Which electronics have precious metals

After all the labor needed to physically break apart the computer and extract the gold, this hardly seems worth the effort.

In fact, you'll probably find yourself out of pocket with such an enterprise on a small number of machines. In some circumstances, computer components might be worth more intact, for reuse and resale. However, if you can recycle this kind of waste by the the ton, the financial outlook begins to make more sense. This is especially true if you are buying e-waste in bulk at next to nothing.

Oftentimes, most companies who specialize in this industry focus on circuit boards, CPUs, and motherboards as these tend to have the highest grade gold. In fact, compared to traditional gold mining, one tonne of e-waste can contain 40 to times more gold than actual gold ore!

And there is a lot of it. According to sources like The World Counts, somewhere in the order of 50 million tons of e-waste are discarded every year. The USA alone creates about 11 million tons of e-waste every single year. Of that, a negligible In a lot of cases, e-waste is simply shipped to Asia and Africa to be recycled.

Once there, it is usually sorted and sold for scrap, or simply burnt in an attempt to either dispose of it or attempt to extract valuable materials. This is not only a very wasteful practice, but it is potentially very damaging physically to the people it's often children doing it, and the environment! This is because a lot of e-waste actually contains extremely toxic chemicals like l ead, cadmium, dioxins, gurans, arsenic, mercury, DDT, PCB, chromium, vinyl chloride, antimony, beryllium, etc.

For this reason, many Western nations have implemented e-waste regulations to attempt to curb the more dangerous aspects of disposing of old electronics. Since gold is widely considered to be a very valuable material, you might wonder why it is used in electronics in the first place.

As it turns out, gold has some very interesting and useful properties that make it practically unrivaled when it comes to being used in electronics. In fact, the electronics industry is one of the major consumers of gold.

Things like solid-state electronic devices tend to use very low voltages and currents. For this reason, they can be easily interrupted by corrosion and tarnish at contact points. Gold is a great solution to this problem, as it is a highly efficient electrical conductor, that is capable of carrying tiny currents and remaining free of corrosion.

For this reason, electrical connectors, switches and relays, soldering points, connecting wires, and connection strips are often made using gold or gold-plating, as this makes them more durable and reliable.

Most sophisticated modern electronic devices tend to have at least a small amount of gold in them. This can include things like phones, calculators, personal digital assistants, global positioning system GPS units, and other small electronic devices. You will also find gold in larger electronic devices like televisions, too. Not to mention computers, as we previously discussed. Gold is also used in the aerospace and defense industries.

Space vehicles, in particular, rely heavily on gold as they need to operate for extended periods of time without the ability to easily lubricate, maintain, and repair many of their parts. For this reason, the connections used need to be extremely durable, and as we have seen, gold is excellent for this. Gold can also help protect space vehicles from the worst effects of infrared radiation.

Aerospace gold acts like a high-tech sunblock. Polyester film is coated with gold particles, and this film can then be used to reflect solar radiation away from the craft. Gold is also used as a lubricant for mechanical parts, as traditional alternatives would simply vaporize in the vacuum of space. Given the very valuable nature of gold, there has been a hunt to find cheaper, and more sustainable, alternatives or solutions to reduce its use. If a device is truly end-of-life, it will be destroyed in bulk with similar devices, and the separated recyclable materials will be sold as scrap for manufacturing.

That would include any precious metals in the device — but those will make up only a miniscule fraction of the original weight. Scrap commodities are traded by weight, and an 8-lb laptop or lb monitor may only contain a few grams of precious metals at most.

Newer-generation devices typically contain less gold as advancements in technology and efforts to reduce production costs have pushed tech manufacturers to design thinner, lighter, less resource-intensive units. If the device or its parts are instead being resold for secondary use, the value of the metal is irrelevant — all of those parts have their own market values.

This is why businesses have an advantage over individuals when it comes to recovering value from e-waste. Businesses upgrade their equipment every three to five years, roughly, and often do so all at once. Otherwise, they might end up with the fabled closet of computers that no one goes into or talks about, but everyone knows is there.

There are multiple steps in recycling, refurbishing or reselling electronics that come between the moment you turn over custody to a certified ITAD and e-waste recycler and when they can be used to manufacture new products. A full laptop, in good condition, and with modern components e.

But then you have to factor in labor, processing, storage and shipping, all of which eat into that value. Laptops are among the more labor-intensive devices to test, sanitize, and refurbish — a process that happens by hand, down to the last tiny screw. CRT monitors contain hazardous materials and must be processed by a specialist in order to safely recover the recyclable metals such as extracting lead from leaded glass.

Likewise, devices that rely on batteries will lose value because those batteries must be recycled separately and safely. Gold: Gold is used in printed circuit boards, cell phones, computer chips CPU , connectors and fingers.

Silver: SIlver is used in printed circuit boards, cell phones, computer chips, keyboard membranes and some capacitors.

Palladium: Palladium is used in cell phones, hard drives, circuit board components and capacitors. Copper: Copper is used in CPU heat sinks, wiring cables, cell phones, printed circuit boards and computer chips.

Aluminum: Aluminum is used in printed circuit boards, computer chips, hard drive, CPU heat sinks. The amount of precious metals that are found in electronic devices can be substantial.

The EPA estimates for every 1 millions cell phones recycled you can get these amounts of precious metals:. When looking at electronics you should be looking at recycling, the computer components with the highest precious metal content by weight:. Mayer Alloys Corporation is based in the Metro Detroit area and provides business to business electronic waste recycling.