Extracting gold from computer parts (Part 1)
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- čas přidán 18. 07. 2016
- Today we recover some gold from scrap computer parts. Also I already know I made a mistake and labelled it 3:1 instead of 2:1. oh well.
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Nile talks about lab safety: • Chemistry is dangerous. - Věda a technologie
1 - buy expensive chemicals
2 - extract a blank amount of gold
3 - realize you lost money
4 - make a youtube video to try to recover money with adsense
Step 5: Profit
Step 6 : *STONKS*
Step 10 - break out of prison then *repeat*
I did notice an add for a collage degree,,,,,,,,,,,
step 12 - hold my beer
*Reads title
*looks at old computer
Old computer: heavy sweating
Haha
Haha
nice one 👍
* softly*
Dont
Lol
Your instructions were unclear, I ended up doing methamphetamine
Porro lol
Yeah that’ll get you happened to my dad too
Hey, that's illegal...
Do you realize that it says "Part 1"?
Lul
Wife: Honey have you seen any of my laptops?
Husband: Forget about your laptops. I got you a gold ring. Happy anniversary!
all fun and games until his mission is: Survive.
@@maticsss Mission failed, we'll try again next time.
Ha! I got a solid chuckle out of this.
Thanks, buddy! 👍
Sweetie I had to wreck that Honda…. I mean those laptops. And don’t worry about Zed. Zed’s dead baby, Zed’s dead.
😂😂 u crazy man!
I like how he can say “ I didn’t have any cyanide” and it’s normal
did you know you can make that stuff with apple seeds?
Felix C yes I did that’s why dogs cannot have them
Well, you just run out of the stuff sometimes.
Felix C and cherry pits
@@Chillerll yes. just have him buy like 50 apples just to remove the seeds and extract the microscopic amount there is.
Summary of gold recovering business:
1. Add acid
2. stir
3. filter
4. repeat and repeat
5. Realizing it's not making money.
Then you realize you need shithole country slave workers...
Had my yacht already ordered... D'oh
realizing it’s not making money?
*visual frustration*
Realizing it's more expensive than gold.
Good luck trying to sell those gold
Actually Old CPUs can be more worth more than the extracted gold itself, the retro computer community does pay really well
Yep. I am an enthusiast and I would pay
CPUS pre 2008 are worth their weight in gold
Probably more
True, but gold is easier to sell.
and here i am about to throw away a lot of working scraps. 3 old computers and a laptop + spare parts. ddr1-ddr2 range. if i put them up for sale it wouldn't sell, unless i basically give it away for free. got some stuff from mid 90s. however a pentium 3 i threw years ago. i tend to save the ram and hdd's, unfortunately i dont think there's much in a hdd besides a little on the controller.
edit: hmm. i have a working C64, even a printer to it.
@@zoompt-lm5xw that sounds interesting because i have a 2005 pentium 4 630 in original packaging sitting here, but ebay says 2 dollars 😅
"I didn't have any cyanide"
Boy, I can relate.
I did this and do you know what I made golden cyanide
@@randomanimations1621 goldide
@@ok1025 exactly
@@randomanimations1621 mp
l
Try with antique computers. The gold plating is usually thicker tho. Like a lot
also most of the gold is in the cpu's. pentium 1 and pentium 2 have approximately 1-2g
Extra *THICC*
@@americanengineering2063 Pentium Pro ;) 1994/1995. Best gold amount.
I’m currently harvesting gold from an old computer 1998
@@smithy1578 If it still works, or parts of it still work, sell the computer online instead of scraping it. you can make 3-4x as much.
shout out to the ant at 6:52 i hope you're living a good life
That ant is dead now.
Along with my will to live
Whoa... Can you marry me?
Who are you talking to?
boil space is fake as hell and the government is spraying hormones on our babies.
*FBI questions why you need cyanide, what is your response?:*
"I"m devolving gold from computer parts."
FBI: ...from tooth fillings ya mean?
*dissolving
Sorry- devolving?
Lol not really an issue
I usually put the aqua regia beaker into a warm water bath to speed up the reaction.
