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RECYCLING OF COMPS VIA ELECTROLYSIS

2007

TO MR. MOONEY OR ANYONE ELSE WHO CARES TO CARE: I ORIGINALLY STARTED THIS PROJECT WITH THE SAME HAREBRAINED SCHEME OF RECOVERING GOLD, BUT JUDGING BY MY RESEARCH THIS IS A PIPE DREAM FOR THE UNEDUCATED. I MYSELF HAVING A MA IN COMP. SCI. AND HELPING MY FAMILY IN THE RECYCLING BUSINESS(I'M A JUNKMAN!). PRESENTLY THERE ARE NO E-CYCLING BUSINESSES IN OKLAHOMA AND I AM THINKING... SO! NOW I HAVE A FEW CONCERNS TO BE ADDRESSED.
1) PCB PREP AND COMPONENTS TO NOT PLACE IN SOLUTION

2) WILL PLASTIC AND CERAMICS POWDER, I.E. CAN I PLACE A RAISED SCREEN
IN BOTTOM OF BATH TO "FILTER" LEFT OVER METALS

3) HOW IMPORTANT IS THE PH LEVEL AND DO I HAVE TO USE DISTILLED WATER

4) DOES THE CATHODE- HAVE TO BE COPPER FOIL IF NOT WHAT COULD I USE IN
A BATH OF CuSO4 AND HOW MANY

5) THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT FOR MY FINANCIER: IS THERE SOME TYPE OF EXPERIMENT
ON A SMALL SCALE (DINING TABLE OR SIMILAR) FOR DEMO PURPOSES.

I WOULD GREATLY APPRECIATE ANY COMMENTS OR HELP WITH THIS PROJECT. E-WASTE IS A SERIOUS PROBLEM I AM TRYING TO HELP WITH. IF ANYONE NEEDS THE PLANS FOR THE COPPER WASH FOR OTHER INFO PLEASE E-MAIL ME.
P.S. FOR MR. MOONEY. THANKS MUCH, I MAY HAVE TRIED FOR GOLD BUT YOUR ADVICE HAS SENT ME IN ANOTHER (SAFER!) DIRECTION. MY WIFE SAYS THANKS TOO.

VICTOR HATLEY
E-CYCLER(JUNKMAN) - OKLAHOMA CITY, OK

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2007

First concerns: Need a hazardous materials business license, EPA Hazardous Waste Generator ID no. and environmental liability insurance (others attempting this have caused air, soil & water pollution). Note that China has banned the importation of electronic wastes due to the low material benefit-to-cost (pollution created); find Internet photos of Guiyu, China.

Alchemy may be required to preferentially plate out gold from very dilute concentration; the more concentrated copper, lead, tin, iron, nickel, cadmium, bismuth, antimony, zinc, etc., would plate out in some mischmetal. Take the emf potential of each element & multiply by its concentration to get its relative propensity to plate from a mixed solution.

Electrolytic recovery probably isn't feasible except at the end of a long process. Most major recycling companies do disassembly & manual sorting, run stuff through a shredder, perform magnetic, electrostatic & density separations, then further separate the various plastics by specific gravity. The steel, aluminum, copper (with any gold), glass, and various plastics are sent in large volumes to final processors. The copper (& gold) may require hydrometallurgical refining (a la ores) prior to smelting smelting or electrowinning. One description:
"Circuit boards are shredded and sent to a refinery for precious metals recovery. Board material is processed utilizing thermal and hydro-metallurgical processes that minimize waste; chemicals and wastewaters are recovered/reused, and air emissions from the melting furnaces are captured and used to make industrial-grade sulfuric acid."

The economies of scale for shredding & sophisticated automated sorting have resulted in a few companies capable of recycling 4-9 million pounds of electronic waste per month. And maybe still only profitable from user fees -- e.g., recycling is subsidized by payments from companies complying with environmental laws and wanting old hard drives destroyed due to federal privacy laws. Check the recycling processes of Metech International (www.metechgroup.com), Global Electric Electronic Processing (http://www.geepinc.com) and Intechra (http://www.intechra.com).
HP & Dell recycle old computers for their customers and others willing to pay a fee ($13-34).

For more news on recycling electronic waste:
Recycling Today (magazine) https://www.recyclingtoday.com
International Association of Electronics Recyclers, Inc. (IAER) http://www.iaer.org
EPA (US) http://www.epa.gov/osw/elec_fs.pdf

Ken Vlach [deceased]
- Goleta, California
Finishing.com honored Ken for his countless carefully researched responses. He passed away May 14, 2015.
Rest in peace, Ken. Thank you for your hard work which the finishing world, and we at finishing.com, continue to benefit from.

I appreciate this response it was very informative on an industrial level, but for my financier (a recycler of repute and epa friendliness) I must perform this operation on the level of garage experimentation, for the purpose of demonstration. My friend doesn't believe the science, numbers, etc. and said he needed to see if it really works. Apparently someone has approached him about gold recovery and he is really up in arms about toxic chems and the idiots that handle them. He has no desire to employ cyanide or any other chems that "kill on open contact to the air". I need to do this on a 1-5 gal basis to demonstrate "it can be done" before we invest a lot into developing a system. Any help will be greatly reciprocated upon demo of simple matter.

VICTOR HATLEY
- OKLAHOMA CITY, OK
2007