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.

In this post - explaining how to recycle gold - you will be working with basic house hold chemicals

This is in detail, step by step process of turning old electronic parts into little round lumps of pure gold.

This process should never be attempted indoors.

In this post - explaining how to recycle gold - you will be working with basic house hold chemicals. By themselves these chemicals can be fairly harmless. The combination of such chemical which will be presented in this post can be extremely hazardous. By such there are a couple of safety items which are not optional.
The follow items are required. Be aware of risk and take these safety measures.
Breathing equipment - You will need a chemical mask rated AT LEAST as a P100. If you don’t know what a P100 rating means please don’t be lazy and find out. It is for your own safety.
Heavy duty Gloves - PVC or rubber is fine, do not use Latex or Nitrile gloves.
Safety Glasses - Any pair will work as long as It is safety rated and solvent rated.
Helpful items which can make doing these experiments easier.
Borosil glass labware.
2 and a 1/2 gallon bucket.
1 gallon bucket with holes drilled in the bottom - to be used as a strainer.
60 ounce pickle jar
Coffee filters
Filter holder from a coffee machine.
Spray bottle.
Mini scale measuring Grams and Ounces.
Some pipettes and test tube.
1 gallon of Clorox Bleach, or Sodium hypochlorate at 6%
Muriatic Acid  34% HCL ~ Baume.
Hydrogen Peroxide  - 3%  but no greater than 5%
Stumpout by Bonide, or Sodium bisulfate - 99.9% as specified in the Msds or Sodium Meta Bisulfite.
You cannot substitute these chemicals. Trying to do so will not give the required reactions. You want your materials to be as clean as possible with the least Amount of Garbage as possible.

Gold fingers are typically found on PCI cards, ISA cards, or on Memory sims/dimms/etc.  They create the corrosion free connection between the computer and the expansion card. This process can also be used to recover gold from CPU such as Pentium Pro, or Cyrix or older 486 and lower generation chips. Objective of this first chemical bath is to remove a large majority the base metals, Such as nickel, zinc and copper. After cleaning and removing your plated sections of computer parts, remove any visible capacitors transistors, or other components. Be sure to also remove any steel or iron parts attached.  These metals can foul the reaction causing poor results.

Tools you will using
100 ML beaker, 1 gallon bucket, 2 1/2 gallon bucket.
Chemicals you’ll need
Muriatic acid, and hydrogen peroxide.
Materials you are looking to recover.
First step, place your 1 gallon strainer bucket, into your 2 1/2 gallon wash bucket.  But first place your parts to be recovered inside your 1 gallon strainer bucket. Add enough muriatic acid to cover your fingers about 1 cm above your materials. Keep track of how many MLs are added. You want to keep your waste Acids to a minimum.  Second, to activate the solution you want to add your Hydrogen peroxide 3 - 5% solution in a 2 to 1 ratio. Take two parts muriatic acid to one part hydrogen peroxide. After the Peroxide has been added to your muriatic acid the mixture should start to bubble, and the base metals should begin to dissolve. At this point you should be wearing your safety gear because a few unfriendly fumes are being released. This process can take up to 24 - 48 hours. This works best at the temperatures of 80 - 90 F.
When this has been completed you will see a batch of gold foils floating in your now dark green acid.
Items required
Coffee filters
Filter holder
60oz pickles jar, or glass container large enough to contain waste acids.

Simply poor the contents of the two gallon bucket into the pickle jar using the coffee filters to catch any foils that are floating on the surface of the acid. Once you have poured off all the acid you will be left with a pile similar to what is in the picture. Scoop these from the bucket into another container for future processing.

Congratulation you are about 50% finished.

HEALTH WARNING

Melting at this stage may lead to the following health hazards.
Zinc - Inhalation of zinc oxide fumes can occur when welding or cutting on zinc-coated metals. Exposure to these fumes is known to cause metal fume fever. Symptoms of metal fume fever are very similar to those of common influenza. They include fever (rarely exceeding 102o F), chills, nausea, dryness of the throat, cough, fatigue, and general weakness and aching of the head and body. The victim may sweat profusely for a few hours, after which the body temperature begins to return to normal. The symptoms of metal fume fever have rarely, if ever, lasted beyond 24 hours. The subject can then appear to be more susceptible to the onset of this condition on Mondays or on weekdays following a holiday than they are on other days.
Beryllium - Beryllium is sometimes used as a alloying element with copper and other base metals. Acute exposure to high concentrations of beryllium can result in chemical pneumonia. Long-term exposure can result in shortness of breath, chronic cough, and significant weight loss, accompanied by fatigue and general weakness.
Mercury - Mercury compounds are used to coat metals to prevent rust or inhibit foliage growth (marine paints). Under the intense heat of the arc or gas flame, mercury vapors will be produced. Exposure to these vapors may produce stomach pain, diarrhea, kidney damage, or respiratory failure. Long-term exposure may produce tremors, emotional instability, and hearing damage.
Lead - Inhalation and ingestion of lead oxide fumes and other lead compounds will cause lead poisoning. Symptoms include metallic taste in the mouth, loss of appetite, nausea, abdominal cramps, and insomnia. In time, anemia and general weakness, chiefly in the muscles of the wrists, develop. Lead adversely affects the brain, central nervous system, circulatory system, reproductive system, kidneys, and muscles.
Cadmium - Cadmium is used frequently as a rust-preventive coating on steel and also as an alloying element. Acute exposures to high concentrations or cadmium fumes can produce severe lung irritation, pulmonary edema, and in some cases, death. Long-term exposure to low levels of cadmium in air can result in emphysema (a disease affecting the ability of the lung to absorb oxygen) and can damage the kidneys. Cadmium is classified by OSHA, NIOSH, and EPA as a potential human carcinogen.

