and processes it at their facility, not these small mom and pop recoveries.
Just watching this and have a question. Would pulverizing these cards or any PC scrap I guess, in a ball mill be more efficient than burning? Thanks for sharing your work.
For the best yield these should be incinerated to a fine ash. Then extract the gold with aqua regia.
Burning plastic is so toxic! I hope your neighbors aren’t close enough to suffer from the fumes. Take care of yourself when you do that!
It’s very slight, almost nothing compared to the exhaust of your neighbors car.
Oh btw. seen they guy from Mount Baker mining? He can grind up your slag and puts it on the shaker table to extract the heavy metals from it. Probably your amounts are more efficient to just grind up and pan out. The guy from mbmmllc he also grinds up the crucibles.
So i had done this a while back. I used Peroxide, vinegar, table salt, and put the scrap precise in to a Mason Jar with the ingredients.
I actually got a pastel teal green and baby blue liquid with gold flakes floating around there was a bit of an odor So I placed it outside on the balcony. We live upstairs I placed it on the opposite side of people. Well lo and behold, long story short. There's no longer liquid in the Mason jar that I forgot outside it has become a foam like consistency with everything in cased into a pellet the size of the Mason jar. There is visible gold flakes and foiling from all the Excel phone parts and chips different boards and memory cards SD cards and pins.
Now with all that said, my question is how do I get the gold out now of my baby blue teal green chalk pellet?
The paste dissolves with muriatic (hydrochloric) acid. Once dissolved and you can see the gold foils filter them out and dissolve with muriatic acid and bleach.
You just NEVER add combustibles to a open flame, NEVAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH
Charcoal lighter fluid is a VERY low grade combustible. Everyone I know has done the exact same thing when grilling. Only dangerous if you are extremely careless.
really excellent business, less company and individuals can't do. now, per grams of gold was up high and more continued to it.. economy is continue crashing,, golds going up more with all metals, iron, copper, aluminium, silver to gold
Wouldn’t removing the circuit board from the plastic by hand be more practical before starting the experiment?
All 5000 of them? I’d rather let the chemicals do all of that work for me.
Good video as usual. I wonder if you got all the gold from the acid peroxide step. I have a bunch of sim cards but i'm not going to rush to process them for the gold. I'd get more money on ebay (thats where I got them) but it feels like I'm scaming someone if I do that.
If I did this again I would skip the acid peroxide and just burn the SIM cards to ash. Then grind the ash up with a mortar and pestle, then hit the fine powder with aqua regia. I might order some more and redo the experiment using that process.
I don't understand why you would bother, when the yield was a fraction of the cost of sims.
1.7 g for all that effort and liquids etc mustve not been a profit
not the point. gold recovery is a gamble. plus, if he saved that solution, i'd bet he could de nox it & drop a cpl more g's...
Experimentation is the name of the game sometimes. Great job Sreetips.
I'd like to try these again. Incinerate to a fine ash then aqua regia.
@@sreetips Have you considered putting them into a blender whole to make a granular plastic / gold mixture and then burning them with the torch to fine ash then refining with aqua regia?
Is it possible to lose gold by burning in open air? I know that burning insulated copper wire produces a green flame. That's some of the copper going up with the smoke isn't it?
Why don't you simply burn the cards, the gold is a metal and will not burn...any thing wrong with that..?
Have you considered trying to dissolve the plastic with chloroform instead of trying to remove the foils from the plastic?
I have not
Great video thanks.
Wohh! Almost! Great job.
What a shame... Sorry my friend. Very interesting to see the clip. Take care sir🙏
I think a lot of the gold was left in the ash from the cards
No; That's what the test was for.
I'm not 100% on this but if you separate the plated part from the plastic on sims it looks like there's a couple of bond wires in them