Honest circuit board refining / PM recovery

[mike5ive]

I joined this forum 3 days ago because I'm sitting on 2,300 pounds of laptop circuit boards and I though I might find an honest place to do business with here and so far all I see are people wanting to buy my boards and I have one reply saying I should think about just selling them so let me get this straight.
Leaving aside all other PM that can be recovered besides gold
Approx one ton of decent boards will get you 5 oz, "give or take
Or 250 lap tops will get you the same Approx 5 oz
so if you have 2,000 pounds of desktop main boards and you sell them outright you may expect approx $3,000 (give or take)
I'm not even going to get into the laptop situation for the purposes of this post, only the desktop 2,000 pounds.
So you do the math, $1,600 X 5
Yet no one knows of anyplace that will work with the public? I call that garbage
How about we start our own business of recovering PM from said circuit boards, I have a very good feeling that if we were to start a go fund me page in order to raise say $1,000,000 to do so "considering there is no other place doing so"
It might very well be pretty easy to do.
Who's with me on this idea?

[IamTheGreatest]

I can't believe nobody in this group thought of this before!!!!! We sure are glad you stopped by.

If you want, you can buy my gaylord of boards from me, I'll sell them cheap to you. 1.25 a lb, you pay for shipping.

[mikeinreco]

My question is what is the cost of recovering the 5 ounces of gold......where are you getting your figures that 250 laptops will yield 5 ounces of gold?.....by your figures each laptop should be worth approx $36 just in gold weight

[hills]

There's plenty of info here on matters related to refining. It comes up every month or so.

Most of the time it's a one and done once the new person begins to comprehend what's involved.

[APA]

I say we do a Kickster campaign. Raise $1,000,000,000,000,000. Then use that money to clone Elon Musk. Then we build a rocket ship to Mars and mine there. Hire local aliens for cheap non union labor. They have to get tested for Coronavirus first.

[ragstoriches]

I say we do a Kickster campaign. Raise $1,000,000,000,000,000. Then use that money to clone Elon Musk. Then we build a rocket ship to Mars and mine there. Hire local aliens for cheap non union labor. They have to get tested for Coronavirus first.

I'm in. That sounds like a reasonable idea, as does the 5oz of gold theory. Worth a try

[WhiteSquirrel]

Been watching some Westworld lately, I think that should be the direction we take for Musks' cloning. Bought some schematics for a "DYI robot cloning machine" off ebay for a great deal, will let you guys know how it works after I assemble it!

[kss]

I joined this forum 3 days ago because I'm sitting on 2,300 pounds of laptop circuit boards and I though I might find an honest place to do business with here and so far all I see are people wanting to buy my boards and I have one reply saying I should think about just selling them so let me get this straight.
Leaving aside all other PM that can be recovered besides gold
Approx one ton of decent boards will get you 5 oz, "give or take
Or 250 lap tops will get you the same Approx 5 oz
so if you have 2,000 pounds of desktop main boards and you sell them outright you may expect approx $3,000 (give or take)
I'm not even going to get into the laptop situation for the purposes of this post, only the desktop 2,000 pounds.
So you do the math, $1,600 X 5
Yet no one knows of anyplace that will work with the public? I call that garbage
How about we start our own business of recovering PM from said circuit boards, I have a very good feeling that if we were to start a go fund me page in order to raise say $1,000,000 to do so "considering there is no other place doing so"
It might very well be pretty easy to do.
Who's with me on this idea?

What do you mean all you see are people wanting to buy your boards? What else are you looking for?

If you have 2300lbs of laptop motherboards, there are buyers on here offering $4.25/lb, thats $9775. And they work with the public, you could send them your stuff tomorrow if you wanted.

What are you complaining about?

Also, there are tons of places already doing metals recovery AND $1,000,000 probably isn't enough to start one up regardless.... so.... everything you are saying is wrong and makes no sense.

[IamTheGreatest]

Boy, I bet a lot of you guys are kicking yourselves for not sending to a refiner!!

I hope he does know the other stuff in a laptop has a good value too.

[jimicrk]

I blame youtube.

[406Refining]

When I first designed my hard drive shredder (still waiting for parts which is annoying) I did some other number crunching on the prices if you were to build the equipment yourself. These costs were with no revisions meaning everything designed worked 100% as planned which never happens in the real world. These prices are a rough estimate since the driving costs for each piece of equipment ultimately is determined by the gearboxes and motors you can find.

Below is what the numbers come to for board processing equipment:

-initial shredder: $5k-$8k
-hammer mill (for pulverizing board chunks): $3k-$5k
-conveyors (optional): $1k-2k each
-shaker table (purchasing a commercial unit): Commercial: $10k Homemade: $2k-$3k

Total Investment: $11k-$25k

If you were to send the metal paste to a refiner the above cost would be your equipment investment. If you were to refine it further you would need a full lab setup and a large smelter and a copper electrolysis cell. Even $25k is a steep investment for most of us, but $25k is better than $250k for professional equipment.

[JJinLV]

And 406 don't forget the ventilation system you'll need to not die a horrible silicosis death from inhaling fine silica particulates from pulverized circuit boards!

[WhiteSquirrel]

And 406 don't forget the ventilation system you'll need to not die a horrible silicosis death from inhaling fine silica particulates from pulverized circuit boards!

Way to be a buzzkill!

[t00nces2]

Honestly, you would be better off to break down your computers and sell them as scrap to escrap buyers and take the money and buy the gold outright. Good luck.

[eesakiwi]

I first thought that escrap went to refiners who seperate every sort of escrap.
And then clean the ferrous off it & then it would go up big vats of acid in Titanium mesh baskets to removed the Solder.
And the boards would be mulched & acid reaction baths to remove the Copper tracks from them.

