Sciencemadness Discussion Board

eWaste recycling, how the pro's do it

deltaH - 24-10-2015 at 03:18

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU62hh3DBfg



macckone - 24-10-2015 at 10:58

Most of our e-waste is shredded before being sent our for processing. The hard drives are processed separately from the MBs, ram, and cups.

j_sum1 - 24-10-2015 at 14:29

The impressive thing about this video is not the process shown -- little detail is actually given.
The impressive thing is the volumes involved. Big rods of Au being swung around like they were pieces of steel.

aga - 24-10-2015 at 14:45

Quote:
eWaste recycling, how the pro's do it

Nitric + HCl to dissolve Gold ?

Must be an Ancient video. Very old technique.

Have they not heard of salt, vinegar and bleach ?

Where have they been ?

Oh how the ancients lived !

deltaH - 24-10-2015 at 16:33

Yes the details are scant and the video is old, yet there are tricks to be learned and I was hoping that some here might know some of those details.

I liked the sequential electrowinning step that was applied to the mixed metals recovered from the motherboards.

The volumes are very impressive, indeed those gold rods just look silly :o. I think they are winning a great deal of precious metals that are contained in the actual IC's on the boards, not just the fingers. After all, that gold wire is used to make the electrical contacts between the IC cores and their pins.

Some glaring omissions [maybe]... tantalum and the PGMs. I still don't understand where the PGM's come from, if at all? Tantalum I know is used in capacitors. Ruthenium in special kinds of resistors (not that it matters much as the Ruthenium spot price is currently junk).

...and maybe most importantly, the waste generated is not touched on, only the treasure... how typically industrial.

[Edited on 25-10-2015 by deltaH]

MrHomeScientist - 26-10-2015 at 11:04

"Cables are unplugged and disposed of" >> Why wouldn't they recycle those too? That's a terrible waste of copper.

"One ton of old computers could fetch them 6,500 pounds" >> Pretty amazing considering one ton is only 2,000 pounds! :P

Magpie - 26-10-2015 at 11:33

6500 £ ?

Little_Ghost_again - 27-10-2015 at 01:36

Quote: Originally posted by Magpie  
6500 £ ?


Yep £6,500, but what they neglect to say is that is based on 1 ton of cpu chips not just 1 ton waste.
I tried to work it out and the closest I got was 1 ton cpu chips with the price of gold at a 5 year high.

Also how did they remove all the solder mask and components?