3 ms·

Are they? If you have a pile of 1,000,000 chips, can you really get any of the elements out at reasonable (by almost any metric) cost?

SpaceRaccoon 6y ago
Why would it be more difficult than to extract from ore? You can smelt them, that will burn away the plastic, and then you can separate the metals.
- CogitoCogito 6y ago
  I'm honestly having a bit of trouble putting my misgiving into thoughts (which if anything demonstrates I haven't thought this all through), but if you throw together say 10 materials, how likely are you to be able to separate out those 10 materials again? Or will you only be able to separate a couple metals with certain convenient melting points? I do see what you're saying though. Maybe the easy question is, what actually happens when electronics are recycled today? How much of the original material is retrieved? Maybe I'm just entirely wrong even given the state of the art today?
  - rurp 6y ago
    I only know a bit about this but from what I understand this is similar to how most modern mining works. Many minerals are mined in very low concentrations, which means they then need to be extracted out of the host material. Part of that process often involves multiple steps where the ore is soaked in various chemical solutions, which separate certain materials. It can be a very complicated process involving a lot of toxic chemicals.
  - dodobirdlord 6y ago
    The rare earth metals are kinda irritating to separate because they have very similar physical properties, but it obviously can be done. They frequently co-occur in ore deposits for exactly that reason.
blacksmith_tb 6y ago
Gold is recovered in significant quantities from e-waste[1] 1: https://www.thebalancesmb.com/electronic-devices-source-of-metals-for-recyclers-2877986 https://www.thebalancesmb.com/electronic-devices-source-of-m...
- CogitoCogito 6y ago
  Once the gold has been recovered, are they still able to recover other metals? I don't mean this antagonistically, this is a serious question (in case you know).
  - blacksmith_tb 6y ago
    Good question, but I don't know the answer - my sense is the bigger problem is the recycling tends to happen at low rates, and often involve nasty pollution/byproducts[1] 1: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/02/10bn-precious-metals-dumped-each-year-electronic-waste-un-toxic-e-waste-polluting https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/02/10bn-pre...
formerly_proven 6y ago
Commercial chips still use gold bond wires (except flip chips), but that's fairly little. Apart from that it's just copper or aluminium for the metal layers, a bunch of silicon and a bunch of silica dust bound with some epoxy resin. Most of this isn't worth anything to reuse.

SpaceRaccoon 6y ago

Why would it be more difficult than to extract from ore? You can smelt them, that will burn away the plastic, and then you can separate the metals.

CogitoCogito 6y ago
I'm honestly having a bit of trouble putting my misgiving into thoughts (which if anything demonstrates I haven't thought this all through), but if you throw together say 10 materials, how likely are you to be able to separate out those 10 materials again? Or will you only be able to separate a couple metals with certain convenient melting points? I do see what you're saying though. Maybe the easy question is, what actually happens when electronics are recycled today? How much of the original material is retrieved? Maybe I'm just entirely wrong even given the state of the art today?
- rurp 6y ago
  I only know a bit about this but from what I understand this is similar to how most modern mining works. Many minerals are mined in very low concentrations, which means they then need to be extracted out of the host material. Part of that process often involves multiple steps where the ore is soaked in various chemical solutions, which separate certain materials. It can be a very complicated process involving a lot of toxic chemicals.
- dodobirdlord 6y ago
  The rare earth metals are kinda irritating to separate because they have very similar physical properties, but it obviously can be done. They frequently co-occur in ore deposits for exactly that reason.

blacksmith_tb 6y ago

Gold is recovered in significant quantities from e-waste[1] 1: https://www.thebalancesmb.com/electronic-devices-source-of-metals-for-recyclers-2877986 https://www.thebalancesmb.com/electronic-devices-source-of-m...

CogitoCogito 6y ago
Once the gold has been recovered, are they still able to recover other metals? I don't mean this antagonistically, this is a serious question (in case you know).
- blacksmith_tb 6y ago
  Good question, but I don't know the answer - my sense is the bigger problem is the recycling tends to happen at low rates, and often involve nasty pollution/byproducts[1] 1: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/02/10bn-precious-metals-dumped-each-year-electronic-waste-un-toxic-e-waste-polluting https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/02/10bn-pre...

formerly_proven 6y ago

Commercial chips still use gold bond wires (except flip chips), but that's fairly little. Apart from that it's just copper or aluminium for the metal layers, a bunch of silicon and a bunch of silica dust bound with some epoxy resin. Most of this isn't worth anything to reuse.