Recycling Old Cell Phones & Electronics

[BrutalBeck]

I started taking apart old cell phones a few months ago. Yes, there is precious metals in cell phones and electronics, especially gold. The motherboards are coated in gold. But, I know for myself that there isn't enough gold to make a fortune and you would need about a ton of just cell phones, just to make it worth the while. I talked to a guy on the east coast who runs a recycling company. He says they pay $1.62 per pound for old cell phones and electronics. Which tells me, obviously, that I have a very long way to go before I ever see any kind of profit from this. I have 11 cell phone boards, 1 old hose phone board, and 20 litium batteries so far.

What do you think and know about this subject?

 

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[KevinInColorado]

A couple weeks ago I was out prospecting and dropped my iPhone 5S in the creek. I looked down thru 6 inches of water at my phone with an immediate sense of panic. Snatching it out of the water, I blew hard into the holes and shook it off. It's been working fine ever since!!

 

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[Duckwalk]

I have been saving all of the contacts off of the memory dims my work throws out (i work for a Server IT comapny.) I just snip them off with tin snips and save them till i have enough to make it worth while to soak them in acid and peroxide. Have not done it yet but i have ALOT saved up. will post pictures and stuff when i do it.

 

[KevinInColorado]

I have been saving all of the contacts off of the memory dims my work throws out (i work for a Server IT comapny.) I just snip them off with tin snips and save them till i have enough to make it worth while to soak them in acid and peroxide. Have not done it yet but i have ALOT saved up. will post pictures and stuff when i do it.

...or you can just sell them here: http://cashforelectronicscrapusa.com

 

[ohiochris]

After experimenting with the gold scrap hobby for a while Ive come to the conclusion that other than being fun to tinker with as a hobby its just more work than its worth. I do however have two coffee carafes with brown gold powder on the bottom , sitting in the basement waiting for me to get around to melting it down. Unless you have access to tons of gold pated electronic scrap , the gold trim on china or decorative ceramics is the best thing to recover gold from. It can be found anywhere and everywhere for very little money if you know where to look.....I get most of mine free or close to it either because its broken and people are throwing it out or because the garage sale is on its last day and people just want the stuff gone. Sometimes the items are maked on the bottom that they are trimmed with gold , sometimes they arent but if you know what to look for you can be pretty accurate at spotting actual gold or gold alloy. I find everything from china with light gold trim to huge ornate decorative items with gold over a very significant amount of the overall surface. I have decorative plates with more gold on them than a whole box full of processor pins and some are a higher carat gold I break them with a hammer and put into muratic acid and a small amount of chlorine bleach and the gold disappears into suspension in just seconds....precipitate with sodium metabisulfate ( a food additive )....then melt the gold powder. Its way more simple and clean than dealing with electronic scrap , except you still need to handle the acid carefully , do it outside in a well ventilated area , and do NOT breathe the vapors coming from the acid/cholorine mix....they are strong and will damage you quick. Aside from that the process is a lot safer , quicker and cleaner than processing escrap. And the leftover liquid , once the chlorine is gone is just muratic acid , you can use it to clean concrete with as it was intended.

 

[ohiochris]

...or you can just sell them here: Cash for Electronics Scrap - Recycle Computers - Cash 4 Electronics

They are bought and sold on ebay too.

 

[Capt Nemo]

Started the HCl/bleach yesterday on those transistors. The first transistor made the mix really yellow and it seemed that it didn't want to strip much anymore. I added enough bleach to get a white pricipitate on the bottom of the beaker. Still didn't strip the gold fully. The acid/chlorine fumes aren't very bad at all until the sodium metabisulfite is added. The solution then went cloudy, but didn't see any precipitate until this morning. The solution is still yellow, but is less intense, so I think I need to add more of the sulfite.

 

[GoldpannerDave]

A couple weeks ago I was out prospecting and dropped my iPhone 5S in the creek. I looked down thru 6 inches of water at my phone with an immediate sense of panic. Snatching it out of the water, I blew hard into the holes and shook it off. It's been working fine ever since!!

Yeah, I hear you. You might recall I dropped my camera (in the case) in the water the last time we went sluicing. I took out the batteries, blew it off, shook it and let it dry for nearly a week before using. It is fine.

 

[KevinInColorado]

Started the HCl/bleach yesterday on those transistors. The first transistor made the mix really yellow and it seemed that it didn't want to strip much anymore. I added enough bleach to get a white pricipitate on the bottom of the beaker. Still didn't strip the gold fully. The acid/chlorine fumes aren't very bad at all until the sodium metabisulfite is added. The solution then went cloudy, but didn't see any precipitate until this morning. The solution is still yellow, but is less intense, so I think I need to add more of the sulfite.

How is this experiment turning out?

 

[Capt Nemo]

Have a nice little bunch of rust colored precipitate. Found that where the semiconductor was mounted, they used a mercury amalgam to mount. The soft silvery metal moves with fingernail pressure and sticks to the plating. The remaining solution has a greenish tint indicating copper chloride. Need to find out how to drop the copper/mercury, but for now I'm just going to keep it in storage. It's only about 250 ml.

Did a run of plates, cups, and decorative porcelain, and the solution came out clear. Lots of 22K and 18K markings on that run.

Last thrift store run, I scored a jeweled/gold dragon for $10 and it's really heavy for it's size. Feels like a pound of lead. Might be solid 10K. I'm going to drill a small hole and see what I get in the shavings.

