zwai,
I noticed you mention mercury in the title, along with copper and palladium. What other metals, what was the source material?.
Was the original material recovered from, or an ore?
How did you eliminate the mercury and base metals?
Did you just make a mess by dissolving this unknown metal in acid and expect a recovery, and just bypassed the recovery stages, going straight into a refining stage?
I am not sure of the material your working with or its source, that information can be helpful.
It is obvious you have other metals involved, and it does not look like you done any recovery stage, before trying to refine a palladium metal or salt?
What methods did you use to eliminate base metals? Or the palladium from the mercury (safely), copper and other base metal?
Mercury in your material concerns me, because of its dangers if the material is not treated properly.
Mercury is also low on the reactive series, so with some methods it will follow your wanted metal with cementation for example.
The pictures lead me to believe you have a solution saturated with base metals, high in copper and other metals, using DMG, with a solution loaded with base metal is not a good idea, dissolving mercury in acids along with your values is not normally a good idea.
You are working with some dangerous chemistry. Watching some videos on you tube and experimenting, without a good working knowledge, or understanding is not a good idea. There are many things you would need to know, background information, and safety information, that a video will not show you. Your material may be different, and may need different methods to recover the values safely. You will not learn the dangers of improperly dealing with waste, or dangerous of metals or materials not included in the video. There is a lot of background information you would need for success. Information and knowledge you will only get from study...
I may be able to watch a video of how someone trouble shoots, and repairs a Television set.
That does not mean I can repair My TV, from what I learned in the video. Especially if I had no electronic background, or knowledge of the safety involved.
With no working experience in the electronics or TV repair field, it would be a mistake to tackle the project from just watching a video no matter how good the video was.
The video may be helpful to a TV repairman who has a working knowledge. But If I tried what I seen in the video, on my TV I could be in for a shock. Most likely my TV would be in worse shape than it was before I started tearing into it, with out really knowing what I was doing.
Not knowing where the mercury is, or how you handled it, it would be hard to make suggestions, of what to do next with your solution or remaining powders.
Not knowing what metals or material you dissolved originally, or knowing more of the details of what you have done, it is also hard to say how to recover values from the salts or complex, (mess you have on your hands now) or how to deal with these toxic wastes safely.
Not knowing if you even had palladium, or what metals the original metal was before you dissolved it into nitric acid, it is hard to give a better method of recovery.
I am reluctant to tell you to dry and save the powders, and cement the solution and save those powders, until you study more, because of the unknown mercury content.
Trying what you see in a video before you learn more of recovery and refining, and safety needed, can, and will put you in dangerous situations, and most of the time it will not be successful.
I do not know what you have, from the solution loaded with base metals (and possibly mercury), for all I know you may have just lowered the pH and have a mix of base metal hydroxides along with the possibility of some palladium DMG complex.
After dealing with mercury properly in a recovery stage. Then a recovery stage of removing base metals. Or a recovery of palladium with zinc, or copper cementation. Before going into a refining stage. May have been a better option, before trying to recover palladium with DMG. But again without knowing what you had to begin with it is hard to say.
Read Hokes.
Give more details, maybe the forum members can help you safely deal with this dangerous mess you have on your hands now.
