How would one go about removing the gold, silver and copper content out of a cell phone?

Let's say you walked through miles of landfill and found 1000 used, broken cell phones people threw away. Assuming you're not dead after walking through said landfill, how could you remove the gold, silver and copper content from them?

If anything, I just found some people a job, I'm a solutions oriented guy. So what if you start growing another head, that's two more eyes to find trashed cell phones with.

DISCLAIMER: This suggestion is not endorsed by ATS.

Peace

Lol....i would imagine its a long painstaking process....hence they are just disposed of in landfill.

To get enough gold to make it worthwhile would take many people many hours...you see it in india.
Hundreds of kids climbing over old electronics getting the copper, gold etc from them.
Doesnt really seem to be a lot of money in it, yet these people would spend days dismantling old electronics.



They burn the plastic to get to the metals.....nasty

reply to post by Dr Love

Let's say you walked through miles of landfill and found 1000 used, broken cell phones people threw away. Assuming you're not dead after walking through said landfill, how could you remove the gold, silver and copper content from them?

I'd assume in a similar manner old pc mother boards are recycled. I work for the government in IT. Our warehouse is also home to a few other departments, one being a non profit group that rebuilds and recycles old pcs and equipment, donating them to schools and non profit groups.

They take a pc, strip it down bare and remove all the plastic from the case and the metal is sold as scrap metal. The motherboard contains gold (the traces and buses on the board itself) these are sent elsewhere and using a chemical process, all the excess non gold material, is removed leaving the gold traces which can later be melted down into bars (much later as there really isn't much in there)

reply to post by loves a conspiricy


That's true, it could apply to many more electronics as well.

Peace

Wikipedia has an article that describes all of the gold seperation techniques used by mines. That may be a good place to start. good luck though. There is so little precious metal used in electronics that the techniques used to harvest them on a small scale are rarely profitable. The call of gold is a relentless beast and if it was viable you would have endless competition and the dumps would be empty. It is more profitable to do basic breakdown and then ship the different components to different companies that specialize in dealing with them. Many recycle shops do this profitably.

Here's a good source for answers to the question on e-waste and urban mining:

Gold Refiners Forum

If you have a question this resource has the answer. One point of advice: If you choose to join be courteous and respectful, as these gentlemen who run the forums have been involved in the industry for decades and can help with educating you. They fully understand that the information they supply in of itself is as good as gold, and hence they understand that they don't have to supply anyone with anything, and thus the forum there isn't governed upon democratic rules, but rules based upon merit and intelligence.

You want knowledge, they give it to you, and with that being said, I hope the resources there will reveal to you the true answer you seek...

THE BASICS

Data
--Charts, Conversions, Calculators, Etc.
Chemistry
Types of PM Scrap
--Lists – Photos – Discussion
Where to Find Scrap
--Manufacturing Scrap – Used Scrap – Scrap Yards – The Public – Etc.
Safety
--Maybe the most important part. Your health has more value than gold.
Chemicals
--What you need – Where to get them – How to make them – Etc.
MSDS Sheets on Chemicals
--Official Datasheets on the chemicals we’re using – Safety and Properties
Legal Things
--Waste – Fume Control – Chemical Containment – Etc.

PROCESSES

Chemical Processes
--Formulas -
Other Processes
Mechanical, etc.
Techniques
--Filtering – Siphoning – Melting – Etc.
Eletrochemistry
Help Needed
--If you need help with the processes..

OTHER METALS

Silver
--Well... everything about silver !
Platinum, Palladium, Rhodium, Iridium, Osmium, & Ruthenium
--Any questions about other precious metals.
Non-ferrous metals
--Recovery of other metals.

LEARNING

Tutorials
Tutorial Questions/Comments
Books and Other Information
--Books - Internet links - Etc
Patents
--Refining Processes – Etc.

EQUIPMENT

Build your own Equipment
--Furnaces – Fume hoods -
Systems / Tools
--If you bought already made systems or tools

EVALUATION

Sampling/Assaying/Testing

PROFIT FROM PM SCRAP

EBay & Other Auctions
Refining as a Business

MINING & METAL DETECTING

Metal Detectors
--Models, techniques, characteristics, etc.
Prospecting
--Gold Hunting - Mining methods - Etc

TRANSACTIONS

Buy, Sell, Trade For sale
--Metals – Systems – Books – Chemicals - Etc..
Wanted items

MISCELLANEOUS

General Chat
--Everything but precious metals.
Gallery
--Show off your nuggets, gold bar, etc.
Forum Improvement / Ideas
--If you woke up this morning with a terrific idea...
About Yourself
--What you do in life, why you refine, etc.
Technical Problems
Useful Tutorials
--How-to guides, not related to precious metals.

enjoy!

