People are just amazed when they hear that there is gold in mobile phones also. Until sometime ago the common notion was that in electronic waste, computer scrap is the only source of gold. And people just did not value their cellphone scrap; they would simply throw it away or sell it at a very cheap price to some plastic scrap buyer. Ever since the demand for mobile scrap grew more and more, people started thinking what is there in it that so many people are looking for mobile phone scrap? And their curiosity took them to the fact that there is lot of gold in cell phone scrap. The fact is that you get more gold from mobile phone waste in comparison to the computer waste. And a broken or defective mobile set that you simply throw away is worth no less than rupees 200 (USD 4.44) the scrap of cell phones is so costly because its motherboard is gold-plated and all the connectors used in mobile phones are also gold plated. And the chips mounted on its motherboard also have good quantity of gold and some palladium in them. And the ceramic capacitors used in cell phones have palladium in them. This way precious metal recovery from cell phone waste is a profitable business. This is the reason why many people on the net search the answer to how to recover gold from cell phones?
You have to employ three different methods to extract precious metals from mobile phone waste. The gold from motherboards and connectors can be removed through cyanide recovery process. I mentioned in my other articles also that cyanide recovery process is quite economical and, we get complete recovery of gold through this. But cyanide being a very harmful chemical, should be handled with care and be neutralized after the use. To remove gold through cyanide gold recovery process you have to first take plain water in a steel pot and boil it on a gas stove or you can take a Teflon plastic vessel and boil the water with a heating rod. Take the quantity of water in which you can easily immerse cell phone motherboards. The amount of cyanide that you dissolve in water depends on the weight of the scrap and the quantity of water that we use. Use commercial grade sodium cyanide instead of potassium cyanide. Suppose you have 10 kilogram of motherboards and 15 litres of water, you may first add 50 grams of sodium cyanide to the water. Try to dissolve the cyanide into the water with the help of a wooden stick, and later on you may add more cyanide to the water if need be. Strong presence of oxygen should be maintained in the cyanide solution for which different types of pumps are available in the market. The more the oxygen in the solution the better will be the dissolution of gold in the cyanide solution. Once the gold has completely been removed from the motherboards, the boards should be taken out of the solution and the solution should be filtered with the help of a filter paper. The gold from the cyanide solution can be easily separated by adding zinc dust to it.
I know the question how to recover gold from cell phones is still echoing in your mind because your question has not been fully answered. You still have to know about the gold and palladium recovery from the chips and ceramic capacitors respectively. Well, as for recovery of gold from chips you have to first burn them in an environment friendly way, then grind them into a fine powder, melt all the metals present in the powder in a crucible by mixing borax and lead with it. After melting you will get a solid mass of the mixed metals such as gold, copper and nickel etc. you can easily separate gold from it through electrolytic process.
As for the recovery of palladium from ceramic capacitors, the capacitors first have to be crushed to a fine powder and then the palladium present in the powder is melted in a crucible as mentioned above with some lead and borax. After the metal melts in the crucible and settles to its bottom, pour it into a mold to get a solid mass of mixed metals such as palladium and lead etc. you can reclaim palladium either chemically or electrolytically.
