How many precious metals in your smartphone

Getting rid of unnecessary trash in an apartment or house, many often throw out outdated, faulty equipment. However, they do not suspect that they are not only violating the rules for the disposal of certain types of equipment, but also literally throwing gold, platinum, silver and other precious metals in the trash.
This article will discuss how much precious metals can be contained in an ordinary smartphone, as well as what can be done with it.

What kind of drag metals is there in a smartphone?

According to some studies, the "stuffing" of many modern technology may include elements such as:

• Platinum
• Gold
• Silver
• Palladium
• Lithium
• Gadolinium
• Niobium
• Gallium
• Terbium

Reference! If we talk about a material called lithium, then it is mainly mined from the rechargeable batteries that almost every smartphone is equipped with today.

Although lithium is not a precious metal, it is still quite valuable, and in specialized enterprises it is often mined from used batteries.

In the printed circuit boards of most modern phones, tablets and laptops today you can find only a small amount of gold. With silver, although it is much cheaper than a precious “aurum”, the situation is different: it is in the production of circuit boards is used in much larger quantities, so its extraction from circuit boards is quite justifies.

As for the extraction of lithium and other rare-earth materials from used batteries, it justifies itself exclusively on an industrial scale.

How many precious metals are in a smartphone?

Statistics say that for the extraction of one gram of gold, it is necessary to process from 35 to 40 smartphones. Anyone who is not too lazy to make simple calculations will understand that one phone contains approximately 0.025 grams of precious material. In terms of rubles, it turns out that getting gold from a pair of old smartphones will not work.

However, the extraction of gold and other valuable materials from used equipment becomes quite profitable if it is put “on stream” on the basis of industrial enterprises. Many modern recycling enterprises receive one ton of printed circuit boards about 150 grams of gold, which is already a considerable figure, and allows the company to go this way "in a plus".

Reference! As already mentioned, there is much more silver in modern phones than gold. On average, one enterprise can produce not less than one and a half kilograms of pure silver from a ton of technical scrap.

What can be done?

Unfortunately, for the time being, to benefit from extracting all precious and rare-earth materials from a spent telephone resource, there can be no talk. The fact is that the extraction of all necessary substances will require complex chemical procedures, as well as reagents (for example, aggressive acids). Any attempts to “privately” extract precious metals even from a large batch of broken equipment will not pay yourself, not to mention that most reagents for the necessary procedures cannot be bought at the neighboring the market.

Reference! Among amateur chemists, it is believed that SIM cards for old or modern phones also contain a large amount of gold. It is alleged that with one SIM card you can get up to half a gram of gold.

The extraction of these materials becomes profitable only in those cases when the extraction of precious metals is put on stream, and the speed becomes really large. The profitability of mining, among other things, also depends on the current price of gold and other materials on the world market, therefore many Processing companies, trying to get significant profit from production, carefully monitor the price indices for extracted substances at exchange.

Those daredevils who possess the necessary knowledge in the field of chemistry and dare to independently extract precious metals from spent phones, when trying sell materials mined in this way, they very quickly learn about the existence of a law on the illicit trafficking of precious metals, and cease their illegal activity.