To lose some gold to teach people some mistakes, this is considered a noble act on your part. That's why I love you, love your work, and enjoy watching your work
i agree but would add that whatever his motives are is a mute point in my eyes. he's so patient with us green-peas in the comment section while being so attentive/thorough in the information he disseminates. Watching this channel regularly is akin to apprenticing at a jewelry repair shop or a gold mine or something (ie INVALUABLE.) Ty Sreetips
Still very nice Chief. To the peeps wondering, etched copper tracks on PCBs will oxidise and disappear quickly if they're not protected and the best way through a process called ENIG. That stands for electroless nickel immersion gold. There's a nickel layer between the gold and copper so the gold doesn't diffuse into the copper track underneath. First the board is immersed in the liquid nickel ion solution, rinsed and followed by the gold layer which makes its stick to the nickel. That's another reason why sreetips first method of removing the copper and nickel first is the best way to go. Too many possible reactions happening with the second method including production of nickel chloride which can be carcinogenic if inhaled.
I found an interesting way of releasing the foils hydrochloric acid 99% hydrogen peroxide 1% leave for 100 hours no heat. Foils release and every metal below hydrogen on the reaction table dissolves into the solution. Leaving you copper and every metal above. Making stage 2 less complicated. And stage 3 higher yeilds. There are so many methods out there awesome episode brother I definitely will never use that method.
I've watched your videos long enough to know that you always want to get those base metals out first and the way to do that (as you've demonstrated many times) is through nitric boils since gold doesn't easily dissolve in nitric acid alone. This was a really nice demonstration of why you do it that way - it looked really difficult to do and not very rewarding in the end - hats off to you for taking the time and effort to show this!
Solution held on to almost half the gold. . Just like it held on to the color green. The process worked but isn't efficient. Thank you for the excellent chemistry demonstration Sreetips 🐉🇺🇸🦅 Hope you have a great Fourth of July 🙏 God Bless
First off i am man enough to say when i am wrong Professor . As it went along , i was like so what it is dirty. Quicker & less waste & then you got the yield & woops. Ty for taking us along
This video reminds me of something that happened to a friend of mine, an older fellow named Tom I knew about 15 years ago... Back in the 80s he acquired some gold plated circuit boards, and decided to get the gold off of them. Unlike you, he wasn't the type to do small scale tests, though. He did some library research, bought supplies, hired a friend, and they took some barrels of circuit boards out to the desert, BLM land near Ocotillo Wells, and set up in a disused gravel mine. I guess he and his friend just dumped jugs of hydrochloric acid and nitric acid in there... When it fumed up massively, he just said to his friend, "let's go into town and get some coffee." And they took off. Someone saw or smelled the fume cloud, and the police were called. They tried to charge him with an environmental crime but it didn't stick, the text of the crime mentioned specified it applied to "the waters of the state" and there's really no water out in that area. The only charge that stuck was a type of littering. The judge was sympathetic to his "minerals recovery operation gone wrong".
It was definitely interesting to watch, and see what happens when you skip the step in the refining of gold. Thanks for sharing this with us. Much appreciated Sreetips!
As long as I’ve been a subscriber, the stannous test sounds like something a doctor would do with a gloved hand. “Okay, cough for me” 😂 I always enjoy your videos. It makes me want to learn how to *safely* refine metals.
I just wanted to say thanx Mr Shreetips. It's always interesting and a pleasure to watch your channel. I feel a bit of a voyeur when i say i have watched your evolution as a channel for years. I have felt privileged also to meet your b er loved family via this channel. I couldn't put into words how greatful I am to be able to emulate and copy your methods. I now need to watch your series on PGM recovery from filters etc. Thanks to you and your hard work, my family benifits from your shared skills. Forever in your debt and entirely greatful, THANKS to you and your family.
I'm curious of the costs, equipment and supplies, involved in processing precious metals. Have you done a video addressing costs? An overview of all of the equipment/supplies would be great too.
What this video teaches someone inexperienced (like me): the "gotcha" of this method is the idea that "aqua regia dissolves gold" - but without knowing that it really should instead be "aqua regia ALSO dissolves gold." It doesn't JUST dissolve gold. Gold is kind of the LAST thing it dissolves, apparently.
