Itronics Inc. says it completed its first shipment of silver bullion produced by its e-scrap refining technology that focuses on recycling materials from personal computer circuit boards.

E-scrap provides raw material for Itronics' silver refining operations and is converted into saleable goods and energy. The company says that e-scrap represents a "zero waste" technology that is expected to "significantly increase the profitability" of its refining operation.

The company's technology recycles PC circuit boards.Reno, Nev.,-based Itronics produces GOLD'n GRO specialty liquid fertilizers, silver bullion, and silver-bearing glass. It owns a large iron oxide copper gold (IOCG) mineral property (the Auric Fulstone Project) in the Yerington Copper Mining District in northwestern Nevada.

Itronics says it is capturing all of the base and precious metals contained in the ground-up circuit boards. The metals include silver, gold, palladium, copper, and tin. The technology partitions the silver and copper into the bullion, and copper and silver bearing glass slag. Virtually all of the gold and palladium are being recovered into the bullion in payable amounts.

"Between early January and mid-April the amount of silver bullion being recovered per melt has tripled. Process optimization is continuing, and further furnace and production improvements are being identified and implemented," says John Whitney, Itronics president, in a statement.

Itronics continues its feasibility study to determine whether e-scrap can be integrated into the silver refining operation as a raw material. One objective of the study is to determine whether e-scrap could be used to expand refining revenues and add a non-seasonal precious metal bearing raw material to the process.

The metal recovery concept is to use the silver recovered from photographic liquids to collect the metals contained in the e-scrap into a saleable form. The e-scrap is now being successfully used as a "cost reducing" "raw material" in the silver refining process.

The company says it now has enough information to develop a detailed revenue and operating cost model. Once ongoing operating procedures are established, this model will be used for operations material balance and accounting control, annual production planning, and for feasibility studies of expansion options.

Based on information obtained to date, the company is defining a pilot plant operating schedule which it hopes to implement in late May 2017.

The Nevada-based company says the benefits of using e-scrap as a raw material in the silver refining operation include:

1. Revenues generated by the refining operation will continue to be primarily from silver, but will be expanded by 20-30% by gold recovery and sale. The operation will continue to be a silver refinery, but will benefit from gold by-product credits. Palladium, copper, and tin are also being recovered in measurable amounts.

2. Copper contained in the e-scrap improves total silver recovery from silver concentrates that are produced by recovery from photographic liquids. The silver recovery improvement is "economically significant" and will expand silver sales.

3. Virtually all of the gold and palladium contained in the e-scrap is being recovered into the bullion, an economic benefit that is expected to increase sales by 20-30%. The modified refining chemistry is said to be efficient at recovering the gold and palladium into the bullion, so that minor amounts of these metals are left in the copper and silver bearing glass that will be sold to copper smelters.

4. The circuit board base material is mainly fiberglass that has been impregnated by organic fire-proofing compounds which contain significant heat energy. The company's modifications to the melting furnaces improved the energy efficiency of the furnaces so that they are able to use the energy content of the ground up circuit boards to reduce the energy costs of the melting process by about 50%.

What's more, the mineral content of the fiberglass is being used as replacement flux, substituting for virgin flux materials that would normally be purchased from outside suppliers. The savings from the mineral flux material in the circuit boards is also a significant contribution to process profitability.

5. The company has invented, developed, and tested computer software that is able to use the measured composition of several different raw materials, including e-scrap, plus fluxes to formulate and produce a new chemical composition of glass. This new composition is able to reject virtually all of the base and precious metals recovered from the e-scrap into the silver bullion, except for a "small amount" of silver and copper which remains in the copper-silver glass.

The glass also is reported to have excellent fluidity at temperatures above 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, a desirable characteristic for metal recovery. The company plans to sell this glass to a copper smelter. Revenue from the sale of this copper-silver glass is expected to further improve the profitability of the operation.

Production of a formulated glass slag sets the stage for future production of glass tile as another value-added product whose formulation would use raw materials sourced from two additional large-volume industrial waste streams generated by certain large scale industries. The company says it has already demonstrated in laboratory testing that its KAM-Thio leaching technology is able to remove the silver from the glass.

In addition, the company says it has also demonstrated that the glass can be used as an ingredient in making glass tile.