Recycling of gold - In depth analysis

Main benefit of gold recycling is that it does not lead to degradation in quality. This means that gold that was mined thousands of years back is just as good as that mined yesterday. It is possible to recycle this gold and repurpose it without requiring any new mining.

Electronic wastes these days form the biggest source of gold that should be recycled. As we dump any kind of electronics like televisions, iPads, iPhones and other classy gadgets, we are throwing away gold. These can be recycled to get fresh gold that can then be used to make other new gadgets.

This amount of gold is huge. Not much gold that has ever been mined has been lost. In fact, it is only 3,600 tons that cannot be accounted for of all the gold mined. The rest of the gold, roughly 167,700 tons, is still traceable. Roughly a half of this has been used in making jewelry while the rest is safely locked in central bank vaults. These are used for making products like dental fillings and iPhones and others are held by investors.

As of 2012, the total amount of gold recycled or reused was less than 3% of the total supply of gold. If only 5% of the total existing gold could be recycled, the world demand for gold would have been met a long time ago.

Find out the benefits of gold recycling

First thing we want to mention is environment protection - Today, gold is mined using Open Pits Methods. The methods involve excavating as well as blasting huge holes on the surface of the earth. Surprisingly, only 10g of gold can be got from a ton of rock. This means that the potential for environmental degradation is massive when gold is mined and not recycled.
No toxic substance - Using cyanide in gold mining is a big cause for worry for environmentalists. This is because the compound is highly toxic not just to animals but humans alike. Recycling does not need any of cyanide, which means there is less toxic substances to people and wildlife. It is defined as gold that has been previously refined and it comes from many places including post-consumer products, gold-bearing products, scrap and waste metals and other sources. The origin of recycled gold is considered to be the point in the gold supply chain where the gold is delivered to the refiner or recycler.

Since refineries often collate gold from multiple sources it has been very difficult to reliably trace the source.

Sources of Gold for Recycling - Gold is used to create jewelry and coins, as dental fillings and bridges and in industrial and electronic applications. Gold jewelry and coins are often recycled through brick-and-mortar dealers or mail-in programs that pay individuals for the unwanted gold. Gold recycled from fillings and other dental work is often collected by dentists and sent to a recycler. Significant quantities of gold are found in catalytic converters and circuit boards, which can be recycled by municipalities or commercial collectors.

Recycling Jewelry and Coins - The first step in recycling gold jewelry and coins is sorting out the purities of gold, measured in karats, with 24 karats representing pure gold. The quantity of impurities can be assayed with an acid kit, electronic tester, X-ray fluorescence spectrometer or melting point test. Once the gold is sorted, it will be melted in a crucible at around 1,064 degrees Celsius (1,947 degrees Fahrenheit) and either poured into bars marked by purity, or further smelted to remove impurities. Smelting is a process where impurities are burned off, or a flux is added to react with impurities and separate them from the pure metal.

Recycling Electronics - Recycling gold from industrial and electronic waste is less straightforward because the gold is embedded in a metal or plastic housing and may only be two percent by weight. Once the pieces containing the precious metal have been stripped, several options exist for processing. The first is chemical stripping with a compound that reacts with the gold. The second option is to melt down the metal components, cool them and grind them up. Both processes require further extraction and purification through smelting.

Dental Gold Recycling - The gold found in pulled or discarded fillings, bridges and casting molds can be collected by dentists and sent to a recycler. The purity of dental gold is usually 16 karat, but it is slightly more complicated to recycle than jewelry because it may include nonmetal content like tooth enamel or porcelain. The recycler will use a process like acid reduction or reverse electroplating to extract the gold from the nonmetal elements. The extracted gold can then be formed into bars or further refined.

Make your own gold recycling business

Let’s write about recycling Gold from Electronic, Telecommunication & Computer Scrap. To find the gold keep your eyes and ears open. Don’t let to miss a chance to collect gold from scrap.

This post should give you simple guidelines how to collect scrap, sort all kind of electronics and recover gold from. To be successful in this business you need to keep your eyes and ears open.