I use urea (which is very cheap) to bring up the pH, and then precipitate with warmed metabisulfite solution. Warming the neutralized gold chloride and metabisulfite, I found, caused almost instantaneous precipitation of all the gold into a sponge-form, which is then very easy to recover.
many computer repair places will just give you pcb's if you ask. they tend to have a ton and dont recycle them on their own.
Really, I'll have to remember that
Yep, I fill a 40ft shipping container every year.
@@EvolvedApe That's interesting. What do you do with the container? I have a business already but always interested in different business models and how they function.
@@aquilatempestate9527 Last year, a guy bought it all for $8000, container included. Don't have a buyer this year. Apparently the Korean guy I sold to last year retired and moved to the Philippines.
@@EvolvedApe Thanks for the response chap. Was he selling it in Asia?
can we all agree that Nigel’s voice is very soothing and makes you feel good
Wow I feel good I knew that I would now so good so good
His voice ain't got nothing on Lock Picking Lawyer lol. Guy has the voice of an angel
@@prestonspencer6094 you obviously don’t know about Ed Bolian from VINwiki
@@mikehawk1673 man but still though lol lock picking lawyer got the voice of an angel 😂😂
You're the first person i've heard say that. I don't think most the viewers are here for his voice
1) The green color is copper, silver and small amounts of platinum metals 2) The Aqua Regia and acid amounts DO affect the resulting recovery efficiency. 3) Grinding or burning the boards means that step 1 takes a day or 2 instead of a week.
I'm in the middle of recovering gold from a variety of junk I've had sitting around for ages. Dead computer/phone parts, gold-plated connectors, and unassembled prototype PCBs. I'm using hydrogen peroxide and vinegar, which is working great for how simple it is. It only really dissolves copper, but that'll get gold off of PCBs and some contacts.
Pretty sure I spent *way* more time than it's worth recovering this stuff. Really, I only have _maybe_ half a gram here if I'm being optimistic. But hey, I'm having fun and getting an excuse to buy cool glassware.
these videos are very soothing and good before bed
Nile's videos are better than porn
I've been using them to treat my insomnia
I listen to them to help sleep
This guy must really like his coffee filters.
I have been using them to make a wooden rifle out of a stop sign and 2 Macintosh computers.
Funny thing, I actually worked at the factory that these exact PCBs. Those are actually test coupons. I can tell by the silkscreen code on the coupons.
Pa
Yeah right. And I dated Bill Skarsgard in college.
0:58 we're not breaking even we're breaking bad
You can also use dilute nitric acid for the initial cleaning of the boards. Weak nitric acid easily removes copper and nickel, but won't touch gold, platinum, palladium, or rhodium at all. It will dissolve silver, but so does HCl and peroxide.
A lot of times computer scrap will contain lead. I noticed you did not add sulfuric to drop out lead before adding SMB to your solution. Hopefully these PCB's were lead free, or your gold is going to be contaminated.
I have been watching sreetips channel. That guy has been doing this a long time, and seems to have perfected every method.
I also love watching Cody'sLab (who I see also commented here), but sreetips is the one i always tend to go back to when I have any questions.
But I love your's and Cody's channels because you guys are actually chemists, and describe the actual chemical processes that are happening. Keep up the awesome work. I love how you can actually learn things on CZcams and it is not all just stupidity, conspiracy theories, and bickering. You guys who are hear to teach the world, are what make CZcams great, in my opinion.
The boards in the video look like boards that were scrapped before ever being assembled.
Here
There is always lead in computer chips. The soldering iron contains lead.
@@kokoslegend4850 Actually it's tin, not lead.
@@frankrodgers7524 it is in most cases made from a mixture of lead and tin. However, there are lead free variants.
It seems like even if you know exactly what parts to buy, that when you take into account the cost of materials, the time hunting down the right deals, and the time put in to the actual recovery, that the profit per hour would be less than a minimum wage job.
