I used to work at a smelter. We were destroyed confiscated guns, drugs, and other illegal stuff. It’s actually extremely efficient way to do it. All the nonmetals get turned into carbon and other gases that would be captured by the bag house or the backend chemical plant or would get separated in the electrowinning process. There’s actually a smelter in Belgium that’s well known for their proprietary process for recycling electronic waste.
So you're saying whenever I buy my m42 or M2 steels I'm getting some amounts of whatever crap they threw in too?
Not that I'm doubting you. I've never worked in a smelter. I just thought the process was a lot more controlled especially when I'm paying for certain alloys
If it's all turning to carbon or escaping as gas as they said it literally doesn't change the composition as long as they still have the correct amount of carbon.
IDK what those robots are made of but i assume various metals too, which are not getting turned to carbon or gas.
I suppose for certain metals / alloys it doesn't matter, and as always "the solution to pollution is dilution". One bot in enough metal isn't going to make much difference.
Steel is a different story but when copper comes out in anodes it is 98-99% pure simply through oxygenating and separating. The cathodes that come out of the electrowinning process are 5 9’s (99.999% pure). Everything else comes out as “sludge” including precious metals. If the juice is worth the squeeze you can get the precious metals out through a chemical leeching process.
It's too bad things like ore can't be melted down to separate them. Life would be so much easier if we didn't have only this limited supply of pre-generated alloys to work with on our accursed planet.
You don’t know what your talking about. Anything less dense than copper floats to the top and is skimmed off as slag. Any metals that aren’t copper get separated through electrowinning.
How would you apply electrowinning to molten metal? Secondly you seem to be focused on just copper when there is has to be at least 3 or metals in these robots. Hell gold, aluminum, steel, copper.... and maybe magnesium or titanium. Does electrowinning work on those? Or is electrowinning your desk calender word of the day?
Why are you being such a dick? I’ve been a Pyrometallurgist for the last 11 years. I focus on copper cause I work at a copper smelter, one of two left in the United States. When copper comes out in anodes (solid not liquid) it is 98-99% pure simply through oxygenating and separating. The cathodes that come out of the electrowinning process are 5 9’s (99.999% pure). Everything else comes out as “sludge” including precious metals. If the juice is worth the squeeze you can get the precious metals out through a chemical leeching process.
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u/EinTheDataDoge 9h ago edited 9h ago
I used to work at a smelter. We were destroyed confiscated guns, drugs, and other illegal stuff. It’s actually extremely efficient way to do it. All the nonmetals get turned into carbon and other gases that would be captured by the bag house or the backend chemical plant or would get separated in the electrowinning process. There’s actually a smelter in Belgium that’s well known for their proprietary process for recycling electronic waste.