Simply nut not easy enough. Make sure you know where gold is hidden and to find right price to pay for that kid a scrap. Also, important thing is to know the amount of gold in particular electronic device or part where you have gold plated parts.

For people doing this for a long time these values are well known but not if you are newbie.

Let’s take a look for mobile phones and try to figure out amount of gold inside these electronic devices - Some people saying that a bag of used mobile phones contains a gram of gold. There are a lot of mobile phones in the world, so how much of the gold we need can we get from them? This is the question everyone dealing with gold recycling business wants to know. Numbers can confuse some people, so let’s quote some text from experts saying about gold amount inside smartphones -

“There be gold in them thar smartphones”, said the European Commissioner for the Environment Janez Potocnik last month. He didn't use those exact words, but that was the general idea.
"The business case is clear," he said, as he launched revised waste and recycling targets for the EU.
"There's gold in waste - literally. It takes a ton of ore to get 1g of gold. But you can get the same amount from recycling the materials in 41 mobile phones."
This seems to be largely correct, whether the commissioner was talking about an imperial ton, or metric tons (one is 1,016kg, the other 1,000kg).

Take these facts and buy old smart phones with prices determined with global gold value at that time.

Now let’s see amount of gold in computer unit - When you buying CPU’s for recycling keep in mind that old ones contains much more gold per pound than new CPU’s. Also, as I shown on example before, low class and mid class CPU has less gold value per pound then high CPU class. These Intel Pentium vs Intel Celeron gives you real gold value per pound example.

To write more about gold inside processor chip - The processor is the brain of the PC. This means that every computer has one, and it contains plated pins. Some processors have high gold value per pound and some of them not. Older processors are generally larger and have more generous gold plating than more modern ones. For gold recycling business 386/486 and Pentium chips are particularly most valuable.

How to get out gold from old computer?

Do you really think that it is possible to get out gold from old PC?

If we talk about getting gold from old PC, it is crucial to understand recycling factor in the whole story. That means that you can't buy expensive computers and electronic parts to get out gold from them. Instead, you need to get cheap material for recycling. For that manner, we are saying Old PC and thinking about computers which don't worth someone as they are.

Gold price all around globe has become main reason for recycling gold from any source people can think about. Old Computers can be rich with gold content and that is why are they so much wanted recycling material. Keep in mind, not any PC component is worth with gold. Forget about power units or main housing components made from plastic. Make sure to collect all CPUs, motherboards, RAM modules and other components with gold plated connectors.

To get more secure way of doing this kind a job take a look at the documentary on NGC how people collect all kind of raw materials and how they extract gold. In most cases they need to use hazard chemicals so be careful and let the professionals do that step. All you need to do is to collect gold plated components, broke them apart and take them to recycling plant in your area.

It is possible to do it at your home if you know what are you doing, but still it is important to know how dangerous that process can be.

For those people who don't want to deal with chemicals it is better way to take their scrap to someone who can do it in a professional way with right equipment.

On my further posts I will show some other cool examples of gold hidden inside electronic devices. In that way you can see where to look for gold and how to make money from it. Don't throw away old electronic devices, keep them instead and sell their gold content.

Beside gold maybe you can find silver or some other noble metal.

Is there gold inside scanner sensor?

I have this old HP scanner and before I throw it away I decide to take a closer look on the inside parts.

Here is this small PCB with some electronic components and this light sensor (scanner sensor) which shows some golden color inside.

I have broken this protective glass and decide to keep these gold plated connectors for later use.

Here you can see some pictures of what I mean.

Recycling gold from electronic waste

Gold can be found in almost every part of electronics. Gold is hidden inside electronic components, and with a little knowledge and willpower we can recycle that gold.

Electronic components that contain gold inside are motherboards from computers, boards from cell phones, electronics from audio and video equipment and similar group of products.

Cell phones and computers are the most popular source for getting gold in the world today. Recycling gold from electronic scrap is the second most valuable way to get gold. First are still gold mines all over the world.

During the production of electronic components factories consume a considerable amount of gold, and therefore it is important at the end of the working cycle of the equipment to recycle the elements necessary for the production of new contemporary devices. The recycling process is far cheaper than digging gold from the mines and recycling has become a large and lucrative business around the world.