Unless you scavenge the parts themselves for free by scavenging them from trash cans or electronics disposal boxes, for example I salvage the computer parts I find from the electronic disposal box in front of the IT department at school, long as you wait till you have enough computer scrap to net you a profit in return of gold per refinement process you should be good, but obv it won't give you as much money as a minimum wage job, it is more of a side income no matter what
@@MonsterPumpkin time involved scavaging would likely make it worse than the awful money you'd get anyway
i like how the disclaimer at the beginning says not to try this but he also gives us exact directions and amounts of everything as if we were going to do it
This is luxury thing
:diamond
:gold
:gold solution
whos with me for a colab of Nile red and Cody slab🙆
That would be awesome! It will probably happen one day
No, they should be roomies. Or at least share a lab. Who knows what they could do for humanity, when they combine their powers.
One problem tho, one lives in Canada and the other lives in Utah of America
nile red is much more professional ;P
I love Cody slab lol
This guy must really like his coffee filters.
my old calculators from middle school served me well, now it's time to use one to calculate how much gold I could get from them
edit: I got about 44 Canadian dollars
Nice one.
Nice
Nice.
Aquarium pumps are meant to have a bubbler stone at the output end of the tube. That disperses the air coming through the hose into hundreds of tiny streams of air making incredibly small bubbles.
Processors with pins are a great source, FYI.
@@Jasperr9999 at least it’s quite an easy process, only time when that’s great
13:33 ... Black Gold. Texas Tea. Oil, that is.
wanted something I could try, ended up in a chemistry class :). thanks man
.. . .
I’d like to see a video on how to extract gold from old dental crowns that were removed by my dentist. And no, I didn’t let the dentist keep them! I think this would be a much different process (as it’s big chunks mixed with other metals, and not gold plated).
Dude I was wondering this with PCBs (work for a CM). Some of them are able to solder WAY better than others even though all get gold plating and, to the eye, look identical from one array to another. I suspect crappy gold mixed with other junk in your case as well as mine.
+NileRed
very nice video
indeedItdoes
ok
Roarke Barrett ok
Roarke Barrett O k t h e n
Nileblue
Nilered
Nilegreen
I would love to see you redo this with different computer parts or materials and a few more years experience to see how it affects your yield/profit. Extracting precious material from junk is so cool to me, even if it's not technically worth it.
Instructions unclear, my stomach is now plated in computer parts
This is why these companies be holding these computer recycling events.
0:58 I know you already did by uploading this video 😁
This channel is a treasure, worth more than gold
My Old Windows: uh oh....
My Broken Laptop: oh shit...
Me: *slowly putting on Gloves*
Hahahahahah
Robotsnake20's Broken Laptop After seeing Robotsnake20 put's gloves on: aw fuck...
it's 2 am in the morning and I have 3 more assignments to complete then now I'm learning to extract Gold from old tech parts. Great!
"Little bit of chemical treatment"
*explains the process in 3 videos*
🤣
I like it when he says "Gold."
@@gavindao6754 Ayy Twoset
0:00 "Wow I'm rich."
14:20 "Oh, forget it."
I tried to start a business like this, because I had access to a lot of junk electronics in my job just after high school. I talked to my high school chemistry teacher to try to get some help but she didn't trust me lol
"I moved the gold to the front so you could really see what was going on in this step"
*pop up ad immediately covers the front of the beaker*
Very familiar with this process, very nice first try. I use the same process to recover gold from slag (I process small amounts of other metals from other ores). My first few attempts weren't very efficient to say the least :)
this is how people get gold in the future, nile is way ahead of his time.
Ray well, u can get cancer and various diseases and body functions disorders from doing this in long term
you know the people who make this need the gold to inject it into the computer scrap, right?
Nah they'll probably make it in labs
Does he wear suits or does he just wear gloves
Nah, gold will be worthless because of asteroid mining
0:29 gamer juice
Some PCBs are have whole-board ENIG, which means stripping the solder resist with strong base might expose more copper pour and help recover more gold.
The mason jar says potassium metabisulfite while you said sodium metabisulfite.
+Ryan Tooher (FantomZap) wow i have no idea how i did that. Nice catch though. It actually is potassium metabisulfite. I messed up, but in the end it doesnt really matter. Both work equally as well
+NileRed lol, its all good.
I like how he sounds surprised that he doesn't have cyanide on hand.
