ALBAWABA - Amid the huge attention towards gold and other precious metals, a video has gone viral and gained millions of views after showing people that they can extract gold from SIM cards.
Although gold fell 7 percent on Monday, it continues to dominate the metals market, supported by the sharp and consistent gains recorded over the course of January.
How to extract gold from SIM cards?
A video of a Chinese man, called Qiao the “Alchemist”, showing the process of extracting gold from SIM cards has gone viral on social media, generating millions of views and sparking an unprecedented surge in demand for used SIM cards, amid official warnings of legal and health risks.
Qiao, who works in the precious metal scrap refining industry in Guangdong, southeastern China, shared the clip showing him pouring used SIM cards into barrels filled with chemicals. This initiates a series of reactions involving corrosion, replacement, and heating, ultimately extracting gold.
After filtering and heating the material, the Chinese man was successfully able to extract 191 grams of gold, valued at about 200,000 yuan (about $29,000), from 170 kilograms of scrap mobile phone SIM card chips through a series of complex processes.
Chinese media reported that a single SIM card typically contains less than 0.001 grams of gold, noting that other waste, such as bank card chips and contact components in telecommunications devices, can also be recycled to extract precious metals.
