# Gold from Scrap Computer parts - anybody recover it?



## Maine-Marine (Mar 7, 2014)

For the last few weeks, my co-worker and I have been pulling boards form scrap modems and radios. We tried the vinegar salt and peroxide method to recover some gold - it did free up some of the gold fingers but overall not that great

I cut off some of the gold ends.

now we have a box of scrap, a bucket with some scrap, and some cut off gold fingers, a bunch of connectors

Does anybody here recover gold from computer parts?

Would love to make a deal with somebody we would be willing to take a low percentage like 25% if somebody could recover the gold. We scrap a bunch of this stuff every year.. of course big question.. is it worth it????


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## Mad Trapper (Feb 12, 2014)

That's just a thin plating of gold on most parts as it's a good conductor and fairly inert, so is silver. Hard to separate from the other metals and the plastic crap. I'm sure you could work out a process, but it would be complex and involve chemicals that are hazardous. I think nitric acid would dissolve most metals and leave the gold. Nitric acid is nasty stuff........

Looks like some coax connections in the mix, that's probably brass , unless some high end stuff.

Thugs have been stealing catalytic converters from cars/trucks (SOBs use electric sawsalls) for the platinum catalyst scrap.

Edit: Some humorous historical on Nitric acid.......

The following is a passage from Ira Remsen (Prof. of Chemistry and Physics Williams College 1872-76) describing his introduction to chemistry.

While reading a textbook of chemistry, I came upon the statement 'nitric acid acts on copper....'. I was tired of reading such absurd stuff, and I determined to see what this meant&#8230;. I was even willing to sacrifice one of the few copper cents in my possession. I put one of them on a table; opened the bottle marked 'nitric acid'; poured some of the liquid on the copper and prepared to make observation. But what was this wonderful thing I beheld? The cent had already changed, and it was no small change either. A greenish blue liquid foamed and fumed over the cent and over the table. The air in the neighborhood of the performance became colored dark red. A great colored cloud arose. This was disagreeable and suffocating-how should I stop this? I tried to get rid of the objectionable mess by picking it up and throwing it out the window. I learned another fact-nitric acid acts not only on copper but it acts upon fingers. The pain led to another unpremeditated experiment. I drew my hands across my trousers and discovered the nitric acid acts upon trousers&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;.


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## preppergrant (Nov 6, 2017)

I have an old CPU with bent pins in with all my silver because of the gold plating on the pins in hopes that one day I will be able to remove it. Very interesting idea, but unless you are doing it large scale and are ok with toxic chemicals, I don't think it would be worth it too much for each person. 
I hope you figure out a good solution though! Maybe some science department at a school would like to show their students a cool chemical reaction to earn them money and they would front all the chemicals and do it safely.


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## Robie (Jun 2, 2016)

I prefer to let our Indian friends reap the rewards....:devil:


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## Maine-Marine (Mar 7, 2014)

I have a large box of this stuff now...


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## Bigfoot63 (Aug 11, 2016)

there are some good videos on youtube about this process. 
i looked into it before i got sick, it is involved and uses two different acids if i remember correctly.
the amount of gold recovered is minute so large amounts of raw material are needed.
having said that... if a person with access to the raw materials and the ability to follow directions,
the end results would be gold you did not have before.
good luck.

i tried to post links but could not... check out youtube 
how to recover gold from computer scrap


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