Gold Recovery from 14kg CPUs

Gold recovery process from 14kg high grade scrаp using the lead bath method.

#goldplated #goldrefining #goldrecovery #smelting #owltech

[adamhixon]

Just imagine showing this to a computer geek in 1995. He would be horrified.

[udittlamba]

This video has some early 2000s era YouTube vibe. I dig it

[kienhwengtai]

Those are really old CPUs, modern ones have very little Gold.

[SollersScrappingandDiving]

One day I'll have the courage to process my own gold but until then I'll watch the pros and just sell the gold bearing goodies (except for the bits I stock pile) those ceramic CPUs are beautiful and I'm sure you've made many collectors cry!! Interesting seeing the eproms being processed! 👍

[adama]

I don't know why you all melt this gold powder with a burner from above, a blast of flame will certainly blow some of the powder out of the crucible, so there are more losses, it would be better to heat the crucible from the bottom.

[JoshuaBerner]

That's no where near 3-9's. Too much lead and silver. You need to melt it into shot and put it in aqua-regia using sulfuric acid next time.

[gelosul]

Some quick maths here for whoever in interested:
If average CPU weight is 60g then that would mean there would be approximately 233 CPUs.
They would have to be sold at about £20 each to have the same value as the gold resulted from the melting.maybe less if I knew how much silver was melted.
So conclusion is that depending how old they are it might not be worth putting them back on the market and melting is better option.
I did not take in to account the time and materials of the melting process as I'm not familiar with the costs.

[noone]

I think there are many steps missing in the video, such as where is the silver, cooper & the other minerals, how pure gold dissolved in nitric aced ... etc

[zerdeaths]

That's almost a $3000 payout for 14k gold, since it's about 50-ish% pure.
Not bad for a few hours of work.

[rustymotor]

Well done! I have worked for many years as an electronics technician and have hoarded boxes of used circuit boards, some boards are from high end Hewlett Packard equipment complete with gold plated circuit tracks and edge connectors. I once had thoughts about processing it all for the gold but I am not going to bother, I hope to hand it all over to someone who can process it, I am sure there would be a nice amount of Gold for recovery.

[rsl]

Great video, but the music is really obnoxious

[aberagebretsadik]

Thank you i seen the process ! I well began !!!

[arnedalbakk]

Hello. Arne from 🇳🇴Norway here. Exelent woork. Wow.. So muth gold. Thank you for this clip😊

[chicoarraes]

I've seen plenty of gold recovery videos and when I saw this title I thought it was fake. My reasoning was "If he can do it in 4 hours, why does everybody take days to do it with complicated acid reactions?" Then I saw what this guy was actually doing in the video and immediately realized "Oh... THAT'S why?" This is both real and crazy.

[frantiseklaluch]

Ahoj.... This looks efficient and scary... "Lead bath" is not exactly a wellness spa procedure... 😀

[jamisontaylor]

Wow excellent video as always thank you 😊 🙏 love how you break everything down

[echosmyth]

Dissolving the alloy in nitric acid is not a process identical to inquartation. They are two completely different processes, with completely different purposes, ending in completely different results.

[rocketskids]

First time coming across something like this, needed to do some math.... Assuming 40 grams per CPU average, 14 kg would be 350 CPUs. From 91 grams gold that works out to about .26 grams of gold per CPU. That jibes with what I have seen reported elsewhere, at least assuming a high yield on recovery. Also, I never realized that these old CPUs contained about $15 in gold each.

[viklund]

As I understand, there are gold threads left inside the ceramic plates!!! You have only taken the visible parts with gold which is a loss. Try to crush the ceramic plates into fine powder and look for the gold that remains in the form of thin wire.

[anthonyplayground]

Chinese resellers are electro plating gold "back on to cpus" and chips - bit it's thinner