 

[KevinInColorado]

Recycling Old Cell Phones & Electronics

You can remove the mercury with heat (using a retort) or with nitric acid. Once the Merc is gone, hydrochloric acid will dissolve the copper. Google for instructions and safety guidance either way.

To drop copper out of an acid solution you may be able to just add some iron filings. The copper will precipitate out and you'll end up with rusty water.

To drop dissolved mercury out of an acid, hang aluminum in the acid. Some aluminum gets consumed and the Mercury will collect on the aluminum.

 

[Capt Nemo]

That's strange with the iron/copper. I use ferric chloride to eat copper off circuit boards. Strange that extra iron would cause the copper to drop.

 

[cyberdan]

Saw a show where a scrapper made a deal for 1,000 old flip phones.
In the end, he got $1500, ...$ 1.50 each. Not exactly huge, but if you run across a barrel full, it's good to know.

Do you remember the show name? I have been scrapping old cells now for 6 years, just about up to 35,000. I have over 1000 in my car right now. Been holding off selling to my local e-scrap recycler. His price keeps going down and so does my profit.

I want to see if i can contact that buyer. I would love to get $1.50 each.

 

[Duckshot]

That's strange with the iron/copper. I use ferric chloride to eat copper off circuit boards. Strange that extra iron would cause the copper to drop.

The irion just wants to be a chloride more than the copper does. Plug "Electromotive series" into your search.

 

[ohiochris]

Do you remember the show name? I have been scrapping old cells now for 6 years, just about up to 35,000. I have over 1000 in my car right now. Been holding off selling to my local e-scrap recycler. His price keeps going down and so does my profit.

I want to see if i can contact that buyer. I would love to get $1.50 each.

Thats a LOT of old phones ! How much does the escrap recycler give you for them ?

 

[ohiochris]

Started the HCl/bleach yesterday on those transistors. The first transistor made the mix really yellow and it seemed that it didn't want to strip much anymore. I added enough bleach to get a white pricipitate on the bottom of the beaker. Still didn't strip the gold fully. The acid/chlorine fumes aren't very bad at all until the sodium metabisulfite is added. The solution then went cloudy, but didn't see any precipitate until this morning. The solution is still yellow, but is less intense, so I think I need to add more of the sulfite.

Did you do the acid peroxide step first ?

 

[Capt Nemo]

Did you do the acid peroxide step first ?

Shouldn't need to. The sodium hypochlorite is the same as the peroxide.

2 Au + NaClO + 2 HCl > 2 AuCl + NaCl + H2O

The second batch of plates and dishes went fine.

Ferric chloride (FeCl3) is copper circuit board etchant, which is what I don't get.

 

[Duckshot]

I don't understand echants either. I heard that copper chloride will etch copper too.

The thing about one metal replacing another is that the solution needs to be saturated with metal. The more noble metal (less reactive) will drop out as the solution becomes saturated- no free hcl, and enough lesser metal to complete the process. That's the way I understand it, might be incorrect.

 

[ohiochris]

Shouldn't need to. The sodium hypochlorite is the same as the peroxide.

2 Au + NaClO + 2 HCl > 2 AuCl + NaCl + H2O

The second batch of plates and dishes went fine.

Ferric chloride (FeCl3) is copper circuit board etchant, which is what I don't get.

Acid/peroxide eats away the base metals , .....iron , copper , aluminum , etc. but dont touch the gold. Pour off the A/P and rinse with water and most of the metals other than gold are now out of the picture and the gold can be safely put into solution with acid/chlorine. Those other metals are what causes a lot of problems when you go to precipitate , they can keep some of the gold from dropping out of solution and/or wind up dropping out along with the gold since you have to use more precipitant. Before dissolving the gold , you want to remove as much of the others as possible. I found this out the hard way , and then after checking on the gold refining forum I realized my error....I should have used the A/P first and had a cleaner end result. But I also did find out that all is not lost , you can rinse the precipitated powder with purified water , let it settle...dry , and repeat the process with acid/chlorine and precipitate ....refining the other metals out.

Thats something you dont have to worry about with the plates and dishes since there are no base metals , makes the process so much cleaner and easier.


The reason for ferric chloride as an etchant has to do with the amount of electrons and desconstruction of the elements at the atomic level. I had to look that up since its a little more complicated than I am used to

 

[KevinInColorado]

When I used just plain HCl it ate the non-gold metals pretty well. Does the peroxide just speed it up or do more?

I found that the base metals under the gold plating would get consumed much faster if I cut the circuit board up in fairly small pieces first. Do you do that too?

 

[ohiochris]

When I used just plain HCl it ate the non-gold metals pretty well. Does the peroxide just speed it up or do more?

I found that the base metals under the gold plating would get consumed much faster if I cut the circuit board up in fairly small pieces first. Do you do that too?

Peroxide is the oxidizer , the acid works much faster in the presence of oxygen. It speeds it up a lot. Some people dont use peroxide , instead they use an air pump and bubbler like for an aquarium to keep it oxygenated , but all the scrap needs to be exposed to the bubbles for that to work right. Cutting up the pieces exposes more surface area to the acid and speeds up the process too , but you may wind up with more pieces of plastic and trash in there that you have to at some point clean out. Depending on what I am working with I may cut it up small or leave the pieces larger so I dont have as many pieces of trash ( plastic , etc ) to clean out later.

The goal to strive for is to remove as much waste trash as possible before the A/P process , and have as close to all gold as possible before the acid/chlorine process. Everything works better and goes smoother that way and you wind up with better quality gold in the end.