Where to find gold in household items

These may include models that allow you to set strength levels, set a specific brewing time, and perform other advanced functions. The presence of circuit boards is not only limited to coffee machines.

Gold-bearing circuit boards are increasingly used in appliances like microwaves, air conditioners, refrigerators, and kitchen stoves. A good rule of thumb is: The more technological features that an appliance has, the more likely it is to contain small amounts of gold.

Another component to look for in your appliance if you want to extract precious metals from it is a thermocouple. Appliances that you use to heat up products coffee makers, stoves or cool down spaces air conditioners, refrigerators contain thermocouples. These are wire-like devices that are composed of several metals. Thermocouples may contain palladium, platinum, rhodium, and sometimes a small amount of gold. There is a catch to recycling precious metals found in household appliances.

The process is based on the principle that precious metals do not oxidize or react chemically, like the base metals; so when they are heated at high temperatures, the precious metals remain apart and the others react forming slags or other compounds. Cupellation is simple weigh the solid pieces of low grade gold, burn the crap out of it until you get no more slag and it becomes a nice bright yellow bead, and then you weigh it after it cools. My solid low grade gold parts with garbage attached went from grains to A week has passed and it is time to collect your gold flakes and dust from your cleaned fingers and circuit boards, after a week the acid darkens and with a stir the flakes of gold can be seen floating around in the pot.

Pouring the acid into a coffee filter the acid passes through the filter leaving the gold behind, save the acid do not dump it down the drain. Next dump the remaining fingers and circuit boards into a deep plastic tray and add water, sort out the cleaned of gold parts, put the cleaned parts in the waist and save the un-cleaned parts for re-dipping.

After you have sorted the circuit board parts pour the water off through the coffee filter and flush with methyl hydrate to clean. Since the methyl hydrate is There are basically two methods of melting gold flakes and dust to recover gold available to the average person, the mercury method called Gold-Mercury Amalgam with its obviously toxic by-products and the Borax Method.

I do not recommend the mercury method it works but it is extremely toxic for generations. The Borax Method is a technique of artisanal gold mining, with its basis in the principle that borax reduces the melting point of all minerals, including precious metals like gold. By adding borax to the heavy mineral concentrate, the melting point temperature decreases, allowing people to melt gold out of their concentrate and salvage.

By using borax, no mercury flour is produced, and gold recovery increases. Take your cleaned gold flakes and weigh them, this tells you how much you lose in melting and cupellation when melting the flakes. There you have it gold from electronics, one troy Oz is grains and I have I think I will retire.

A great instructable, here in the UK trying to just get Muriatic acid is almost impossible unlike the USA where you can get it from just about any hardware store. Reply 3 years ago. I got a question. I have been refining gold pins with nitric acid. The issue is this. When i melt it using the coffee filter the gold comes out white. But when i don't use the coffee filter the gold doesn't loose its golden color.

What is happening? Reply 7 years ago on Introduction. Here in Canada it isn't that easy ether, some things require you to pass a university course in order to get the licence so you can buy the chemicals.

Because of my work I have 5. One metal that is currently in high demand is cobalt, a crucial component of lithium-ion batteries for smartphones and electric cars. From one tonne of mobile phone batteries, Umicore claims it can extract between kg of cobalt, depending on the generation of phone — modern smartphones have more.

They say they can also reclaim 70kg of copper and 15kg of lithium from the same handsets. Even once the battery has been removed, the electronics inside a phone can surrender around 1kg of silver and g of gold per tonne of devices. This compares very favourably to primary mining, which only averages g of silver in each tonne of mined ore, and g of gold per tonne of ore.

Mining for metals like cobalt from the ground is a dangerous and dirty job, often in countries far away from the electrical devices it is used in are bought Credit: Getty Images.

And, according to Sintef, the Norwegian research institute, urban mining requires 17 times less energy to retrieve these metals than needed to obtain virgin materials.

Research examining discarded television sets in China also showed that large amounts of gold and copper could be obtained at less than the cost of mining the metal from the ground.

Secondly, not all the elements are currently extracted… due to the treatment processes employed. The myriad of devices, cables, chargers and transformers that make up the most valuable part of the urban mine are not just conveniently piled up in one place, awaiting a digger. Instead they are widely dispersed, often hidden and hard to access. Retrieving its precious materials is less about mining, and more about harder, complex chemical engineering, community services and education.

It is tantalising to think we could use the materials our old electronic devices to make new ones without the need to mine Credit: Getty Images. We horde our old electronics, waiting for a day that never comes when we may need them again. The WEEE Forum estimates that the average European has kg of electronics both waste and in-use at home, including 17kg of batteries, says Horne.

The collection points for WEEE readily exist in the EU, for example, through kerbside recycling or return-to-retailers schemes. The US, meanwhile, has no national law for managing e-waste , leaving it as a state issue. Only 25 states actually have laws for electronic waste, with California becoming the first to introduce them in Collection is a collective challenge. However, there is another way to reduce raw material extraction: using less stuff in the first place.

For example, through increasing product lifespan, changing consumer attitudes towards ownership and consumption, evolving approaches to manufacturing and retail of items, and ensuring ease of reuse. In the meantime, throw-away devices remain exactly that: thrown away.