Urban Gold Mining

This photo shows four beads of pure, 24K Gold weighing over 12 grams that I extracted from electronic waste. Welcome to my Urban Gold Mining web page. There's a lot of gold to be had in the urban landscape. You just need to know where to find it and how to extract it. Here I'll show you how I do it.

It goes by a lot of names: E-Waste, Electronic Scrap, Electronic Waste, E-Scrap, etc. It consists of things like old and unwanted computers and laptops, servers, cell phones, telecom equipment, gaming systems, televisions, military electronics, and lots of other things. The one thing they all have in common is that they contain precious metals. They have silver, gold, platinum, palladium, etc., within their inner workings. With a little knowledge and some basic equipment, you too can extract the precious metals from e-waste.

This collection of videos should help you get started.

Forbidden Chemistry: Making the chemicals you aren't allowed to buy.

Forbidden Chemistry: Making Potassium Nitrate
Here I show how to make Potassium Nitrate from common chemicals available almost everywhere. This is a viewer request special series on how to make some of the chemicals commonly used for gold recovery and refining which are banned an many parts of the world, and unavailable for sale to amateur refiners.

Forbidden Chemistry: Making Concentrated Sulfuric Acid
Here I show how to make concentrated Sulfuric Acid from material available almost everywhere. This is a viewer request special series on how to make some of the chemicals commonly used for gold recovery and refining which are banned an many parts of the world, and unavailable for sale to amateur refiners.

Forbidden Chemistry: Making Concentrated Nitric Acid
Here I show how to make Concentrated Nitric Acid from chemicals we made in earlier episodes. This is a viewer request special series on how to make some of the chemicals commonly used for gold recovery and refining which are banned an many parts of the world, and unavailable for sale to amateur refiners.

Where does the e-waste come from?

I don't always buy chips for gold recovery on Ebay, but when I do, I look for a bargain (He said in the voice of the most interesting man in the world ;-). Yes, this video is all about how to find bargain scrap IC chips on Ebay, and how to avoid the bad deals. I show a bunch of Ebay listings and critique them. In the end, I show the one I bought because it looked like a real bargain. Here is the unboxing video I made after the chips arrived.

A whole series of videos on processing the chips will be coming out too.

Bringing home the scrap.
A lot of the material I process comes from e-scrap pickups like this one. A buddy of mine who works in the IT department of a big, multinational corporation called me up and said they had a big load of scrap equipment ready for me to take away. They filled my truck up with computers, printers, monitors, keyboards, lab equipment, and a bunch of other stuff. This load will keep me busy for a while.

Also see my Teardowns and Scrapouts web page to see how I tear this stuff down to get to the gold-bearing material.

2023 End of year Gold Weigh In

How much gold did I recover this last year? Here I total up how much gold and silver I recovered from E-Waste in 2022. Plus this year there was a third "mystery metal" recovered. Watch the video to see what it was and how much I got.

My "Refining 26 grams of dirty gold powder recovered from e-waste" video series

Refining 26 grams of dirty gold powder recovered from e-waste, Part 1.
In part one of this two video series I show how I refine 26 grams of dirty gold powder recovered from various types of e-waste. The gold is contaminated with base metals, silver, platinum group metals, trash and oils. In part 1 the gold is refined to remove base metals, silver and trash.

Refining 26 grams of dirty gold powder recovered from e-waste, Part 2.
In part two of this two part video series I give the 26 grams of dirty gold a second refining to ensure any platinum group metals are removed. Then the refined gold is melted, cast into a bar and weighed to see how much weight was lost in refining.

My "Where is the gold hiding in e-waste?" video series

Where is the gold hiding in e-waste? Part 1 Transistors
The first in a new series of videos where I show where to find the gold and other precious metals hiding in e-waste and e-scrap. In this first video I discuss transistors, and where to find the gold in them. Later in the video, as a bonus, I discuss diodes and LEDs and their gold content.

Where is the gold hiding in e-waste? Part 2 Connectors, fingers, plugs and sockets. Plus Silver!
This is the second in a series of videos where I show where to find the gold and other precious metals hiding in e-waste and e-scrap. In this video I show where gold is hidden in connectors, plugs and sockets, plus I include some bonus content at the end on recovering silver.

