Posted on 01/03/2025 7:11:06 AM PST by Red Badger
The gold that I see in the picture is on the connectors.
These connectors could be sawed off before further processing.
“And how much waste is still left? (99% I bet)”
Copper will be needed for the leftists’ EV schemes.
“Need something like this for rare earths extraction”
Whole motors could be reused.
Smaller rare earth-containing components could be industrially cut off using AI guided robots.
“Is this in Iran?”
I suspect Ithaca, NY:
“Cornell Center for Materials Research”
I tried once crushing the chips, then panning the residue for the gold.
It turned out to be a big waste of time and effort. Wasn’t worth it.
OK ... i skimmed the full paper looking for the catch ... amongst others, was this one:
“Metal flakes were removed from an end-of-life CPU board by mechanically scraping the components”
not very scalable for railroad cars of scrapped electronics, huh?
and then of course there was the complex and expensive chemical method used to put the mechanically scraped gold in aqueous solution ...
and of course there was the complex and expensive chemical method to make the capturing matrix in the first place ...
and finally, looks like it takes ANOTHER complex and expensive chemical process to release the gold ions from the complex and expensive matrix ...
the whole thing had to be much more costly than mining new gold in the first place ...
and according to AI google, there’s many simpler [and presumably economic] methods of gold recovery:
There are several ways to recover gold from scrap electronics, including:
Acid treatment
Mix hydrochloric acid and hydrogen peroxide in a glass vessel, submerge the circuit boards, and stir daily for a week. The acid will darken and gold flakes will form.
Acetic acid and oxidant
This nontoxic solution dissolves gold from circuits in about 10 seconds, leaving other metals intact.
Protein fibril sponge
Researchers at ETH Zurich created a sponge from whey proteins to recover gold ions from e-waste. The sponge is placed in a metal ion solution to extract the gold.
Cupellation
This process treats ores or alloyed metals at high temperatures to separate precious metals from base metals. The precious metals remain apart while the base metals react and form slags or other compounds.
Other methods for recovering gold from scrap electronics include:
Using a mixture of hydrochloric acid and nitric acid
Using other mild acids
Burning off the gold at high temperatures
Leaching chemicals like a cyanide solution
Smashing the motherboard into bits and dissolving it in an aqua regia bath
The value of the recovered gold depends on its purity and the current market price of gold. A skilled recycler can expect to receive over $10,000 worth of gold from just one ton of computer circuit boards.
“Beautifully written and ready for inclusion into 1) grant applications from the federal government and 2) the prospectus for luring venture capital to invest in Zadehnazar’s BIL’s newly formed LLC.”
well the author is a Science Fiction and Fantasy writer
His grant writers certainly used every “green” buzzword to beg for tax dollars.
People think that this is going to be some lind of gold mine. I read that National Semiconductor’s gold consumption in the 70’s and 80’s (when NS was NS) was about 12 troy ounces, or about a pound. I have equipment made by HP in the 70’s (still works, of course) where the entire PCB was plated in gold. Those days are LONG gone except maybe for the military.
I’ve watched some of those scrapper channels on you tube. They spend HOURS collecting trash to turn in to “treasure” and just guessing it looks like they don’t even make minimum wage. There’s one treasure you can not recycle or save and that is TIME.
Zak Lee.
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