How to extract gold from electronics (2024)

FAQs

Is it worth extracting gold from electronics? ›

While extracting gold from electronics is not without its challenges, it can be worth it for individuals looking to recover valuable metals and reduce e-waste. However, following safety precautions and using personal protective equipment when handling hazardous chemicals is essential.

But how much gold is found in a computer? On average, a desktop computer contains about 0.2 grams or 0.007 ounces of gold. While this may seem like a minuscule amount, the gold content can significantly accumulate if you are considering a large-scale recycling operation.

Removing Gold Using Fire

Use steel tongs to turn over the burning circuit boards. Get a metal bin or tray, and put the circuit boards into it. Break the boards into smaller pieces so they burn faster. Light the boards on fire.

In fact, almost none. Gold, at $1900 per troy ounce (31.3 grms), is too costly to use very much of it in any electronic device. The cheap TV sets will use tin plating where gold might be used in the higher end TVs.

Gold mining is one of the most destructive industries in the world. It can displace communities, contaminate drinking water, hurt workers, and destroy pristine environments. It pollutes water and land with mercury and cyanide, endangering the health of people and ecosystems.

Did you know, for example, that it only takes around 41 mobile phones to recover 1g of gold? The price of gold is currently around US$1,700 (£1,365) per ounce, which is roughly US$60 per gram. That means there's about US$1.50 of gold in every junked device.

The amount of gold in SIM cards is very small, usually measured in milligrams or even micrograms. For example, a typical SIM card may contain around 8 milligrams of gold, which is equivalent to 0.00028 ounces. This means that you would need around 3,571 SIM cards to get one ounce of gold.

Remotes contain only a few cents' worth of gold that can be found on the edges of the printed circuit boards they contain.

Which cell phone has the most gold in it? ›

Apple's iPhones, on the higher end of the smartphone spectrum, contain more gold than other brands. The exact amount varies depending on the model, but on average, an iPhone contains around 0.034 grams of gold.

Bottom Line: Doing the Right Thing with Old Electronics is Worth It. Disposing of e-waste properly and safely is still important. First, it costs less and is significantly less damaging to the environment to recycle precious metals than it is to mine them.

In this case, a chemical solution and electricity are used to remove the gold from circuit boards. Using chemical solvent baths. It's possible to extract gold by dissolving it in a powerful chemical bath, then filtering and purifying it.

In printed circuit boards (PCBs) - PCBs are found in almost all electronic devices. They contain thin layers of copper tracks that connect various electronic components. Gold is also used for plating the contacts and connectors on PCBs because of its excellent conductivity and resistance to corrosion.

printed circuit boards (PCBs) is that a rich gold ore might have 0.5 – 1.0 oz of gold per ton of ore, but computer PCBs contain 3 – 8+ oz gold, 15 – 20+ oz silver, 500+ lbs copper per ton of boards, plus multiple other base and precious metals.

Gold is used on connectors and contacts because it has excellent corrosion resistance, high electrical conductivity (only copper and silver are better) and, alloyed with small amounts of nickel or cobalt, has good wear resistance.

Including both source material procurement costs and the energy costs for the entire process, the total cost of recovering 1 g of gold from e-waste was 50 times lower than the value of the gold recovered. And the method is better from an environmental standpoint.

It is possible to find gold plating in small traces, not only in hard drives, RAM memory sticks, but in many other components of desktop or laptop computers. The exact amount can vary around 0.3 gram of gold worth around $20.