Apparently there is about $0.40c of gold in an average mobile phone. This works out as 0.034g of gold lol.

lol... P.S.: I usually Ball and Mill my cell phones, then use a magnet to retrieve the goods (as most of the Precious Metals are going to be electroplated onto base metals... usually magnetically active irons and nickles). Copper based components, too, will be mixed with ferrous materials that magnetics will separate. Recycle the rest @ scrap iron prices ($.12 per pound).

Separate your metals based upon color... i.e.:

Silver colored metals = Silver, Palladium, Platinum, Ruthenium, Iridium
Yellow colored metals = Gold
Red colored metals = Copper, Gold, Palladium

in electronic wastes, Ball and Milling of PCBs (Printed Circuit Boards) is recommended - however, that depends on the circuit board. Ball and Milling stripped IC (Integrated Circuitry) chips and SMT (Surface Mounted Technologies) devices is best in efficient PM extraction. Sell a stripped PCB for scrap iron prices after processing.

Hard Drives, Optical Drives, Zip Drives, and Floppy Drives: Strip them of on board PCBs (collect and save. THESE PCBs go for $75 to $100 per pound, if not interested in processing these yourself!). Strip drives of optical apparatus. On Hard Drives, salvage internal platters and magnets (magnets are made of rare earth element Neodium), sell the aluminum cases. HD platters can possess 3% platinum if shiny silver colored. Gold colored platters are worthless, unless you wish to manufacture wind chimes, which they excel in their abilities to be such.

There is so much more to e-waste than can be covered here... That is why I recommend the Gold Refiners Forum as a source to discuss those other items.

Archives, out!

This is fascinating, cool thread, Now I wish my husband never got rid of our old computers, (still mad as hell, never told me) cause apparently the hard drives had other important contents in them as well lmao!!

I spoke to someone who setup a recycling business for old tech stuff once and they said that a lot of stuff was frozen and put through a large grinder to break it into tiny bits that were then somehow separated and then chemically separated.

reply to post by hapablab


I've thrown two cell phones into my trash accidentally, and then into the dumpster.

Nothing like looking for a cell phone that's somewhere on the other side of the city when you need it. I can just imagine who answered my calls.

Peace

Its really not as easy as one would think. First, you have to take your obsolete electronics and send them through a commercial shredder. Second, you have to get the heavier gold particles to drop out of this medium by running it through something similar to a sleuth box. Next you must dissolve (strip) the gold from its substrate that it has been plated on. You do this by using Aqua Regina (nitric acid/hydrochloric acid) or by dissolving in sodium hydroxide/sodium cyanide plating solution. Next you precipitate the gold by using reagents if you are going the Aqua Regina route. If you are using the plating solution approach, you need to redeposit the gold (plate) on a cathode. Its a messy, dangerous deal and not worth the time or effort unless you can realize tons and tons of scrap electronics for processing.

The only way to get the components separated is to melt them.
Plastic melts at a different temp then gold. Same with other metals.

Large industries do this to refine the products.

It's far easier and more productive to find the right spot of earth and dig it out (legally). We had a few week phase when we tried to salvaged precious metals from scrap electronics. As was said above, you need many tons of scrap electronics to make a profit.

I say strip as mush as you can manually. Take all the plastics to a local asphalt paving shop and ask the roller operator if he wants to have a little fun crushing some plastic, tell him its for a science project or something.
you will end up with tiny little scraps. Put a little elbow grease in action with a nice heavy bristle broom and pick up everything.

You can use your bathtub to eliminate a lot of the plastics as they will float to the top and the metals should sink.

From there you've got a good base to work with using a magnet, a fine sifter, some more running water and a lot of time.

Screw the tiny amount gold in a phone, however the LCD screen can easily be reused in ones own electronics projects. The motor/vibrator can be salvaged, the battery cell, the mic and speaker. A lot more if smd components doesn't scare one off.

reply to post by Dr Love


I had an idea, check what the meltingpoint of copper, silver and gold is. Try to build a machine that separates liquids from solids. The plastic should have evaporated before any of the metals melt I think.

reply to post by Dr Love


Alchemy?

maybe?

We're probably a little late if trying to recover worthwhile quantities of gold from discarded electronics. I knew some guys a long time back who were making a decent amount out of this but they concentrated on certain ICs from early computers (not PCs) that were white 40 pin or larger ceramic cases - these had a higher percentage of gold than anything you'd see now and even had heavily gold plated tracks on the surface of some of them. Rare as hen's teeth now though for good reason.

Having implemented a Euro Wide process on WEEE products. (covering 8 member states) the process is as others have stated smelting (the plastics are used fuel source) and given that these smelters actually do sell their ingots back to the markets (much to the annoyance of China/hence the price hike of rare earths) I would say the process is successful for the corporates involved (not in my opinion for the environmental considerations we are sold)

There are some good detailed documentation of the WEEE reclamation process on the net, I'll have a look and see what I can dig up that might help give some direction