Disposing your waste acids - Place your acid in a separate container, label these bottles as CLCu2 with a black sharpie marker. Under that write may also contain trace amounts of NICKLE and ZINC, BERYLLIUM, CADMIUM and LEAD. You can take these items to your local hazard roundup or recycle your acids with a method you prefer.
DO NOT dump your acids down the drain or on the ground. It is IMPORTANT to be responsible with wastes.

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.

Wonder if there is gold inside CPU?

New CPUs are made using new technology with a less gold than old ones, but still there is gold inside them. To find that gold first you need to take CPU apart and to search for gold plated elements inside CPU housing unit.

How much gold you can find inside CPU?

Here are two examples of gold plated components inside modern CPU. To be honest, these CPUs are not so modern anymore but they are used even in these days. You can find gold in personal computers but not as many as that was case in lately 80’s or early 90’s.

First example shows you gold plated components inside Celeron D processor and second one shows you 755 socket Chip with gold inside. Both of these CPUs are broken and gold is easy to be noticed.

Production process become more precise and gold plating was made more accurate which means that CPU’s from early 2k year contain less gold per unit than it was case in a decade before.

However, if you want you can still find gold to recycle. Not as much as it was case before, but it is worth to try to recycle even these new Celeron, Pentium or AMD chip.

CPU is component which is made of significant amount of gold. Mostly gold is trapped inside CPU housing unit. To collect gold you need to break it part and to look for plated parts. After that it is easy to dissolve gold plated surface and collect pure gold.

Amount of gold depends on which processor we talking about. Some of them have more gold than others but one guideline stays and that is - Older processors have more gold than new ones.

For example - Cyrix Cx486 processor contain about 0.11 grams of gold inside. That means that you can find one gram of pure gold inside 10 CPU units. It is not bad for recycling them. Other example is Cyrix 586 processor which contains 0.25 grams of gold inside single unit. You need only 4 of these processors to make one gram of pure gold. Take a note and do the math. It is quite good to break them apart and to dissolve gold from them.

Today we know that most valuable processors are Pentium PRO with about 1 gram of gold inside and AMD-K5 PR133 which contains 0.5 grams of gold. This applies for single CPU unit.

Gold plated circuit board and chip

Have many old boards and chip inside? Don’t know what to do? Maybe it’s time to sell those for recycling gold from.

To make money by selling old Computer parts you need to find recycling corporation which can take gold and silver out of electronic circuits. Gold value of Computer Chips found on Motherboards & PCB Circuit Boards can be significant especially with these gold prices.

Mostly old circuit boards are heavy gold plated but still you can find gold in these new ones. I have showed you already example of gold plated Intel CPU 755 Socket processor. Depending on their age, computer electronics and cell phone electronic boards can also contain rich gold content made up of gold-plated circuit traces, edge fingers, connectors, Integrated Circuits, transistors, & memory chips.

If you don’t know how to take them apart and to recycle gold from them it is a good idea to take your electronic parts to recycling plant and to ask for fair price.

Electronics from old army equipment can be rich with gold parts, also aero and radar equipment and telecommunication devices as well.

Make sure to know how to recognize those parts so you know where to look for gold.

Some printer devices contain gold and you only need to take board out of them, not mechanical parts. If you find old phones or some other telecommunication equipment make sure to look for gold plated parts.

Calculating actual gold value

While calculating gold value it is very important to know gold purity. Gold purity is known as Karat.

Karat represents the gold ratio inside the alloy in which it is located. Weight ratio of gold alloy and value of the carats gives you value or the amount of pure gold inside that specific alloy.

If the gold piece of jewelry or other piece has no mark for the karats then you can do test with the proper equipment, which can tell you gold purity.

Learn how to test gold to determine karats

If you don’t have the equipment to determine gold purity, then we suggest that you buy it. If you don’t want to spend money in that way, then just go to the jewelry and ask them to test your gold.

Anyway, if you want to do it yourself and you have equipment this is how it’s done. Reading gold purity with this method brings you reading something like these - 10, 14, 18 and 22 carats. This is quite accurate for such a use.

Now, if you suspect that you have 14 carat piece of jewelry do this. Rub a piece of jewelry by stone and put a single drop of acid from a bottle that reads 14 karat gold. If it is indeed the 14 karat gold then the acid will not show any reaction. If, for example, you don’t know the purity of gold at all, then you are doing the test that we wrote in a way to repeat the action with acids from the lowest to the highest value. The first time you see that the acid reacted know that you have previously lower carat value of gold jewelry.

How to determine the weight of gold?

Once you determine the purity of gold, the next step is to weigh gold. It is necessary to weigh the gold each group separately. So, if you have two pieces of jewelry with 18K gold and one piece of 10K and 22K gold do this. Do separate weigh measurement for 10K gold. Do separate weight measurement for two 18K gold pieces. And once again, do separate weight measurement for 22K gold piece.

While you do weight measures it is very important to use precision scale. If you own goldsmith's scale, which measures weight in ounces of gold then simply Calculate Ounces to Grams. 1 ounce contains 28.3495231 Grams.

On the end you need to determine the price of gold

The price of gold per ounce is changing every moment. However, to know the current value of gold on the world market is enough to look on the internet and read the chart.

Gold price is expressed per troy ounce, which is 31.1 grams of pure gold.

Divide the current value of gold per ounce from 01/31 to get one value per gram. The value you get now to be multiplied with the purity of gold you own. For each group of gold that you weigh divide it with 24 and then multiply the result with the current value of gold per gram.

And finally, just multiply the value of gold per gram with the weight of gold that you have weighed in grams.

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.