The Real Treasure Older Industrial Circuit Boards The real value lies in older industrial circuit boards particularly those manufactured in the 1980s and 1990s These boards especially from military grade equipment can contain significant amounts of silver gold and palladium Some of these older boards are worth as much as $100 per pound
Laptops phones cameras and the like are filled with gold plated circuit boards even printers and scanners have gold silver and copper even platinum in them Gold is a precious conductive and pliable metal that retains a stable value better than many commodities Its chemical properties make it useful for the manufacture of computers
There are many reasons that gold works wonders in various components of electronics First of all gold is an efficient conductor of electricity allowing for transmission of electrical signals without a significant loss of energy making as much as $85 000 per day recycling old electronic circuit boards And there s a good chance that
Circuit boards contains many different materials that could be re used As well as recovering gold the company is also looking at what to do with all of the other materials that it is separating
You might wonder how much gold is in a flat screen TV knowing that many electronics get dipped in gold or sealed with it After the scraping operation reclaims the gold copper aluminum and circuit boards it resells the raw materials back to industrial manufacturers These manufacturers recycle it for use in new products
Today Printed Circuit Boards that Contain Gold Are Everywhere You can find them in computers cell phones televisions radios manufacturing equipment just about everywhere And the good news is electronic scrap contains gold and other precious metals that can be extracted by an experienced precious metals refinery
Few consumers of computer desktops and laptops know the interior of their electronics are thinly layered in gold Thus far in the 21st Century we humans have averaged using about 10% of our annual ne Skip to Content Free Shipping on $199 Orders Search Search 1
Boards do no lend themselves to be wet processed profitably Too much waste and too much cost of acids for not getting the brunt of the values out of them Most of the Copper are inside the boards For boards there is not much if anything beating smelting/melting
The cost of Wholesale PCBs ranges from $1 to $500 While these costs vary from manufacturer to manufacturer wholesale PCB costs are relatively cheaper However purchasing Printed Circuit Boards at wholesale price is beneficial if you plan to buy a significant number of PCBs Conclusion Printed Circuit Boards are the core of electronics
How much gold is in circuit boards The amount of gold in circuit boards varies depending on the age and type of the device Older electronics from the 1980s and 1990s tend to have higher gold content compared to newer devices This is because gold was commonly used in connectors fingers and traces on PCBs during that time
These components such as circuit boards connectors and memory chips are carefully designed with a thin layer of gold to enhance conductivity and prevent corrosion While the amount of gold in each individual device may be small the sheer number of electronic gadgets people own and discard creates a vast opportunity for gold recovery
Is there gold in circuit boards Many electronic devices contain a small amount of yellow metal especially on the printed circuit board This is because gold is an extremely efficient conductor better than copper and does not corrode ensuring that the energy transfer and currents needed to operate the device are not disturbed
Recycling 1 metric ton 2 200 lbs of circuit boards yields 700 2100 grams of gold worth around $30 000 90 000 Obviously scrap gold recycling is more feasible at large commercial scales But it demonstrates how even minute concentrations in e waste can produce tremendous value With gold prices around $1 800 per ounce computer recycling
Circuit boards still go routinely unrecycled in discarded household and office equipment suffering a similar fate as many of those found in vehicles Diesel sputters palladium soars Gold can almost always claim the right to be the most precious of the precious metals as measured by its per ounce price
3 The best parts to use in this experiment are printed circuit boards motherboards central processing units random access memory chips drives and other internal modems Identify areas with gold color on these parts and strip the surrounding plastic You should have more gold colored components than plastic to extract a sizeable amount of gold
Gold recovery from circuit boards is not only easy it can be done at home The highest concentration of gold in any computer hardware is contained on the gold fingers found on slot cards and RAM Recovering gold from RAM and slot card fingers is also one of the easier processes For this reason this is where many DIY e waste refiners begin
After cutting up a few circuit boards to remove the precious gold bearing parts [Josehf] threw these parts into a mixture of muriatic acid and hydrogen peroxide After a week the acid darkened
In many cases the circuit boards have tiny amounts of metals such as gold silver copper and lead These metals are used to improve conductivity Although the gold is in small amounts you can extract the metal from printed circuit boards While you won t get rich removing gold from circuit boards some people enjoy the challenge Instructions
There are about five troy ounces of gold in 2 000 PC circuit boards or 200 complete laptops There is typically more gold content in older supercomputers and desktop computers from the 1990s or earlier In addition to the circuit boards the modem cards graphics cards and memory components also contain gold Examples include
Circuit boards contains many different materials that could be re used As well as recovering gold the company is also looking at what to do with all of the other materials that it is separating
Lastly we don t need much gold for the coatings and the material gels easily with the PCB ensuring the joint is strong and long lasting Hybrid Circuits One of the best alternatives to plastic laminate PCBs is a hybrid circuit especially where heat dissipation is necessary Also these circuits ensure improved responsiveness at high