I did a batch of a little over 400gm of these a few years ago and if I recall I got just over 40gm silver and a couple gm of palladium. The dust that was left over had those same shiny bits and under a strong magnifying glass I could see they appeared to be silicon (they remained after an AR boil). I still had over 300gm of dust left over and I was curious as to how much of that was the tantalum. I had a small counter-top gold sluice I'd made years before and tried that out and it did a surprisingly good job in collecting the heavy stuff. I wound up selling the tantalum powder for more than the silver. Now I just save all the dust after I do the nitric soaks and let it all collect until I have enough saved up to process in a larger batch. It's not always easy to find a buyer for the tantalum but when I do they seem rather eager and I get what I feel is a decent price. Oh...and for that foam I find a small butane torch on low does a great job of breaking it down without causing issues.

I'm finishing up the latest batch of mills right now, so I can't wait to watch this video later! Already "thumbs up'ed" though, cause I know it's gonna be good! :-)

We have two companies nearby that buy tantalum capacitors. I called they were $14 a pound. Think I have about $10 saved up so far.

Cool excellent video thank you 😊 I use my magnetic stirring plate with heat cuts down on rinse water washing and really helps in the conversion process

Tantalum's has a very high melting point of 3017 °C (boiling point 5458 °C)

Good day, if you boil a pot of water place a plastic bowl in the pot and cover with an hourglass lid the water that condenses off the lid and fall in the bowl should be distilled

@corybuckles8492

4 күн бұрын

Given that Florida is so humid, running a dehumidifier would produce copious amounts of distilled water for very little cost.

I’ve definitely been keeping these for the past several years, someday to recover silver.👍

Enjoyed this. Always hear about tantalum capacitors but not seen them processed. Cheers mate

Incinerating beforehand may eliminate the foaming issue and you could place a piece of copper in the nitrate solution to precipitate the silver as a readily meltable metal

@jessewilson8676

7 ай бұрын

I was thinking the foam was coming from the plastics also..

I noticed you were not wearing a mask or respirator while using your precious little mill there and dust was visibly floating out of it. You might want to Google the toxicity of inhaled Manganese Dioxide, which is also contained in those capacitors.

@damianstasek8946

Жыл бұрын

Lol a youtuber actually wearing proper PPE? First day on the internet huh?

If you run ALL your rinses through a filter, and burn it when melt the silver, you would get a little more silver.

I am surprise of the result..I have collected 10 kg TA capacitors in 3 years..difficult to find a buyer here in the Philippines...

great result

That was a good % recovery. 👍

Good video, thanks for sharing, I was surprised you didn’t pyrolyse the material before processing, even if there is nothing in the plastic, it reduces the amount of material while dissolving the silver. But a great result, nice job

I believe you said you had older capacitors mixed in . I wonder if somehow contaminates were introduced.i am saying this becouse I do the same process and have many times never foamed on me and it settled quickly on my rinses

could you boil of the waste water and save room

As Mr sreetips always says incineration incineration incineration

If you have it already dissolved into the Nitric- Acid why not just Drop the Silver with Copper. Then to use Lye and Sugar to make more steps to your process. When using copper will drop the silver and leave you with two less steps.

The greenish liquid is from nickel in solution .

Would it surprise you to find gold bonding wire in some of the black tantalum? I have bunch of new old stock. Drawers emptied into baggies from closed business, that sold online. Cracking open some of the tantalum from different baggies, i found gold bonding wire in some of the black ones. I have maybe 5 to 6 kg of tantalum from the old stock. So I'm not sure how common the gold ones are yet. I set it aside for now.

Nice vid thank you. I'd really like to see what would come out of this mill if we put connectors with pins inside like ide connectors or sata connector that would have been desoldered from a mother board.

@omegageek64

Жыл бұрын

I have some videos like that. Check out my channel.

lol maybe the foam is from the nitric reactic with the powdered shells of the caps or something like that... if was using a larger beaker.. couldve maybe just added more distilled water to dilute the nitric a bit more

Thanks Mike: Dang I been throwing these away I guess I should start saving them

As far as filtering goes, the Russians patented a filter, it was open cell foam like the filter media of tropical fish filters, but they compressed the thick filter to a thin disc, used it to filter the fine solids out, then released the pressure and washed out the solids, it was quite an inspired idea I thought

Awesome ... sorting T-caps as I'm seeing you do them ... Points of order .. Would it help to boil in HCL & wash ... before going to Nitric? 2nd would it not be easier to cement out the silver from AgNO3 on copper? Great stuff thanks for making my life simpler.