Very interesting how the 2 methods vary in yield. I can see how the gold can get lost easily. This method is like driving in a blizzard. You can't see where you're headed with all the metals dissolved together in solution. Even losing a couple of grams of gold in the process is costly in the end. Thank you for showing this method. More kilos to go.👍
Go to school so in part you're prepared to go make money in the "real world", but I'd guess you're presented with a bunch of less useful real world experiments that are more of a novelty etc and lots of memorization. Apprenticeship at least lets the kid put a meager roof over his head as crooked the whole money system is etc. But 300k loans for a possibly worthless degree and you know squat after you get out except how to really order a double caramel frappe latte cappucio. Sreetips incorporates the thing probably missing in school. A real practical way to help keep something going your way with some effort and knowledge/skill on your end. Rote learning in school to get a grade probably doesn't stick around. In short you could probably learn more off RU-vid for all its censorship and flaws than spending top dollar at a university because it's considered appropriate.
I agree with Andy, you're probably having fun with nickel during the refining process. The good news is that both ENIG (electroless nickel under immersion gold) and ENEPIG (electroless nickel, electroless palladium, immersion gold) are pretty common so you might be getting a little palladium bonus to help offset the nickel frustration.
you can try to refine the gold from the solution using electrolysis and 2 graphane rods (from an old battery for instance). it will be more cost-effective and you do not need to reans all that dirty solution. you can refine the deposited metal afterward. the downside is that a lot of nasty gases will be released during the process and you need to do it under the fume hood.
I was a little surprised you didn't use ferrous sulphate for precipitation of such a dirty extraction. Do you think using FeSO4 would be more selective in dropping out just gold and leaving base metals and nickel in solution?
I’ve definitely tried this during my early days of refining and learned the hard way haha. After 13 years of playing with Ewaste, if you insist on acid route instead of cyanide or bacterial leaching, the best way to have done this properly, would have been to use about 65% sulphuric acid mixed into 10% water, and 25% AR. The sulphuric acid causes a passivation layer on the copper/nickel to allow the AR to leach the gold off, and obviously will precipitate lead out once cooled. Carefully Get it hot and keep the materials in the solution until you see the gold is gone. Then decant, rinse very well, and once cooled, filter and drop, refine after the recovery, etc etc. You’ll get some base metals of course into solution, but it’s a small fraction compared to the mess of trying AR like this.
I prefer hot dilute nitric to do the recovery. Then refine the loose foils with AR. Just a matter of personal preference. There are many ways to get the gold from this type of scrap.
I love chemistry and this stuff fascinates me, but I'm a bit too clumsy and so I stay well enough away from these things, but I enjoy watching and learning. Thanks as always Sreetips!
I'd like to see an xrf of that button. I've done some experiments myself trying to recover the copper after Ag cementation. Adding SMB to barren blue nitrate solution drops copper as a flour like red powder. Ultra fine red powder. So there has to be some copper in that button being it was never removed. This leads me to also believe that not only is there copper in there, but who know what else came out with the Au and Cu. I could see the copper not melting as quickly as the gold and remaining in the melt dish residues as well, also with some Au clinging to it. Very surprised to see Less total metal in the end result than expected. I actually expected More total weight than less because of this. Probably locked up in complexes 'somewhere' with the missing Au as he said.
Hey sreetips would the cheapest way to get rid of the base metals not be peracitic acid by useing vinegar and with an addition funnel full of hydrogen peroxide I tested this mix on a half silver half copper ring and it fully dissolved in less than 24 hrs and those base metals there are super thin shouldn’t take more than a few hrs with a dollar or 2 worth of chemicals would like to see it tried by a professional like yourself
Ya the nitric is clean I was thinking supply cost but with the price of gold now I guess production beats cost there is enough profit margin to do it the nitric route in other words I remember recycling computers back when gold was a lot lower and everything u could do to maximize profit u did never did any refining myself tho just the people we worked with did anyway awsome videos really enjoyed the platinum series recently!
What do think will happen to the gold when all the surface base metals are dissolved, and there is still sub-surface copper traces present in the circuit boards?. Don't forget that most trimmed fingers come from multilayer circuit boards. you can really see the copper once the outer layer of copper is gone and you can then see wavy lines of copper underneath the fiberglass.
Interesting to see how big difference there were between the two methods. The question is where the gold went. The liquids looked barren so I don't think it went to the stock pot. That leaves the circuit boards. One thing I've seen is that gold could cement out on the inside of multi-layer boards and when it does it's hard to get it again. I would run a sample of these leached fingers in aqua regia and test with stannous to see if there is some gold left in it. There are many videos of people running all different kind of scrap straight into aqua regia and doesn't seem to have any problem. The difference between you and them is that you are careful with your nitric usage while the usual way is to run with a 3:1 or 4:1 mixture from the start. With such a high nitric concentration I think it inhibits any gold cementing. Whenever I run any unknown material I usually do a second digestion if I suspect that I could have missed something.
