My Recovered GOLD from eWaste

Cind3r

Cind3r

Active Member
Silver Stacker
Hello Stackers

I wanted to share my journey with you about recovering gold from ewaste.

This account was my first test run with a small sample to see if i could even do it.

I used circuit board cuttings from mobile phones and ram chips
EWaste Scrap

EWaste Scrap

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Once i bathed it for 3 days in a HCL+H2O2 bath, filtered and washed i got the gold plate
Gold Flake from eWaste

Gold Flake from eWaste

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Next i disolved in HCL and Bleach(7%). Filtered and washed and i got this awesome 22.5+ Kt gold mud
Purified gold mud

Purified gold mud

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Now the next part was a bit sad because the instructions i followed stuffed me.
What was meant to happen was to dry out the mud then place it in a crucible with flux....problem was the flux i used turned into glass and would not remelt once set so i could not get my gold. What i did was crush the gold/glass and re-disolve it ect.
This incident took 90% of my yield but i learnt a lot from it.

Here is what i had left
recovered gold close up

recovered gold close up

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recovered gold on scales

recovered gold on scales

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it would have been profitable. im still happy :)

I took to gold to a seller with an Xref just to find out the purity and was told that its 24kt. The Xref did not show any other elements on the screen. I would have been ok with some copper, nickle, zinc, tin or lead as they are the base metals that i dissolved to get the gold plate flake
 
Awesome! I have been smashing through ewaste ever since I bought a 1oz button from Humbolt maybe 4 years ago but don’t know what to do with it.
 
Awesome.
From scrap to money and cool skills learned/used along the way.
Keep up the great work and do not be shy in sharing the results.
 
Out of curiosity. What was your expense of the Ewaste (not the consumables) to get 0.13g
 
well i got it all for free from being a bin scab. Also i got about 200 old 90's-2010's mobile phones from my old work.

i buy ewaste boards for about $3/kg off gumtree if the grade of the board is ok (stay away from power supply boards)
 
Whats the going rate for the gold fingers cut of the memory sticks out of computers ? or do buyers prefer the whole memory stickers kept in tact ?

Cheers, HAPPY STACKING :-)
 
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