Gold Recycling Process Explained!
Gold recycling has only one objective: to recover as much pure gold as possible, from products of various origins and forms, deemed to contain noticeable traces of this valuable metal. Certain rules are employed in manufacturing plants, which prevent gold being illegally diverted from the recycling scheme.
Hence the process of recycling is quite costly, and it's important that some basic estimate is made, as to the value of the recovered gold.
With development of new recycling techniques, some sources of the scrap gold that were uneconomical for recycling, became viable. For example, electronic components, microchips and printed circuit boards all contain very small quantities of gold per weight; usually in the form of a fine gold plating some 1 tenth of a micron thick. However, as the quantity of dumped computers, TV sets, cell phones and other electronic circuitry grows significantly, it makes sense to build recycling installations that will make the recovery of precious metals economically viable.
Here are some of the most common sources of recycled gold:
-dental laboratories making dental gold implants
-waste from jewellers and goldsmiths (floor sweeping, rags, waste water)
-waste from gold processing plants (cuttings, clippings, unidentified ingots)
The next step in recycling gold is the identification of the type of metal and its purity. This is achieved in the following stages:
-preparation of a batch (solidifying by fusion, mixing till the homogenous phase is attained) usually in the form of ashes
-sample taking and its analysis, using cupellation
-spectrometry by absorption
-spectrometry by emission
-electrolysis (especially effective for gold-plated jewellery and electronic components) Because of the fact that the above processes are technologically advanced, and require expert handling, very few metal recyclers can actually handle gold. Naturally, off-cuts, slivers and cuttings are easy to deal with. Put them into a melting pot, and then assay the cast ingot.
The process is far more complicated for recouping gold from electronic circuitry and components, or gold lost during certain chemical manufacturing processes. The analytic laboratory's set-up alone would require a considerable investment running into hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Consequently, for this kind of scrap gold processing, the intending business needs to first secure a number of reliable scrap suppliers; be it direct gold users, or buying agents. Despite all these difficulties, there’s a significant interest in recycling gold, with new entrants to the industry coming every year. In some countries, the whole process of gold recovery from scraps has long traditions. Countries like Italy and South Africa come to mind. As the commercial use of gold rises, so does the number of enterprises dedicated to saving this precious commodity.
One thing worth mentioning is that France is currently leading the gold recycling industry, with their sophisticated analytic and recovery techniques being exported all over the world. 
Scrap Gold
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