I did a recovery video on the waste solutions. There’s still gold in those waste solutions. I think one viewer nailed it: when there’s gold, copper, nickel, and iron in solution all at once, the base metal ions interfere with the gold precipitation. It’s slow and cumbersome compared to precipitation with just gold in solution by itself. Which underscores why it’s a bad idea to use Aqua Regia before all the base metals are removed.
Not sure how this would work, but some of the resins used in the underlying circuit board are dissolvable in sodium hydroxide. It might be interesting to see if you can separate the foils first that way.
Would be interesting to see the dry weight of the fiber boards after having the metal removed to determine the total weight of metal removed from the boards...
I wonder if it will come down to a stronger acid to dissolve the base metals quicker vs less removal and rinsing steps. I think that would be the only advantage if there is one. After the base metals are dissolved then it would be dissolving the gold after so all the waste scrap can be removed out. I see this being more for a fully fleshed out refining process for doing a lot of these fingers in mass if not general computer boards to also recover copper and other metals for processing. For a process like this size, its more of a hassle to deal with since you are going for the gold only. For a larger operation removing the boards would be more optimal as then they just have to pump out the liquids and then separate out after.
I have a dedicated acid I use just for removing Gold fingers from edge connectors. It's a Mixture of Hydrochloric acid, 3% hydrogen Peroxide and Dissolved copper. Basically it's used AP. After I use the fresh acid and peroxide mixture, I don't throw it out. I re-use it over and over. When the solution gets a little thick (1-2 uses) I just add a little more acid. When this solution is heated, I can strip a batch of fingers of it's gold in less than 12 hours.. It seems the more copper that is dissolved in solution, the stronger it gets. I don't dispose of the mixture until about 10 uses. It just gets too saturated to filter.
I thought about you doing it this was when I watched your last vid on these things. I figured it would just take everything and then you'd have to refine it some more. I didn't think it would be the massive pita as you showed us here.
Another tip: Second option besides the first one I’d mentioned is to put into AR multiple times, rinsing and filtering after each step. Stannous test after each one, but you know due to the reactivity of metals, that the base metals will tend to go in first prior to the gold, so by the 2nd or 3rd AR step, it’s much easier to work with and drop the gold.
Great vid as usual Mr. Driver. This what makes me laugh about the “bucket” vids out there. They must lose so much metal because they don’t separate the foils first. Electronics are filthy anyway and this is proven by Streetips’ first filtered solution.
I wonder if putting the nitric acid into a drip setup would avoid some of the “babysitting” you need to do? It may require a longer evaporation period, but at least you could possibly make better use of time. Just a thought. This was a captivating experiment, for sure 👍🏻
Good work team. I watched Philip benders video as per your recommendation and completely forgot I had watched it once before. Unfortunately though, we don't have that same brand of stump out as he recommended, and sulfuric acid isn't free to purchase. You need special permission because people think you would use it as poison. So, basically, shit out of luck. I wanted to use nitric to get gold but ok.
Your Chanel is awesome!!! Big fan! So I was browsing the internet and came across something called purple gold. Apparently it’s a mixture of gold and aluminum, and turns gold purple! Maybe something you want to try and make a video? I think that would be really cool!
Can you do a video of the different colors aqua regia makes with various metals? I thought the yellow it makes with gold was beautiful but that green/emerald color was just as wild! Thanks for the videos!
As my chemistry teacher told us in school when we were 15: "Gold is boring. It only reacts to a few things, and even then, it's the most laid back reaction compared to everything else! It's why Gold's so valued as jewellery: it survives almost everything."
Plus, contrary to what people think, gold is NOT an investment to be bought low and sold high. Gold is real money. Gold is wealth. Paper dollars are a money substitute and require third-party validation. Not so with gold (and silver). They stand on their own.
The scientific thing to do now is to figure out where the retained gold actually is, and why. I don't see how gold stannate could be in play here. Possibly absorption into the circuit board materials?
After that first filtration, I would have put the fingers and the filter residue in boiling AR (on the back burner) to recover any remaining gold while working the filtrate.
Could you have put some sort of metal ( say iron) in the liquid to get the unwanted base metal out, before going to the SMB dosing? Just trying to get a cleaner and quicker result. ??
Do you think you will try to recover that lost gram and a bit of gold out of that mucky solution? I'd think it's probably not worth it now, with the cost of materials, acids and your time etc for that little amount lost, i mean it could be for the ad revenue by doing a video on it maybe? Whats your thoughts? I was thinking... you could try evaporating all the dirty liquids to get a solid mass, then see if its possible to remove the base metals using nitric acid and see if you can get the gold that way?
If you had produced this mixture in a zero atmosphere environment then leave it for long enough exposed to sunlight, I believe you would create inorganic life!