Where is the gold hiding in e-waste? Part 3 IC Chips. Plus, How to get added value from your chips.
This is the third in a series of videos where I show where to find the gold and other precious metals hiding in e-waste and e-scrap. In this video I show where gold is hiding in plain sight in IC chips of almost all kinds. Plus, as a bonus, I explain how to get added value from your salvaged IC chips over and above their gold and precious metal value.

How I Make Stannous Chloride Solution

How I Make Stannous Chloride Solution for testing for the presence of gold in solution.
Stannous Chloride solution is just indispensable for gold recovery and refining. Stannous Chloride solution gives a positive indication if gold is present in solution, and a negative indication if there is no gold present. This is very important. You don't want to accidentally discard solutions containing gold, or wast time and chemicals on solutions that don't contain any. Stannous Chloride solution can also be used to test for the presence of other precious metals.

What is Telecom-Grade equipment?

What Is Telecom Grade Equipment, And Why Is It So Much Better For Gold Recovery?
If you get into gold recovery from e-scrap, you'll occasionally hear the phrase "Telecom-Grade Equipment." In this video I show you what telecom grade equipment is and why it is so much better for e-scrap gold recovery vs consumer grade equipment. I found some great telecom-grade equipment in my favorite scrap yard in Albuquerque. I managed to buy it cheap, and get it home for free in my checked bags. The TSA was really interested in the content of my bags. Anyway, here I show you the glory that is telecom-grade equipment.

Stripping gold plating without dissolving the underlying base metal!

Stripping gold plating from e-waste using Eco-Goldex E-Series
In this video I show how to use Eco-Goldex E-Series stripping agent to take the gold plating off of electronic waste without having to dissolve the underlying base metal. This product makes getting the gold plating off things so much easier. There are a lot of steps in the process, and there is a bit of a learning curve to using it, but it does strip off gold plating almost like magic. This is a long video as there are a lot of steps involved in the process. Getting the gold off the plated items is pretty quick and easy, but getting the gold back out of solution has a lot of moving parts.

The "Building My Own Chemical Fume Hood" video series.

A home-made chemical fume hood I built myself
After doing gold extraction and purification from e-waste for a while, I decided I needed a fume hood to keep the nasty fumes and bad smells away from me. I was tired of dancing around, trying to stay up wind from whatever reaction I was doing. The final deciding factor though was when the coating on my Transisitons glasses dissolved. I figured those fumes can't be doing good things to my lungs and the rest of my hide. So I decided to build a fume hood. Part one of the series shows how I built it. There were a few issues and growing pains with the original design. Please watch the two update videos that follow this one before trying to emulate my design.

Home-made Chemical Fume Hood Update
In this video I give a brutally honest assessment of my home-made fume hood, the good, the bad and the ugly. There were some issues with the original design of the fume hood. I had a lot of problems with condensation dripping down into the box and all over whatever I was working on. I also had some issues with the circuit breaker popping on the outlet strip. Later in the video, the original ductwork failed and I had to replace it with ducting that was more chemical resistant.

2nd Home Made Chemical Fume Hood Update
The bathroom blower fan I was using for the fume hood failed disturbingly quickly. The chemical fumes totally corroded it out. So I tried something different. I mounted a bilge blower fan on the back of the fume hood, and plugged the hole on top where the bathroom blower was. The bilge blower is a sealed unit, which holds up to the corrosive fumes much better. The position at the back of the fume hood also prevents condensation from dripping into the hood. I also discuss issues with the internal LED lighting.

The "Getting Gold From Scrap IC Chips" video series.

Panning Gold from incinerated and crushed RAM Chips
Here I do an experiment by incinerating and crushing a bunch of computer RAM chips, and then panning the powder for gold. I was quite pleasantly surprised with the amount of gold I got from a relatively small number of chips. This lead me to try to scale up, and find ways to improve and simplify the process in the following videos.

My new system for recovering gold from incinerated IC chips
Excited by the above success with recovering gold from Computer RAM chips, I scaled up the process and began processing larger numbers of chips. I replaced my hand-powered ore crusher with a powerful blender to pulverize the chips. Everytime I do this process, I figure out improvements and shortcuts to make it work better. There will likely be update videos in the future as I continue to make improvements.

