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Im my last post regarding the scrapping of electronic components, I explained the benefit I could win by recycling about 10 kilos of ceramic capacitors in order to recover Silver and Palladium. As it was interesting, I decided to search and buy old stocks of theese components last February.
Now I would like to share with you a new way I experimented successfully to analyse the content of precious metals (Ag and Pd) in ceramic capacitors (MLCC).
Last time I worked with a laboratory who conduct a spectro analysis: this was expensive and long (about 15 days)...recently, after a few research on internet I learned that I could obtain the same result in less than a minute with an XRF spectrometer, like the XL2 manufactured by Niton.
This device is expensive (about 25.000 USD through an authorized distributor), you also need to have an official agreement to be able to use it.
As I am actually not able to buy it, I tried to find a laboratory who had this kind of device and ask them to quote me for an analysis. But the best is that after a few phone calls, I learned that one of my customer (a factory who produce stainless tubes next to my home) had this spectrometer and that the team of their laboratory was agree to make analysis for me (for free).
In theory you can analyse direct any material with an XRF spectro, but for theese very small capacitor it is better to grind them in fine powder to obtain optimal results :
The main benefit of this new way of analysis is not just the price, but also the fact that I can now analyse the item one by one :
this time I could check the content of an old TDK capacitor produced in 1999 (I found this nice stock of 120000 capacitors ealier in January in the USA / Parnumber of this item is : C3216X5R0J335K). Once unreeled there was about 6 Kilos capacitors.
And here is the content in Silver and Palladium measured with the XL2-Niton :
Not bad : 2.29% of Palladium (=137g Pd) and 6.59% of Silver (=395g Ag)
Total value around 10027 Euros (at current rate of Pd and Ag), for 1000 USD investment.
But this is not everytime the case, I bought also a lot of Murata GRM42 series produced in the 90', they don't contain (or very less) Pd and Ag :
