How to Smelt a Circuit Board

Have your smelted circuit board assayed by a third party.

While the computer revolution of the modern era has extraordinary benefits, it has simultaneously created a new issue that is cause for concern. Circuit boards are ubiquitous as they can be found in phones, cars, computers and a host of other electronics. When the gadgets you use everyday have reached their shelf life the components that make them up must be dealt with in an environmentally friendly and safe manner. This is where smelting comes in.

Things You'll Need

• Circuit board
• Blast furnace
• Conveyor belt
• Small sledgehammer
• Metallurgical flowsheet

Instructions

1. Determine what all of the different materials are that compose the circuit board. Especially if the circuit board contains hazardous substances, it is crucial to know what types of metals are in the circuit board not only because of environmental concerns but also in order to properly assay the value of the metals in the circuit board.

2. Strip the circuit board of components such as chips and additional memory. These parts of the circuit board are more valuable as chips and memory than they are as smelted metallic parts.

3. Remove large aluminum and iron components as efficiently as possible without jeopardizing the precious metals in the circuit board.

4. Break the circuit board into smaller pieces with a small sledgehammer. This will allow you to more easily extract the metallic substances from the slag when they are melted down.

5. Place the pieces of the circuit board on a metallurgical flowsheet and place the metallurgical flowsheet on the conveyor belt that leads into the blast furnace.

6. Let the material smelt in the blast furnace at approximately 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit for several minutes to melt the flowsheet and cause the precious metals to stand out from the slag that is created from the rest of the smelted circuit board.

References

• Umicore Precious Metals Refining: Our Process