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Recycling as a business

Darshevo

Experienced Member
Joined
Aug 9, 2009
Messages
206
Location
Eastern Washington
I have finally made the commitment to step up to full time electronic recycling. At this point I have found a couple of local outlets that will accept e-waste free of charge. That leads me to believe there must be some money in it up stream a little ways. I'm guessing not much per piece, maybe a few bucks each on the outside. At a volume of 40-50 pieces a month it would hardly be worth it (places like that deal in truckloads) but I have some lines I am working on that should move me into the semi truck load a month range. Ideally I would deal with someone who recycles the CRTs themselves (not a full monitor), circuit boards, etc. My conscience won't allow me to do business with someone who is shipping the stuff to thailand for swamp dumping.

As a side note, if someone could provide me with a proper method to extract gold from CPU's it would be greatly appreciated. I have read page after page on the internet and all of the pages seem to leave out just enough info to make it either unworkable, or downright dangerous. Barring that a trustworthy refiner reference would be great. Both on a CPU and pallet load circuit board level

I understand that some of you may be involved in the recycling industry and don't wish to provide trade secrets to local competitors (or competitors in general) so PM's would be great as well, any information I am provided will be kept in strict confidence. I am located in Spokane, Wa. and won't be straying more than a couple hundred miles from home, basically eastern Washington and northern Idaho.

-Lance
 
People still do hand mining where I live, and one fellow was telling me the other day about having gotten a significant amount of CPUs together and extracted a fair bit of gold. His description of the ensuing toxic cloud sounded downright dangerous and definitely not something you could do legally.

I think if you want to do it legitimately it could be a huge equipment, procedural, and particularly permit and licensing issue. I don't personally fear industrial chemistry, but there are lot of people who do and I think they could make it difficult for you. Those are just my thoughts - not real knowledge. :)
 
I have a pretty good idea about the chemical method to break down the cpu's. I also made note of how to neutralize the acid when it had become broken down enough to no longer be useful. (I'm a very enviromentally minded person its a large part of why I am in the metals recycling business to begin with) My stumbling block comes with how to extract the metals from the sludge the acid makes

As kids we found that the proper (improper? :)) combination of muriatic acid, aluminum can shavings and a certain type of pop bottle (glass) well.... you can guess the rest. The muriatic gave off a very unpleasant visible vapor, so I have been schooled on careful handling of the hard stuff

-Lance
 
Don't you add some halogen (F, Cl, Br, I etc) to get a fallout salt from some of the metal ions? Or maybe even add some other lower metal salt to react. I'm no chemist, but someone like Merlin may be able to give you a better answer.
 
Here is a good site that explains some of the recovery methods used.

http://www.shorinternational.com/goldrecovery.htm

For the CPU's, you can use electrolysis.

There are cheaper places to get the chemicals. Most of these sites make their money selling you the expensive recovery kits and chemicals. You don't need all that. There are also substitutes for the caustic acids used too.

I haven't recovered anything yet myself. Just researching.

There is a payback period on your investment too. You need to recycle a lot of stuff to break even. If you only have small amounts, it might be better selling to other recovery operations.
 
I'm not sure what states have this but I recall Sellam (vintage.org) talking about a state sponsored recycling program that sounds like they get some money or tax breaks being registered as a recycler instead of just a scrapper or whatever other technicalities there are. Essentially as that (in California) you can accept anything but you aren't responsible for breaking it all down so you can then ship out entire TVs without having to float the lead or other chemicals.

Similar business you might want to ask him about it although again, he doesn't float stuff I don't think but instead gets paid by the pound by the actual disposal folks (and at THAT rate then the heavy TV and each palette of stuff (think he does it by the truckload) become more profitable).

As you are probably already aware, it's tough making a living just recycling but if you keep some odds and ends and sell some I'm sure it'd become a good deal. Then you sell the service of equipment removal from facilities (go pick up palettes of computers/electronics from places) and for whatever reason they pay you to get a bunch of their stuff you can sell.

Good luck! I wish I could do that. I'm getting more antsy with my dream to have a public computer museum and do that myself though I don't have the funds or place for it. Maybe one day!

- John
 
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