That little bead right there? That’s all the gold in four and a half pounds of electronics waste. And it took so very much work to get there.
Here’s what YouTuber is no stranger to the refinement of precious metals. Previously he’s gotten silver from shit-tier fireworks and found platinum dust on the side of the road. But striking gold in junk electronics is just so much more involved than expected. Here’s what he had to do to get that tiny pellet:
Grind it all up in a ball mill
Incinerate and sift the ashes
Do some panning to remove the trash
Run a magnet through the slop to get rid of bits of iron
Melt it down at 1,700 degrees to remove lead
Stick it in a water-and-acid bath and electrocute it to remove the copper
Dissolve the whole thing in more acid
Melt it, yet again, with flux and litharge
And at the end of all that work, Cody was left with… four milligrams of gold, from a two-kilogram bag of busted circuitboards. As he mentions early on, the margins on this type of work are very tight, but for the purposes of the video, it’s worth it to watch the bright flash of that gold bead solidifying.