Depopulating Circuit Boards In A Kiln To Recover Gold from IC Chips
Now that I have a process for getting gold out of IC chips, I need a steady supply of chips to process. I found a quick and easy way to depopulate the chips from printed circuit boards using a ceramics kiln. I happen to have several kilns which I use for melting and casting glass to make telescope mirrors. I found that the kilns also work great for depopulating PC boards. I just put the boards in a metal basket, put the basket in the kiln, and then set the kiln to heat up to just above the melting point of solder. Once the kiln gets the boards up to temperature, I shake the basket vigorously and all the IC chips fall off the boards. Couldn't be easier.

Dissolving The legs Off Of IC Chips With AP Solution
Someone watching my earlier videos on recovering gold from scrap IC chips suggested that I remove the legs first before processing them. It's a good idea since it would greatly reduce the amount of base metals I'd have to deal with. The problem is that all the methods of removing the legs I had heard of were mechanical and labor intensive. This would not scale up well to the huge numbers of chips I was processing. Then the person suggested I try soaking the chips in used AP solution for a while to dissolve off the legs. It sounded like a good idea, so I gave it a try. This video shows the results.

Scaling Up IC Leg Removal With AP Solution
My method of dissolving the legs of of scrap IC chips using AP solution worked great on the small scale. I decided I needed to find a way to scale it up since I had a lot of IC chips to process for gold recovery. This video shows how I scaled up the process using only a five gallon bucket, a plastic colander, a fish tank bubbler and some string. This is really just too easy.

An Improved Method for Ashing Plastic IC Chips
I am always looking for ways to improve my processes. One thing that has always been a pain in the you know what for me about pyrolizing plastic IC chips is that there is a lot of carbon produced by the process. The chips get nice and brittle and easily chopped up by my blender, but the carbon that is produced makes a horrible black mess of it all. Even worse than the mess is the fact that the carbon is porous, and will entrap gold in solution, and not want to give it up again. I've been looking for ways to get rid of the carbon. The obvious solution is to not pyrolize the chips, since the end product of pyrolysis is often carbon for organic compounds like the plastics that make up IC chip bodies. On the other hand, my foundry pyrolysis method can handle a large volume of chips and process them quickly and efficiently. I didn't want to give up on it. I tried various ways to improve the pyrolysis process and cause the chips to oxidize, without resorting to slower and less efficient methods. Eventually I hit on something that works like a charm.

I now insert a long piece of steel brake line into the crucible first, then I fill the crucible up to the top with chips. While the chips are firing in my foundry, I use my air compressor to run a trickle of air down the brake line into the bottom of the crucible. Now there is oxygen entering the bottom of the crucible. Once the chips have been pyrolized and mostly converted to carbon, the carbon starts burning off very vigorously in the air flow. In fact the carbon burns so hot that I can turn off the propane flow and the crucible just keeps getting hotter until the contents are glowing white hot. After about 20 minutes or so, the chips are fully oxidized. There is nothing left of them but white ash and bits of metal and silicon dies. The amount of base metal to deal with is actually pretty minor because I used the above method to dissolve off the legs from the chips in AP solution before oxidizing them in the foundry. The processed chips go through my blender and produce a nice, fluffy, white powder that is mostly ash with bits of metal and silicon on it. Washing away the ash is super easy. Best of all, there is no nasty carbon to deal with. Check out the video to see the process in action.

Pulverizing ashed plastic IC chips to recover the gold bond wires
In this video I show how I pulverize ashed IC chips from the above process in a blender. The resulting powder is sifted through a kitchen sieve to remove large bits of base metal. The gold bond wires and fine ash pass through the sieve. The process is quick and easy. That is when I am not stopping regularly to jawbone at the camera. I can process a large volume of ashed IC chips in a short time.

Washing Away The Ash From Incinerated IC Chips To Recover Gold
In this video I use a simple gravity separation to wash away the ash from incinerated and pulverized IC chips so the gold can be more easily recovered. The materials needed are only a garden hose and some buckets or pans. The result is a dramatic reduction in the volume of material and concentration of the cold content, making recovery of the gold easier.