The individual components seperated via many different methods & various acid baths to remove the PM's ( Precious Metals ) and then each is melted into ingots.

Nah, they get checked for excess Ferrous & such, mulched & dumped into smelter pots of molten Copper at a Copper mine & the PM's are extracted during the refining of the mined Copper product.
Since they had to do that anyway to the mined Copper.

So really there's not a lot extra for them to do but account for the input escrap & sorting, and do the numbers for the extra PM's they get out at the end of the process.

No 'Startup costs'. No extra investment. A little more production costs for a much better return on a long term known existing production facility.
It's probably the refiners who refine the Copper slimes, or they do it as 'in house' refining anyway.

[t00nces2]

I first thought that escrap went to refiners who seperate every sort of escrap.
And then clean the ferrous off it & then it would go up big vats of acid in Titanium mesh baskets to removed the Solder.
And the boards would be mulched & acid reaction baths to remove the Copper tracks from them.

The individual components seperated via many different methods & various acid baths to remove the PM's ( Precious Metals ) and then each is melted into ingots.

Nah, they get checked for excess Ferrous & such, mulched & dumped into smelter pots of molten Copper at a Copper mine & the PM's are extracted during the refining of the mined Copper product.
Since they had to do that anyway to the mined Copper.

So really there's not a lot extra for them to do but account for the input escrap & sorting, and do the numbers for the extra PM's they get out at the end of the process.

No 'Startup costs'. No extra investment. A little more production costs for a much better return on a long term known existing production facility.
It's probably the refiners who refine the Copper slimes, or they do it as 'in house' refining anyway.

Thank you ee. That makes sense. Percent of salable product is much higher there than in a ton of rock.

[alloy2]

I joined this forum 3 days ago because I'm sitting on 2,300 pounds of laptop circuit boards and I though I might find an honest place to do business with here and so far all I see are people wanting to buy my boards and I have one reply saying I should think about just selling them so let me get this straight.
Leaving aside all other PM that can be recovered besides gold
Approx one ton of decent boards will get you 5 oz, "give or take
Or 250 lap tops will get you the same Approx 5 oz
so if you have 2,000 pounds of desktop main boards and you sell them outright you may expect approx $3,000 (give or take)
I'm not even going to get into the laptop situation for the purposes of this post, only the desktop 2,000 pounds.
So you do the math, $1,600 X 5
Yet no one knows of anyplace that will work with the public? I call that garbage
How about we start our own business of recovering PM from said circuit boards, I have a very good feeling that if we were to start a go fund me page in order to raise say $1,000,000 to do so "considering there is no other place doing so"
It might very well be pretty easy to do.
Who's with me on this idea?

Years ago was in a red light district looking for a wife, the first women i met told me, honey your looking in the wrong places.

[aurum]

I joined this forum 3 days ago because I'm sitting on 2,300 pounds of laptop circuit boards and I though I might find an honest place to do business with here and so far all I see are people wanting to buy my boards and I have one reply saying I should think about just selling them so let me get this straight.
Leaving aside all other PM that can be recovered besides gold
Approx one ton of decent boards will get you 5 oz, "give or take
Or 250 lap tops will get you the same Approx 5 oz
so if you have 2,000 pounds of desktop main boards and you sell them outright you may expect approx $3,000 (give or take)
I'm not even going to get into the laptop situation for the purposes of this post, only the desktop 2,000 pounds.
So you do the math, $1,600 X 5
Yet no one knows of anyplace that will work with the public? I call that garbage
How about we start our own business of recovering PM from said circuit boards, I have a very good feeling that if we were to start a go fund me page in order to raise say $1,000,000 to do so "considering there is no other place doing so"
It might very well be pretty easy to do.
Who's with me on this idea?

HA HA HA!!!

Sorry, no one will refine such a small lot. If you want to go to a refiner directly, you will need quantity. Usually 40,000 lbs at a time, and commit to ship on a regular basis.
How do you know how much gold is in your boards? Only way to know is to do an assay. Each lot will be different, based on the particular mix in the lot. In order to do a meaningful assay, the lot must be shredded, blended and sampled properly! Ewaste is very difficult to sample properly, as the material is not very homogeneous, even after shredding. If you don't have a representative sample, the assay will be worthless! A good quality commercial assay is about $150 PER ELEMENT, you need to assay for at least gold, silver, copper, palladium.

Just the cost of shredding, blending, sampling and assaying already nearly exceeds the value of such a small lot! This is one of the reasons why no large smelter wants to deal with small lots. I have worked in this industry, mostly on the side of sampling/assaying.

As far as the smelting and recovery goes, it will take many millions in investment to set it up, tons of permits, regulations to follow etc. If you think you can compete with the large smelters, go ahead!

Most buyers on here pay a fair value for the boards, based on estimated yields, based on years of their experience with similar lots. The smelters don't work for free either, they only pay out a ertain percentage of the recovered metals, plus there are all kinds of additional charges. In some cases there are even penalties for certain elements if they are present above a certain concentration (things like arsenic, selenium, cadmium, etc) Considering all that is involved, the buying prices are fair in my opinion. They take all the risk, and you get paid regardless.

[APA]

Years ago was in a red light district looking for a wife, the first women i met told me, honey your looking in the wrong places.

Tell us about your red light district and wife seeking adventures.

[alloy2]

I say we do a Kickster campaign. Raise $1,000,000,000,000,000. Then use that money to clone Elon Musk. Then we build a rocket ship to Mars and mine there. Hire local aliens for cheap non union labor. They have to get tested for Coronavirus first.