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Comment by yread | Hacker News Reader

Awesome! Recovering gold from the contacts with several steps involving electrolysis in 95% sulphuric acid and a reaction 2 Au + 3 Cl2 -> 2 AuCl3!

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.

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If you research it a bit you'll find there are a few processes to get back the gold. Some more hazardous yielding higher returns while some are more cautious. I looked at it a while back and one process seemed feasible for DIY gold recovery but, you'll need to collect thousands of pounds of boards. Where you could do that I have no idea.

When I was just out of High School, I worked at a computer repair shop. We probably tossed out 50-60 pounds of fried motherboards and expansion cards a week until the owner worked a deal with somebody to haul away the stuff to get the gold out. After that we had a dedicated dumpster out back for throwing circuit board stuff into. We easily got to a couple thousand pounds that year.

I think he got some percentage of the money out of the parts, it wasn't a ton of money, but better than just throwing the stuff away.

If you know someone at an electronics recyling facility, or someone who repairs TVs, or computers. Basically you first have to have access to all those boards, then you can think of setting up your business.

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