Sluicing to get gold from incinerated and crushed IC chip remains
In this video I experiment with using my mini cleanup sluice to separate the gold and other metals out of incinerated and crushed IC chip remains. It was an experiment that was fairly successful.

Panning ashed and pulverized IC chips to concentrate and recover gold
In this video I show how I use gold panning to concentrate the gold, and reduce the volume, of ashed and pulverized plastic IC chips from above to make gold recovery easier. A gold pan makes concentrating the gold and removing a lot of the waste material really easy.

Processing panned out ashed IC chip concentrates to recover the gold
In this video I process the panned out remains of ashed and crushed plastic IC chips to recover the gold the chips contained. This is the final stage in the process of gold recovery from plastic IC chips. Finally, we can get our hands on the gold they contained. With the end of this video, I have shown you every step in the process, from depopulating circuit boards, to dissolving the legs off the chips with AP solution, to ashing the chips in my foundry, to pulverizing the ashed chips in a blender, to washing away the ash, to panning out the metal-rich concentrates, and now to recovering the gold from the concentrates. I hope you found this series interesting and informative.

Recovering cement silver as a byproduct of extracting gold from scrap IC chips.
Just when you thought this series of videos was over, here comes another one. There's more than gold that can be recovered from scrap IC chips. In this video I recover cement silver from the waste liquid left over from recovering gold from scrap IC chips that have been incinerated, pulverized, gravity separated, and acid leached. The waste liquid from the acid leach contains significant and easily recoverable silver. Using only a coil of copper wire I get the silver present in the waste liquid to precipitate, or "cement" out on the copper. No extra chemicals are required. The only real effort involved is filtering the liquid to ensure the resulting silver isn't polluted with crud from the incinerated IC chips.

Misc. videos on Urban Gold Mining.

Huge amount of Gold recovery from scrap BGA chips (Incineration, not wet ashing)
In this video I show how to recover gold from scrap BGA IC chips by incinerating them and extracting gold from the remains. The BGAs held a surprisingly large amount of recoverable gold. I love surprises like that. The batch of BGAs I processed were 1.125% recoverable gold by weight. That's pretty amazing. Check out the video.

Recovering gold from 1 pound of BGA RAM Chips. How much is there?
In this video I determine how much recoverable gold is in one pound of BGA RAM chips. The final amount was a bit of a surprise. I was expecting a result even better than the above 200 grams of big BGA chips. Instead I got a much smaller amount. The particular mix of RAM chips I processed proved to be only about 0.24% gold by weight. Still, that is a very high percentage of gold, but the big BGA chips are still the champs for gold content.

Processing Gold Corner BGA Chips to extract gold via the wet ashing method
In this video I process 50 gold corner BGA chips using the wet ashing method to recover their gold. The yield in gold is surprisingly high. 50 gold Corner BGA chips yielded almost as much gold as two Pentium Pro CPUs, while being much cheaper and easier to acquire. That said, I am not really a fan of the wet ashing method. I much prefer the above incineration method. However, if incineration isn't an option for you, try wet ashing.

Using multiple precipitating agents to get purer gold
Here I use multiple precipitating agents to get purer gold drops. I used SMB (sodium metabisulfite)) for the first two precipitations, and then did a third with copperas (iron sulfate). The idea is to prevent PGM elements from following gold through all three precipitations. I was finding that my gold wasn't 24 K pure when I went to sell it, in spite of at least three precipitations using SMB. Then I read that Platinum group metals can precipitate with gold when using SMB. So I started using copperas for the third precipitation and got much purer gold.

Melting a five gram gold bead from e-waste
Here I show how I melt down my accumulated gold powder into solid gold beads. I show all the equipment needed and the process involved in melting, quenching and cleaning the gold buttons. The really pretty gold buttons can then be sold to precious metals dealers for cash.

I have a lot of other videos on my Urban Gold Mining playlist that didn't make it on this page. New videos will appear there first in the future. Check it out.

To see where I get the raw material I am processing for gold here, visit my Scrapouts and Teardowns web page to see how I acquire and dismember various pieces of dead, unwanted or obsolete electronic equipment to recover all the bits containing gold and other precious metals. Check it out.

You can also visit my Youtube channel. I have lots of videos on many different techy subjects. It's a bit of a nerdfest I must admit.