Where do your computer, iPhone, and television go when they die? Mostly they end up in dumps. Now, people in North America, India, and Europe are harvesting these trashed electronic parts to recover the precious metals within. Though gold is often what they seek, lead and copper are valuable in large quantities too. Take a look at the places where you can find valuable metals in your electronics — though beware of the health dangers of e-garbage prospecting.

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Valuable metals beneath your fingertips

A metric ton of electronic waste contains 8 to 16 ounces of gold - a considerably profitable scenario if you have the means to properly recover the gold in a pure form. In addition to gold, other metals like lead and copper are common in electronic waste.

The cathode ray tubes in older televisions and computer monitors contain lead,barium, and strontium. Lead is recovered by private and government recycling units due to the possibility of air contamination when waste is incinerated.

Copper is found along the tracks of printed circuit boards, while gold is popular in connectors due to its conductive properties. Thieves destroy air conditioners worth several thousand dollars to retrieve a few dollars worth of copper, so digging through electronic waste is a worthwhile (and legal) venture for many.

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A burgeoning hobby

Hobbyists are starting a modern day gold rush by using harsh chemicals like aqua regia (a mixture of concentrated nitric acid and hydrochloric acid) to solubilize the platinum and gold in electronics.

Hard drives and motherboards are placed in an acid bath and left until fully dissolved, with additional chemicals added to the solution to alter the equilibrium and precipitate gold or other precious metals. The solid gold is then recovered and sold or dissolved again to increase the purity.

This is not a safe process, with very minute amounts of valuable metals obtained when working on an individual scale. For profit metal refineries also purchase processors and other parts, giving around a dollar for an older processor and $15 for a pound of clipped gold-plated connectors. Refineries also buy used catalytic converters, recovering the platinum, rhodium, and palladium within used to decrease automobile exhaust emissions.

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Why recycling e-waste is killing people

Electronic waste from North America often travels to China, while waste from Europe and Russia lands in northern parts of Africa. Your old 386 and Pentium II processors do not stay in the dump - locals gather processors, connectors, and circuit boards containing any element available for resale, and recover metals for sale. The workers often burn entire circuit boards in the process, exposing them to dangerous fumes from bubbling chemicals as the boards melt.

Workers in unlicensed e-waste recycling venues make between $4.50 to $5 a day - nowhere near the average salary for a worker in China, but enough to make a difference in the rural areas of provinces like Guangdong. Children also work part-time after school, scrounging through waste piles looking for copper wire.

Workers in unlicensed centers lack proper protection, exposing them further, with reports of chronic health problems like coughing up blood occurring among long-time workers. Death is sadly common as well, with 163 people dying from lead poisoning associated with e-waste within the village of Yar'Gailma in 2010.

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Recovering valuable metals is not a safe process, but maybe that's coming from my healthy fear of certain chemicals gained during graduate school. I wouldn't think of dissolving computer parts in aqua regia without a considerable profit motive and an abundance of protective equipment.

The e-waste health risk twist is particularly unfortunate; a bizarre abuse what aims to be an eco-friendly system that instead destroys the health of fellow human beings half a world away.

Gold in cell phones - VIDEO!

              Another way to recycle cell phones is their sales for the same purpose. 

Price cell phones without batteries is around 4.00 to 5.00 EUR per kg. 

Price panel of cell phones is around 12.50 to 15.00 euros. per kg.

Gold Fingers - How to Recover Gold from Electronic Scrap - VIDEO!

VIDEO

              Gold Fingers - How to Recover Gold from Electronic Scrap

How to extract gold from electronics!

There's gold in them thar circuit boards -- laptops, phones, cameras and other devices use the precious metal to connect components, and it can be extracted relatively simply. A typical handset holds around 0.2g of gold, which means about £1.80 for your pocket.

lectronics-technology engineer Josehf Lloyd Murchison claims he has extracted up to $1,600 (£980) worth of gold in three months of collecting junk electronics -- and you can too. "Surprisingly, chemical recovery of gold takes almost no skill," he says. However, you should only attempt this if you have a basic knowledge of chemistry and are aware of the dangers of working with the chemicals and tools mentioned on the right. Make sure you have suitable protective equipment (goggles, gloves and overalls to protect your clothes) and a suitable and well ventilated (or outdoor) work space. Some of the chemicals produce noxious fumes, are highly flammable or strong oxidants, and can cause skin burns. Learn basic first aid before you try this.

"Hydrogen peroxide is used to bleach hair and is a good antiseptic," says John Turner, a reader in inorganic physical chemistry at the University of Sussex, "and although hydrochloric acid isn't usually found in the house, the actions are very easy to do. It's the possible hazards [from the chemicals] that gives you the frisson. If you are careful, I don't really see [the experiment] as a problem. Someone with A-level chemistry should be able to do it."

Collect your scraps
In phones, most of the gold is in the SIM card, the main board and the smaller components on the back of the LCD screen. Use a magnet to separate all gold-plated steel parts, as you need a different process to extract it. "Older electronics have more gold in them," says Murchison. "The best thing I extracted gold from was industrial video equipment -- a couple of ounces [up to 56g] per machine."

Strip out the boards
Place your circuit boards in a glass vessel. In another container, mix two parts hydrochloric acid and one part weak hydrogen peroxide (a concentration of three per cent). Pour this mixture over the circuit boards so they are completely submerged. Wait for a week, giving the vessel a stir every day with a glass or plastic rod. Over time, the acid will darken and gold flakes will come off the scraps.

Collect the flakes
Pour the mixture through a coffee filter and into another glass container. The gold flakes will be left behind. Pour the remaining circuit-board bits into a deep plastic tray filled with water. Save any pieces with remaining gold for re-dipping. Pour the water through the filter to collect any gold dust, and flush the flakes with water. Wash them with methanol, then again with water to rinse away any residue.