Electronic Precious Metals Recovery

Circuit boards, connectors, and backplanes are present in most all computer equipment as well as in most modern electronic equipment. MPC in its pursuit of the recovery of these materials utilizes a sampling and assaying process which includes: manual examination, shredding, continuous sampling, and fire assay.

The principal process that MPC conducts for precious metal recovery is to accumulate and fire assay all of the material that contains precious metals. A fire assay is the term used to describe the method of determining the quantities and purity of the precious metals.

A working example of a customer’s printed circuit board shipment is as follows: Upon receipt and weight verification, the material is reviewed in order to recover remarketable parts, such as IC chips, and remove hazardous components and non-refinable material. MPC will then shred these boards into 3/4" pieces. After shredding, the material is shipped to a world-class smelter for further processing. Upon arrival at the smelter, our representative witnesses the sampling process. During this step, a continuous sample of the shredded circuit cards is drawn. The sample drawn then undergoes controlled sintering to create an ash. This ash is then ballmilled to pulverize and expose the encapsulated surfaces of the ash. The pulverized ash is then mechanically screened and divided into three size fractions. Each of these size fractions are then fire assayed in our lab to determine the precious metals quantities.

The lab fire assays of the three size fractions are used to calculate the quantity of the gold, silver, palladium, and platinum within the original shredded material.