What about the palladium and tantalum?? Can those be gotten also?? Palladium for sure. Another good good video.

"Stirring seems to make it worse".... continues to stir it for 10 minutes

I was wondering if the value of silver you recover exceeds the expense of the acids being used. I've been passing up on thousands of tantalum capacitors over the years. Right now, I have over 300 old laptops to scrap out. I have seen several tantalum capacitors on each motherboard. I am just interested in recovering the gold from the IC's and connectors and I have not been collecting the capacitors. I just tell myself that I'm leaving something for the next guy to recover. If anyone is intersted in the leftovers, just hit me up. I figure it's going to take me at least a year just to recover the gold and I don't have the time or patience to recover the other precious metals, or even recover the copper.

Does the hydrophobic powder contain any minerals?

What do u do with your rinse water i just let mine evaporate. Leaves very little. U can straight melt silver chloride the lye is only for youtube

Have you tried piranha salutiont to remove the plastic

Can you use regular tap water we are in shortage of distilled water in Tennessee too

@omegageek64

Жыл бұрын

No. Tap water generally contains chlorine.

On rinsing, I've seen a video where after sugar is added and conversion is complete, they add water and place on heat. After short time the liquid will turn yellow/brown and then decant/ syphon off and only a few rinses required.....

@chrisneal7798

Жыл бұрын

Also, a boil in HCL will clean that up to nearly 3 nines fine.

Hi Mike, Great video! Excellent silver recovery! One of the tantalum recycling companies offers pictures of the older tantalum capacitors . I wonder what the silver content is in those older ones?? Did you save the sludge to recover the tantalum bits? Take Care, Jim

@omegageek64

Жыл бұрын

Yep. I've been saving the tantalum.

Can't you just melt the silver chloride and reprocess the pellet?

Great Video!! Hopefully the most common magnetic MLCCs are coming up this year to see how much silver you can get with them? Also what about using copper to drop the silver? Just wondering what your thoughts are on that?

@omegageek64

Жыл бұрын

I think the lye and sugar method produces purer silver, but I've done cementation on copper too.

@shaneyork300

Жыл бұрын

@@omegageek64 I did not know that! Thanks

Before watching I will guess ~15gr of silver recovered. Now I will watch and see how close I was. Been saving these but they take a while to build up.

Question why not just use copper and cement out silver medal rather than go the silver chloride way. Of course if you have silver chloride to start with makes sense if you don't ?

@omegageek64

Жыл бұрын

My cement silver always seems to be contaminated with a little bit of copper. Reduction from silver chloride produces very pure silver.

@spirit_wolf123

Жыл бұрын

@@omegageek64 silver chloride and cement silver both come out 98 to 99 % pure both require a silvercel to be pure. I rinse my silver cement with hot water and then 20% dilute sulfuric acid to remove residual copper. Happy refining

@omegageek64

Жыл бұрын

@@spirit_wolf123 Thanks for the tip.

Rubbing alcohol in a spray bottle will take the foam down in a heart beat. Try it.

Just watching you trying to separate the silver chloride, what about a flocculating agent added to the first wash that would drop the solids then wash away, used in wine and beer making Bentonite I think is one

Burn some dicyanoacetylene with oxygen. Then you have your surface of the sun temperature. Otherwise acetylene and oxygen should be able to (just barely) surpass the ~3020 C. Melting point of tantalum 👍

What I’m wondering is who buys tantalum besides the guy in Florida. I have over 100 lbs of tantalum silver capacitors. 1/2 tubular and the other ceramic.

and what do you do with the tantalum? is there a method to recover it? i mean is it even worth going for the tantalum?!

@GamerLoggos

Жыл бұрын

Tantalum is pretty much valueless as a scrap metal. When processing these you are only after the silver.

@TheZamiboy

Жыл бұрын

I was wondering the same but it seems like tantalum value is something like 150-160$/kilo.

@GamerLoggos

Жыл бұрын

@@TheZamiboy Yeah its got value but the issue is purifying and smelting the stuff. Its super chemically resistant and it has a melting point just shy of 3,000°C. The expense of processing would likely offset any profit you might had made on selling it.

@TheZamiboy

Жыл бұрын

@@GamerLoggos You are right about it. Also, i have no idea who would buy tantalum. It is not commonly traded metal like silver, gold and platinum group metals.

@iamanempoweredone6064

Жыл бұрын

Wear a dust mask. The ceramic dust can lead to cancer

It helps if you know what the crap you're doing...