I love the bug photo bomb at 6:50 lmao 😂
He sounds no older or younger than today. His video as a whole looks no older than today. I also have no idea what half the chemicals he is talking about. Amazing.
Hi man! Your channel is great and I learn a lot from it. Gold recicling is a thing that needs a lot of reasurch and practice. What I've probably spotted in your video, and what I think is a mistake is that you did not neutralise the aqua regia solution before adding the metabisulfite, which resulted in immediate re-desolving of the perticipated gold, which one can see on the the immediate gas that was emmited after the addition.... I made that mistake and it cost me maybe 10-15 g. of gold and me running around trying to fix things...
What do you think - IMO you have to neutralise with urea or pottasium bicarbonate before SMB addition...
Waiting for your thoughts on that...
Regards form Sofia, Bulgaria!
How much urea would you add? Just as much as needed to get a neutral pH?
Processors, RAM, and anything with a PCI-E bus aren't bad choices. Connectors (processor pins, RAM buses, PCI-E buses) are what are most commonly gold-plated because gold being soft and conductive confers desirable properties when plating connectors.
“I’m personally not even close to a master at gold recovery” is such an Alpha statement I can’t explain why
6:52 A bug runnin! Those were your good ol days!
Made a twitter! twitter.com/NileRed2
can you do a video on how to recover palladium from MLCC's?
u could have just scrap off the gold from the computer part or carefully heat to separate the gold that was put on that computer part. why wait 2 weeks and use so much materials and ruin all other computer parts to get the gold off and polluting environment with so many chemicals ??
meri You seem very uninformed. I'd recommend doing even slight research on what you're talking about, but you probably wouldn't listen.
YOU MADE TWITTER?
Hey man great videos .
Love your work.
So I did the gold extraction as a project for an assignment at school.
Followed almost all the steps you did except I used HNO3 to get rid of all the base metals.Then I dissolved the gold obtained in aqua regia .To precipitate it I'd used Sodium MetaBisulphite. On adding the first few spoons, there were tiny black clouds formed, But after that nothing much seemed to be happening even after adding more metabisulphite. I've a hunch that i used a tadtoo much of Aqua regia.
Even after 2 hours there was no sign of any precipitation.
Did I do something wrong like adding excess of metabisulphite or would i have to wait longer?
Around 0.25g of gold is expected to be there. And i used mainly ram and data card trimmings.
So what do you suggest I do?
Never destroy a working older part. Plenty of people looking to build retro gaming rigs out there. That old 80486 or Pentium chip is likely worth far more to a collector / gamer than as scrap. Even bent or missing pint can be fixed on really old chips. More modern chips like the P4 on up are much harder to fix once broken. But an early Pentium or 386/486 can be easily fixed.
"At the time of this recording I didnt have any cyanide" hah! Gosh, I love chemists. I love that that wasn't even a joke lol
The fact that it costs more to seperate the gold from the computer parts, than the amount of money the gold is worth
Could you please make video about extracting silver from x-ray films
I would watch this
+Lord_Lammington Me too
Here's what you're looking for. Sreetips is pretty much the best on youtube and truly covers the entire process. czcams.com/video/0tn-a0S0FD8/video.html
yo!
Can you make a video on extracting silver from film
He is the only person to ever say
I’m fresh out of Cyanide
😂😂
CZcams finally recommends this after 3 years
Me :"watching the video"
My computer : Oh man i'm dead...
2016: Extracting gold from computer parts
2020: Extracting computer parts from gold
6:52 there’s a little bug crawling around on the bottom right lol, scared the shit out of me because my glasses are off and I was laying on my bed watching this at 2am lmao
6:45 you can also tie a loose knot in the air tubing and slowly tighten it to get your desired bubble rate
POV: You are getting this video recommended 5 years.
True.
!true
6:52 aww how sweet. You brought on a guest :-)
omfg that filter adjustment at 8:10 was heaven! 😍
I was *immediately* annoyed by the way it crumpled, and then you immediately rescued my rapidly-deteriorating emotional state by fixing it.
Thanks, man. I was only a few seconds away from losing my shit there. lol
that's called fluted filter paper folding in chemistry
Next video will be making a bomb out of paper, I swear this dude can make everything out of anything
Did you know that a lot of people in Africa actually make their living doing this?
