How It Works Computer Recycling

But first many people believe that when 

that computer no longer works the only thing it's good for is a paperweight to clutter up their desks, but they couldn't be more wrong these men work for a new breed of recycler who has discovered gold in old hard drives hidden within your old computer is a treasure trove of precious metals the circuit board contains silver and copper and the microprocessor is laced with gold all of which are good conductors that carried electrical signals around your computer the old computers are sent to a plant which salvages their precious metals first the outer casings are taken off cables are unplugged and disposed of and then all that remains are the chips and processes all these components were worth a fortune when they were brand new, but now they would be worth nothing if they were on a rubbish pile this company will make a handsome profit though one tonne of old computers could fetch them six and a half thousand pounds these microprocessors are the easiest to recycle as the only metal contained in them is gold a mix of hydrochloric acid and nitric acid is used to separate the gold from the ceramics hundreds at a time it is solved in a large barrel what remains are pure gold dust this is melted into gold bullion the stuff of dreams for any business other parts of the computer's interior are not harder to recycle since they contain a mix of metals, but the efforts is still well worthwhile the metal parts are stripped down and put into a furnace they melt into a liquid mix of gold silver and copper which is poured out cooled pressed and then sliced into place each plate is placed into a bath and given a positive charge here we see it on the left on the right and negative charged copper plates attracts the copper particles which loosen from the mixed metal plates and accumulate there in the next bath a steel plate attracts the silver which forms in crystals after the second bath the plate contains nothing but gold and could be melted down it will be shaped in two different forms that have a variety of uses these sheets can be used to make gold salts which will be sold to the computer industry to create the salt crystals from the sheets they have to use cyanide which is highly poisonous, so the engineer makes sure the container is sealed very tightly this salt may not be so good for fish and chips, but it is excellent for computer chips this bucket of gold salt has a value of almost 47,000 pounds here the gold sheets are pinched into small plates that will become dental crowns what once carried information around a computer's memory will surely find a home in someone's mouth this worker is taking mate and measure gold rods from the furnace they're compressed and twisted into a coil which is then transformed into fine wire used in computer circuitry another industry that has a huge demand for gold is the space industry satellites and vehicles such as the Space Shuttle use gold in their engines everyone knows gold as a precious metal but who would have thought that it would have so many industrial uses all of these combined to make recycling old computers a very lucrative business