2006-12-10 01:06:48 · 2 answers · asked by TOM S 1 in Environment
You can melt the gold but the high temperature will also melt the fiberglas and other metals on the board.
It is far better to use acids to put the gold into solution and then pecipitate it out of the solution. This way you recover purer gold. It's fairly dangerous and expensive to do.
2006-12-13 14:03:39 · answer #1 · answered by ©2009 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
You can, but it is difficult and messy and expensive. There are companies that specialize in "harvesting" precious metals from Printed Circuit Boards.
I work in telecommunications and we often send old circuit boards to scrap vendors who do just that. I'm not exactly sure of what the processes are, but they use heat and caustic chemicals to remove the precious metals from the boards.
It would not be economical (or safe) for an individual to try to manually remove the gold off one or two cpus on their own.
2006-12-10 09:15:51 · answer #2 · answered by 2007_Shelby_GT500 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