(+prophetchannel) And a lot of those same people also recover data on the hard drives and sometimes find government data (from the master cryptographers) that can be sold. Most of the time it’s just regular hard drives where you find normal people things.
Sadly a lot of poor Africans will burn electronics to extract various metals. They don't realize they inhale dangerous fumes and poison nearby drinking water sources which causes horrible birth defects.
@@chr1s83 sadly? Lol luckily instead
@@franc5016 whAt
@@franc5016 maybe you didn't read my entire comment. It poisons rivers and leads to horrible birth defects in people and animals
My Siri went off at 6:45 when you said it was really important
Did you see how Apple got about $40 million in gold from old phones reported recently?
Hey... You've saved a life today, and I want you to know that i'm very grateful for you. I love you and please keep going.
This is a new way to get rid from some electronic parts and save gold for the future
Me: I would like to be rich.
My CZcams Recommendations System: Yes.
I love your videos, they help me when I have trouble sleeping
weirdo !
0:08
I did think he maked a "computer juice"
Fun fact - The chemicals he used costed more than the gold extracted itself!
F
is the recovery from processors the same as from RAMs? I mean, should I do something different to separate the gold from the metallic connections, or it's the same as you do for RAMs?
why are u trying this bro
I just realized that this was made 3 years ago..
Some tho
Good suggestions, warnings, and use of language to indicate precautions necessary. This process includes some chemistry notes, and it helps people understand what you are doing.
I just went to the grocery store. My eyes lit up when I saw muriatic said!!! I thought of you!!😂
6:59 never say basic in a chemistry video unless you mean it has a pH greater than 7😂
That timestamp is almost basic
Aryaman Kejriwal this comment tastes like basic oxide
I've watched your videos for years and I'm a huge fan of your channel. I have a proposition, do you have a way I could contact you? Basically I have a few buckets of gold ore, here's the thing its mixed with tellurium. There is even a big huge chunk of elemental tellurium. Ive read that its one of the most rare of all finds I've also read it can be slightly radioactive. If you would be interested in processing some of this ore for a how-to video on the ore or if you have any use for the tellurium as well.im not exactly sure about shipping the hunk with the elemental tellurium though because I'm not really trying to break any crazy laws or anything
I hope you get a response! I'd love to see a video on that. I don't know anything about tellurium at all.
Hey Nile, I love watching your channels even though I don't understand most it. Anyways, could you do a video on extracting platinum from dirt you get from highways?
Great chemistry lesson!
This guy rlly gets gold from anything mad respect for you bro
NileRed, your videos are great; I have learned how to make many interesting things from you. That said, I have a n00b question: how does the aquaregia not utterly destroy the coffee filters and the plastic funnel?
Aqua regia don't really disolve plastics well. I guess that the funnel was made out of HDPE or PP plastic which are reasonably resistant to acids.
Filter paper though, I think it would react with it, I assume it just hadn't have enough time to destroy it.
I love you Nile!
man , it got recommended now(finally)
what if you recovered all three metals? The copper may be worth something too.
TwoSet Violain better than nothing lol
@@ehxrow this
Rhodesian Wojak I think the extra chemicals you would use would be a lot more than 3 cents...
@@ltorrison1 and the time it takes
I feel that crushing the parts or grinding them prior to adding the acid can make the process faster and might give more gold as the surface area of reaction increase. But again this can only really work if the suspension made is not allowed to settle and you have to make sure not to waste a lot of the powder from grinding it.
BIG thumps up to this boy.. love it
Omg, I have no idea how I found this video but I'm here for the comments. So hilarious
CZcams recommendation: "Extracting gold from computer parts"
Me: "finally a good way to get money"
Me: *clicks on the video*
Video: *chemistry*
Me: "ight imma head out"
Turns out he didn't even make money, he wasn't even close to breaking even! To actually turn a profit you need to upsize this operation by a ton... So that is a shame.
Nice new icon dude
It looks really good
Thanks!
NileRed ayyy, no problem sciencebro
I preferred the old one
best use of my computer according to parents
This must be the Gold Experience!