How to Extract Gold from Computer Circuit Boards?

A. The amount of gold you will get from 4 tons of circuit boards may not be worth the effort and cost.

There are at least two ways to get the gold: (1) cut off the tabs and strip them in cyanide (2) burn the entire collection, smelt the copper and gold out of the ash, then extract the gold from the copper. Both methods are highly regulated environmentally, as well as being dangerous. I suggest you stay out of the business.

A. Hello, those boards if made before 1990 should be worth a dollar per pound after you cut the gold plated material off. There are better ways of gold extraction other than cyanide. I have refined gold for many years and have never used any form of cyanide. Use a dilute Aqua-regia.

A. Hi, Marie, Heather, Matthew --

E-waste has become a curse on the planet. The first problem is that amateur recycling is a wrecking ball that scatters toxic waste everywhere. Add to it that the cost of recycling the whole item is so close to break even that the rest of the toxins become unrecoverable and buried everywhere if people do 'cherry picking' on the waste. The following video, and there are dozens like it from many major environmental organizations, explains why leaving the scrapped electronics whole is a pivotal ingredient in the world gaining control over the e-waste problem:

One convenient widget for locating green recyclers is on the Crutchfield site at www.crutchfield.com/environmental-policy/recycling.html.

Regards,

A. Hi, Tod. There is a "green recycler's pledge", which is intended to make sure the recovery of e-waste is part of a sustainable economy.

So "green recyclers" are forbidden from using prisons or slave labor, or other tricks which would make it impossible for legitimate businesses to compete against them. It's not possible for a small real business to compete against politically-connected firms for whom the public is paying much of their bills . . . so grants violate the spirit of the green recycler's pledge. And as we see time & time again, as each particular feeding trough runs dry, the real businesses in that field have been driven out by the unfair competition, the grant mill has moved to greener pastures, and the public is left with nothing but bills and shuttered businesses. Good luck in your endeavors, but please foreswear grants.

A. Ok curious.... I read one on here that said wouldn't be worth the time....
I broke down 5 comps.... I got 2 ounces of GOLD. from it... ok is the GOLD not going for $1000 to $1200 per ounce now?

Hi, Chuck. I doubt that your recovered gold is anywhere near pure yet, because it sounds improbable that a computer would have $500 to $600 of gold in it and sell for $399 complete :-) Please let us know how big the check actually is after you actually get it! Don't rely on extravagant claims as evidence that you will recover valuable amounts of gold -- we sometimes see people post glorious tales about how much money they recovered from scrap, only to find the same person selling scrap on eBay . . . and it becomes obvious that they made that claim to try to inflate the value of the junk they were hawking :-)

Good luck.

Regards,

A. Well here goes. I know it is very possible to profit off of old pc boards because the price of gold was a lot lower then say in the nineties gold may have been 600.00 hundred per ounce compared to now 975.00 per ounce so yes it can be profitable to dissect old boards for gold silver platinum and copper just be careful of health hazards. I will be honest, most people don't want you to know $$$$ in them there computers

A. This strikes me as highly improbable, Mark, but if you can provide a reference I'd certainly love to look at it.

Regards,

A. Hi, Jim. If they truly are dime sized (0.0207 in³) and four of them weigh 1 ounce, then their density is 12 oz per cubic inch, i.e., .75 pounds/in³, which is much heavier than silver or lead, a little heavier than gold, and about the weight of platinum.

For this to have any validity, though, you need to weigh them, not guess, and you need to carefully measure that they are dime-sized, not eyeball it. If they are rounded or odd shaped so that you can't easily calculate their volume, look up what Archimedes exclaimed "Eureka!" about -- if you drop them in water they will displace an equal volume of water.

If they are as heavy as you say, they are worth taking to a jeweler or gold dealer to be checked, as only precious metals or tungsten would be this heavy.

Regards,

A. In reference to the platinum in computers. i.e hard drives. there is only a very thin layer of in located on the disks themselves and even the amount in that is based on the age of the hard drive. the process involved in recovering that involves a lye solution which can be EXTREMELY dangerous using if all safety precautions are not followed.

A. Your circuit boards are worth Serious money if you have "tons" of them.

Average Circuit Board Values range from 25 Cents per pound for low grade power supply boards to over $4 per pound for main frame computer boards.

There has not been any computer related product with any solid gold since the early 70's and that was some main switch gear from at&t.

Everything else is gold plate from 10,000th's of an inch for standard computer products to 30,000th's of an inch for military specs.

An average pc (personal computer) has a mother board, and a few riser boards. Current market value for these mother boards is $2 per pound, and $2.50 per pound for the riser boards---better known as "finger" boards ---because of the gold plate edge connector plate.

Processor Chips which we refer to as "high-grade" can be worth $25 to as much as $100 per pound.

Hope that helps everybody---don't get "snowed"

A. To Patti L: Your pins off the chips are most likely gold-ruthenium alloy, still valuable. Ru is paramagnetic so it will stick to a magnet. The gold passes the acid test, and Ru tests magnetic.

Hi, John. You pose an interesting question, but it isn't answerable until it is rigorously defined.

Actually, 100% of anything is recyclable. But if you need to spend 2 pounds of chemicals and a lot of energy to recover 1 pound of product, do we call it recyclable or not? It's surely not worthwhile to create 2 pounds of waste to recover a pound of sand. But how about to recover a pound of gold?

Environmentalists often consider business an enemy, so it's probably hard to say this in your college classes, but a good way we can answer your question is by considering something recyclable if it is economically viable to recycle it. I think that since it costs you money to recycle a computer, rather than paying you money, computers are presently "not recyclable". When we reach the point where people pay you for scrap computers rather than you having to pay them for responsible disposal, that's the point at which they can be considered "recyclable".

Regards,