smd's

Gold Refining Forum

Help Support Gold Refining Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

samuel-a

Well-known member
Joined
Oct 7, 2009
Messages
2,190
hi all
i have this common types of smd's , some i know and some i don't, help will be appreciated:

1.JPG

no. 1 - monolithic capacitor , usually come in many different colors from light brown to dark red , some of them contains Pd and sometimes Ag. marked Cxxx on PCB.

no. 2 - don't know the name or function or what it contains. marked as Lxxx on the PCB.

no. 3 - don't know the name or function of the component, but visible gold is on it.

no. 4 - don't know the name or function of the component, but visible gold is on it.

no. 5 - don't know the name or function or what it contains.

no. 6 - resistors, don't know if contains any PM's. marked Rxxx on the PCB. comes in many sizes and colors.


SAMUEL
 
Hi Samuel,
I too am interested in this type of components. I have the chance to refine a 55 gallon drum of over runs but would like to know a little bit more before I take the job. They gave me a .5 oz sample to test and claim that it is high in Platinum. Most of the components I have are very very small. Advise anyone?
 

Attachments

  • 100_9199.JPG
    100_9199.JPG
    392.4 KB · Views: 1,896
  • 100_9200.JPG
    100_9200.JPG
    105.4 KB · Views: 1,896
  • 100_9195.JPG
    100_9195.JPG
    420.7 KB · Views: 1,896
2002valkyrie

i see that most of the components you have there are a mix of monocaps and resistors.
as i'm not sure about the different types PM's that resistors may or may not contain (probably not), if you plan on taking the job, i strongly earge you to work only with homogeneous types of components and not a mixture. this will make your life harder with low return.

platinum is not present in monocap's, and pretty rare unless special types. as far as i know....
the PM's in monocap's are Pd and sometims Ag.
 
Thanks for the fast reply Samuel. I normaly only work with gold and most of that is pawn shop supplied. As far as working with a mixture, this stuff is mixed through and through. But it's in 55 gallon drums. I was ask by an associate if I would refine one of them if he purchased them. I told him I would have to research it.
 
I've got some old videos of me processing the monolithics, I'll try to post them to my website in the near future.

If you have the time (a month or so) a long soak in straight AP with occasional additions of HCl and peroxide will eat the little buggers right up with no heat, crushing, or special preparations. Just stir occasionally and add some additional solution when needed.

You'll end up with a nice blood red to deep-orange solution with a thick white sludge in the bottom. Part of the ceramic will initially dissolve into the liquid then after becoming saturated will crystallize back out in large clusters of semicircular scales of an unknown compound.

After everything is dissolved that will, filter every last bit of the sediment out of the dark liquid and process for PGMs with the usual methods.

The fine powder is then separated from the crystals by washing with dilute HCl and lots of filtering. A buchner with vacuum assist would do wonders at this stage. I've melted some of the white powder and it formed what appears to be silver (smoked a lot when melting and crabs up on the surface), but I'm not certain of it's purity or silver content.

The overall process can be sped up if you crush the material to a fine powder, use a heated reaction, and have good stirring. An initial extraction of the ground material with HCl will serve to remove the nickle and tin from the end caps of the SMDs. The initial HCl extraction will be purple and the second one will be pale blue-green to lime colored (nickle). After these two leaches as done, filter out the sludge and leach it with hot HCl-Cl or AR to extract the precious metals.

When crushing the SMDs be very care to wear a good breather mask, goggles, gloves, and skin protection as the fine dust is bad for your health .

All of the monolithics I process come from identical reels of the exact same make and model cap. GSP has previously stated that the SMD resistors contain ruthenium, and I have confirmed this via online research.

Expect yields of up to 2.5% Pd by weight for the proper types of monolithics. As I have always stated concerning these items: Not all monolithics contain Pd, those manufactured prior to 1997 are the most likely to contain Pd. Don't expect platinum unless you are dealing with monolithics from aerospace, military, medical, or IBM mainframe equipment sources. The older ones may also contain gold and/or silver.

