Recycling Gold from Smart Cards.

[Emanance]

Was about to cut up an old expired credit card when I got to be wondering what type of metal is used on the contact surface of the in built chip most modern cards now have. Wikipedia tells me all contact cards have gold plated contacts, which makes sense as gold would be the only metal that won't oxidize during the life of the card that still has a high electrical conductivity.

After a little more googling I came across this forum page http://goldrefiningforum.com/~goldrefi/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=13051 Turns out some backyard refiners have successfully got some very small amounts from recycling quite a few cards. I imagine most smart cards that rely on contact would have small amounts of gold plating on them, like sim cards for phones. Probably not practical to recycle them for the average Joe, but nice to know just the same.

 

[silversmith]

Do a search on Youtube for "gold recovery". Lots of videos of people trying to get the gold out of cell phones, computer chips and everything else with gold contacts. Also plenty of those things being sold on ebay.

My guess is the majority of them end up with a messy gold colored sludge worth far less than the money they spent on chemicals and equipment. Having said that, the idea of recovering scrap gold is interesting. It's kind of like urban prospecting for gold. I wonder what price gold has to hit to make it viable for the the average guy.

 

[silvertorrent]

I did take a very brief look into the topic of gold recycling; however got put off shortly afterwards as it is rather chemical intensive (that goldrefiningforum in the first post has way more reading material than I could ever get through) and expensive.

Were I able to gather enough products and good quality hard waste for this exercise; I would start out with say copper and other more common metals that are easier to extract/sort for recycling without the need of messy chemicals to extract Gold. Meanwhile I would be storing away items with gold/silver/other precious metals and reading up in depth about how to extract them; so that there is either enough to make it cost effective later and/or the price of these metals rises enough to cover recovery expenses (measure twice, cut once and pending disaster the metals will be there waiting for you).

 

[wrcmad]

My guess is the majority of them end up with a messy gold colored sludge worth far less than the money they spent on chemicals and equipment.

Not always the case.
I am lucky... I have access to free chemicals and lab gear, and I have a good mate who is a scrappy and supplies me with more waste PC's, laptops and mobiles than I have time to deal with.

As for messy sludge?......

 

[honey stacker]

^^Did you make that?^^ Thats a nice chunk of gold.

 

[wrcmad]

^^Did you make that?^^ Thats a nice chunk of gold.

I wish I could say that particular bar was mine, but it was made by another recycler.
This bar is now my goal.

 

[Emanance]

My guess is the majority of them end up with a messy gold colored sludge worth far less than the money they spent on chemicals and equipment.

Not always the case.
I am lucky... I have access to free chemicals and lab gear, and I have a good mate who is a scrappy and supplies me with more waste PC's, laptops and mobiles than I have time to deal with.

As for messy sludge?......

Sweet looking gold bar wrcmad! Lot's of character...Just learnt about Dead Weight Tonnage thanks to your photo .

 

[Dan Unda]

My guess is the majority of them end up with a messy gold colored sludge worth far less than the money they spent on chemicals and equipment.

Not always the case.
I am lucky... I have access to free chemicals and lab gear, and I have a good mate who is a scrappy and supplies me with more waste PC's, laptops and mobiles than I have time to deal with.

As for messy sludge?......

Sweet looking gold bar wrcmad! Lot's of character...Just learnt about Dead Weight Tonnage thanks to your photo .

Actually, the "dwt" in this instance means "pennyweight"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennyweight

 

[silvertorrent]

My guess is the majority of them end up with a messy gold colored sludge worth far less than the money they spent on chemicals and equipment.

Not always the case.
I am lucky... I have access to free chemicals and lab gear, and I have a good mate who is a scrappy and supplies me with more waste PC's, laptops and mobiles than I have time to deal with.

As for messy sludge?......

http://forums.silverstackers.com/uploads/4088_p1190280.jpg

http://forums.silverstackers.com/uploads/4088_p1190268.jpg

Not a bad goal to aim for

edit: Any short and simple tips for us beginners in this thread (raw basics not the whole kaboodle like on other websites). :|