We extract gold from old electronics

Each of us has accumulated dozens of unnecessary and broken gadgets. It turns out that all these devices are able to bring a little benefit to their destruction.

Josehf Murchison, an engineer and chemist, posted step-by-step instructions on the Instructables website for smelting gold from old electronic devices that you were about to dump in your landfill: old laptops, phones, cameras, printers, scanners, and other junk.



Each electronic board contains several milligrams of platinum, gold, silver and copper, which can be removed from electronic waste if desired.

It is most profitable to mine gold. Joseph Murchinson says that the older the electronics, the more gold there can be. First you need to collect all the gold-containing parts together. For several months, everyone can collect a lot of such details. The photographs show what Joseph managed to collect in three months.



Parts need to be sorted and using a magnet to remove the gold-plated steel, which requires a separate process technology.

Gold-containing boards purified from dirt are lowered for one week in a solution of hydrochloric acid (two parts) and hydrogen peroxide (one part). The acid pot should be stirred slightly daily.



After a week, the solution darkens and floating flakes of exfoliated gold become visible. They must be passed through a coffee filter and washed with methyl alcohol.







Next, you need to fuse the scales into one ingot. The melting point of gold is 1063 ° C, so a conventional burner will not cope with the task. But if you treat gold with sodium tetraborate (borax), then the melting point decreases.



Next, we melt a mixture of borax and gold.









After receiving the ingot, you need to weigh it to assess profit. Here such an ingot weighs a little more than a troy ounce (31.1 g) and costs from 600 to 1600 dollars A



good addition to the scholarship for three months of work.