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Experiment: Can You Mine Gold From Old Motherboards?

tomshardware.com

11–20 of 27 posts

Re: Experiment: Can You Mine Gold From Old Motherboards?

#12

I know a guy who has done this as a business for at least the last 20 years. Nice little business model.

That guy you know is doing the world a favor. This is an alternative: http://www.google.com/images?q=guiyu%2C+china&#62 ;

Not necessarily... Umicore in Belgium recovers >100 tonnes of gold (and more of other precious and base metals) from electronics scrap in a clean way (there's residential houses 10m from the factory).

I remember seeing a video in which it was claimed their electronics scrap was richer in gold (by weight I assume) than many gold mine ore.

Re: Experiment: Can You Mine Gold From Old Motherboards?

#13
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That guy you know is doing the world a favor. This is an alternative: http://www.google.com/images?q=guiyu%2C+china&#62 ;

Not necessarily... Umicore in Belgium recovers >100 tonnes of gold (and more of other precious and base metals) from electronics scrap in a clean way (there's residential houses 10m from the factory). I remember seeing a video in which it was claimed their electronics scrap was richer in gold (by weight I assume) than many gold mine ore.

My apologies. I've corrected my sentence to use the article "an" instead of "the".

Re: Experiment: Can You Mine Gold From Old Motherboards?

#15
post #14
post #11

The author forgot to give instructions on how to safely dispose of these nasty chemicals.

If you have access to that kind of stuff, you probably know what to do next.

Never assume the power of idiocy will be subsumed by the power of common sense.

Re: Experiment: Can You Mine Gold From Old Motherboards?

#16
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That guy you know is doing the world a favor. This is an alternative: http://www.google.com/images?q=guiyu%2C+china&#62 ;

Not necessarily... Umicore in Belgium recovers >100 tonnes of gold (and more of other precious and base metals) from electronics scrap in a clean way (there's residential houses 10m from the factory). I remember seeing a video in which it was claimed their electronics scrap was richer in gold (by weight I assume) than many gold mine ore.

Production capacity for gold exceeds 100 tonnes per year according to http://www.preciousmetals.umicore.com/metals_products/precio...

Re: Experiment: Can You Mine Gold From Old Motherboards?

#17
There was a DEA agent giving a speech the other day. One of the stories he told was about a meth user who used his 3-4 days of being awake to harvest the gold from cpus/motherboards over the months. He stated the guy had a ball in between the size of a golf ball and baseball. He was just getting free equipment out of dumpsters in the city.

Re: Experiment: Can You Mine Gold From Old Motherboards?

#18
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily... Umicore in Belgium recovers >100 tonnes of gold (and more of other precious and base metals) from electronics scrap in a clean way (there's residential houses 10m from the factory). I remember seeing a video in which it was claimed their electronics scrap was richer in gold (by weight I assume) than many gold mine ore.

My apologies. I've corrected my sentence to use the article "an" instead of "the".

Of course, the pictures you link to are the norm, and clean recycling very much the exception...

Re: Experiment: Can You Mine Gold From Old Motherboards?

#19
post #16
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily... Umicore in Belgium recovers >100 tonnes of gold (and more of other precious and base metals) from electronics scrap in a clean way (there's residential houses 10m from the factory). I remember seeing a video in which it was claimed their electronics scrap was richer in gold (by weight I assume) than many gold mine ore.

Production capacity for gold exceeds 100 tonnes per year according to http://www.preciousmetals.umicore.com/metals_products/precio...

Right you are. According to p. 9 of this 2009 Umicore presentation production of gold at the Hoboken plant is 25 tonnes/year (still 1% of world mining production):

http://impeltfs.eu/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/umicore-impel-...

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