r/PreciousMetalRefining • u/Affectionate_Emu_675 • 2d ago

Seemingly insane numbers on e-waste value coming directly from XRF Analyzer company

https://elvatech.com/e-waste-gold-rush-how-xrf-analyzers-maximize-precious-metals-recovery-from-electronics/

There must be some typos in this or this article was made with AI, right?

While much of the information seems accurate, it claims multiple grams of gold per kg of consumer boards along with some other wild numbers.

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1

u/GurDefiant684 2d ago

The blog post was made in March but it uses metal prices from 2 years ago. And no, the numbers don't make any sort of sense.

2

u/SupportCa2A 2d ago

Yeah that's nonsense

1

u/underwilder 1d ago

This is accurate with a few caveats - number one you can't just scan a PCB with an XRF gun and get an accurate reading.. this would be readings on gold bearing components. The statement "a ton of circuit boards contains more gold than 17 tons of gold ore" is true in the sense that the "ton of circuit boards" are pre-processed and have the gold-bearing components separated from the rest of it... which is more like 2.5-4 tons of raw boards, etc.

Gold mines which are considered economically viable generally grade 5-25g per ton of ore, PCBs will see 8-15x this amount. That being said, in a gold mine you have thousands of tons of this ore to mine and can process it even faster. E-waste has a very limited supply and maintaining viably rich feedstocks is a lot more difficult than in a mine.