Steve
 
Samuel,

I think I can help identify some of those parts but it's hard to see details of some in the photo. See comments below.

no. 1 - monolithic capacitor , usually come in many different colors from light brown to dark red , some of them contains Pd and sometimes Ag. marked Cxxx on PCB. I agree.

no. 2 - Inductors, consists of a copper strip or wire core surrounded by ferrite. Sometimes very little inductive value but just a flat nickel strip covered by ferrite to attenuate rf noise. Those are called beads. marked as Lxxx on the PCB.

no. 3 - Hard to tell but I believe these are crystals used in oscillator circuits. Can't read but if they are xtals there will be numbers like 14.318, etc. on them that reflect the frequency. Different numbers than my example but same format. Some gold, some silver.

no. 4 - LEDs, (light emitting diodes) Some gold, some silver. Usually when silver it's a high percentage in the alloy.

no. 5 - Not sure about these. They appear to possibly be polarized. Larger value capacitors? Tantalum?

no. 6 - resistors, Thick film carbon on ceramic substrate. Very little PMs. Possibly silver, ruthenium, palladium. marked Rxxx on the PCB. comes in many sizes and colors.
 
steve, scott muchos gracias :mrgreen:

well, ruthenium today is 170$ per troy ounce... i wonder if worth harvesting....


steve, somthing intresting about the first HCL wash of the crushed monocap's, after 24 hours in crockpot it came out purple like you saied, when it came back to room temp' the purple cloud stteled down (after 8-10 hours) to the bottom, leaving the solution pale green showed negative for Pd, i still need to check the sediment.

SAMUEL
 
steve

do you happen to know if Fe will drop any barium from a solution as a metalic form , solution containing also base metals (CU,Ni,Sn )
or only sodium sulfate will drop it as BaSO4?


thank you
SAMUEL
 
Barium forms many insoluble salts, the sulfate is one of them. Add any soluble sulfate and barium sulfate should precipitate. This is assuming you know you have dissolved barium in the solution.

Steve
 
Steve, i have tried the AP way.

5 days ago i took 100 gram of monocap's (Edit: un crushed) and throw them in AP (3:1 ratio).
total solution 400 ml.
now, two nights is was on hot plate, and two nights on stirring.
during this time i added more HCL and more peroxide. now the volume is 580-600 ml
it seems that by now 40%-60% of the monocap's had been dissolved (and somewhat reprecipitated)

here are the pictures:
IMGP0654.JPG
IMGP0657.JPG

i believe the white powder is a mix of Pd and AgCl (and maybe cordierite)

I'll update when it dissolve completely.
 
The solution looks the wrong color, more like dissolved nickel than anything else.

Do you have DMG on hand? It good for testing Ni and Pd.

The powder maybe anything, silver chloride will react to bright light and darken to a purple color.

Did you test the solution yet with stannous chloride / DMG?

Steve
 
samuel,not wanting to interfere,but to help,i think that the pd is in the solution and the powder is agcl with cordeiryte-----after filtering i would go for pd in the filtrate(solution)----
regards from
Arthur
 
i have yeat totest with stannous.
and i don't have DMG.

i also need to add, that i might added to much peroxide...
before the secund peroxide addition the Dominant color was pale purple and not this dark green....
i have noticed, that each H2O2 that droped inside created deep orange color that faded away when stirring... (indicating maybe on Pd that absorbed to the solution momentarily and reprecipitating)

if it's just nikel then i guess that i'm ok...
if Pd is presence in the solution, then i think i'll leave it in a crock pot until everything is dissolved and test with stannous again.
i'll update once i'll test tomorrow.

thank you guys, i hope this therd will be helpfull to a lot of people reading here.

SAMUEL
 
Tim,

Your tests are definitely positive for Pd.

Sam,

Remember: not all monolithics contain PMs. The newer ones contain mostly nickel with a few exceptions. Monolithics from pre-1997 have the best chances of having PMs.

Steve
 
Steve, the green loking solution is positive for Pd, according to my stannous test.

i'll siphon it off and refill with AP 3:1 ratio to dissolve the rest of the monocap's.

i'll upload a picture of the siphoned and filtered solution... i guess it contains also Sn , Ni with the Pd
 
lazersteve said:
I've got some old videos of me processing the monolithics, I'll try to post them to my website in the near future.

Expect yields of up to 2.5% Pd by weight for the proper types of monolithics. As I have always stated concerning these items: Not all monolithics contain Pd, those manufactured prior to 1997 are the most likely to contain Pd.

Steve

Steve, I know you're always very busy but I would love to see those videos. 8) Also, do you know the composition of the post 1997 types that don't have Pd?

Thanks in advance.
 
Scott,

Most newer monolithics have nickel and sometimes silver layers in the monolith sandwich.

Steve
 
well, on the left side is the first AP run (filterd twice) , on the right is the secund AP run (look like the right color?).
for now it seems that 50%-60% of them had been dissolved and laying on the bottom.

IMGP0658.JPG
IMGP0661.JPG
IMGP0664.JPG

they both seems to contain Pd... where to from here?
 
Back
Top