Experiment: Can You Mine Gold From Old Motherboards?

I knew a lot of hardware hackers who did this as a side-business. They would find old electronic equipment and sell to someone else who, would sell it someone else and so on, until all that hardware ended with someone who had a large vat of acid just lying around.<p>It was in Eastern Europe, where, as everyone knows, people just have large vats of H2SO4 lying around in their back yard ;-)

Awesome! Recovering gold from the contacts with several steps involving electrolysis in 95% sulphuric acid and a reaction 2 Au + 3 Cl2 -&#62; 2 AuCl3!<p>I wish there would be more chemical hacking articles like this. It's a pity they didn't write more about how did they come up with the process and how does it work.

There was a DEA agent giving a speech the other day. One of the stories he told was about a meth user who used his 3-4 days of being awake to harvest the gold from cpus/motherboards over the months. He stated the guy had a ball in between the size of a golf ball and baseball. He was just getting free equipment out of dumpsters in the city.

The author forgot to give instructions on how to safely dispose of these nasty chemicals.

As a vintage computer collector and restorer, I find this rather alarming...

I know a guy who has done this as a business for at least the last 20 years. Nice little business model.

The industrial process for refining gold ores uses cyanide in one of the processing steps. Good thing he didn't try that process for a DIY project. He's already insane enough for using concentrated sulfuric acid without a fume hood, emergency shower/eyewash station, and full face shield.

The challenge seems to be scaling this up... as ever!

I have a friend who's father makes his living by buying old computer equipment and selling the precious metals.