Smelting Problem

Gold Refining Forum

Help Support Gold Refining Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Geo

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 1, 2011
Messages
7,070
Location
Decatur,Ala.
I have accepted a small batch of material that someone tried to smelt. It has about every metal you can imagine. The original material is high grade, military electronics (pins and connectors) CPU's of all kinds including ceramics, gold filled jewelry, gold plated jewelry, silver contact points still in the copper buss. I have about forty pounds to work on with another several hundred pounds if I can get the flux worked out. I want to work with small batches containing three or four pounds of metal (including existing slag) at a time. I have #4 salamander crucibles to work with. I need a flux combination that will take out the Fe and ceramic material and leave the copper and precious metals. I milled a couple of pounds of the material and leached the metals out to see what I was working with. From the two pounds I recovered 1.2 ounces of silver and right at a gram of gold. There was a strong positive test for PGM's as well. Not all of the material can be leached. A majority of the material is magnetic. The ceramic bodies of the CPU's are still intact but are coated with slag. There are large globs of metal and the whole mass is full of tiny prills. There are large masses of un-melted metal that appears to be iron. I plan on milling the entire mass and removing as much iron as possible manually.
 
Geo

Interesting problem/project you have here - because this is a situation different then the discussion going on here - I would like to suggest that we move this to a thread of its own posted in "Other Processes" with a new title like maybe --- Smelting Problem - or - Smelting Mess

It might be best if you copy & paste this post to the above suggestion - rather then having a Moderator do it - that way you could edit it (as I show below) & as well it would be nice to see some pics showing some of what you are talking about concerning this material --- & then this can be deleted (your post & my reply here)

I suggest the editing (including some pics) as there are a number of issues to deal with here & breaking the post up makes it easier to follow what's going on &/or easier to reply

In other words - what I am suggesting is - lets address your problem in a thread of its own - instead of trying to discuss it mixed in here with the alchemy BS & having one discussion clutter the other

Edit to add; - or a Mod could move it & re-title for us 8) :mrgreen:

Kurt

Geo said:
I have accepted a small batch of material that someone tried to smelt. It has about every metal you can imagine. The original material is high grade, military electronics (pins and connectors) CPU's of all kinds including ceramics, gold filled jewelry, gold plated jewelry, silver contact points still in the copper buss.

I have about forty pounds to work on with another several hundred pounds if I can get the flux worked out. I want to work with small batches containing three or four pounds of metal (including existing slag) at a time. I have #4 salamander crucibles to work with.

I need a flux combination that will take out the Fe and ceramic material and leave the copper and precious metals.

I milled a couple of pounds of the material and leached the metals out to see what I was working with. From the two pounds I recovered 1.2 ounces of silver and right at a gram of gold. There was a strong positive test for PGM's as well.

Not all of the material can be leached. A majority of the material is magnetic. The ceramic bodies of the CPU's are still intact but are coated with slag. There are large globs of metal and the whole mass is full of tiny prills. There are large masses of un-melted metal that appears to be iron. I plan on milling the entire mass and removing as much iron as possible manually.
 
Needs a bunch of copper, a rotary furnace, and a ton of borax :)

Then...the copper cell!


Lou
 
I have copper. The rotary furnace is a no go captain. There is a good amount of copper in the mix. It's hard to make out anything because of the oxidation but when it's wet, it looks like red brass in places. Too light for just copper. I have a few hundred pounds of good solid copper I can use.
 
Would you be able to use Cryolite mixed with borax and copper? The reason I am suggesting that is to be able dissolve the ceramics and if MLCC are present, you can get the Pd out also. Just a thought.
 
Geo,

Without a rotary furnace, what if you sparged it with compressed air to add a little O2 and agitation to the mix? If you set your melter up to tilt like the ones 4Metals posted drawings of you could pour the saturated borax off and add more as needed.
On question, on the material you leached did you incinerate it first?
I hope you continue to share, as this looks like quite the challenge.

All the best,
John
 
Actually, I am using a small furnace with a A4 salamander crucible to smelt in. I could go bigger with little problem but a tilting furnace may be out of my realm of expertise. I have only ever melted metal and smelting is something I would like to try. The A4 crucible has a capacity of 5.6kgs (12 pounds) of brass or .75 liters of liquid. Since the flux needs room to expand when boiling, I may only get a couple of pounds of metal at a time out of each fusion.
The material I leached was passed through my ball mill for a short time to break up the slag. I didn't include any material that did not contain slag. If I had to guess, I would say that I may have gotten half of the metal leached from the slag. I didn't mill it completely. I was just curious to see if what I had been told was mostly true. This material did not come from anyone off of the forum. I had no idea what to expect. Except for the ceramics and the few gold plated objects, it's hard to identify individual pieces in such a mixed up mess. I did find a couple of rather large contact points that was recognizable. Most of the large chunks is very magnetic and must be mostly iron. The CPU's excludes me from being able to separate any magnetic material before smelting. I had started with the intention of milling everything completely and leaching everything with CuCl2 and then straight melting everything that was left. It may work well enough with the forty pounds because I am set up to run that much metal at once but if I want to be able to do the remaining hundreds of pounds, the chemical route would just be too much to do with any speed plus the cost of acids would eat into the profit.
 
:shock: WOW !!! glad I had you post some pics Geo because its way more of a mess then I imagined from the description in your OP ----- Like Dave - I thought I saw at least part of a kitchen sink in there :lol:

One thing is for sure --- my original thoughts on how to deal with this after reading your OP have just gone out the window :lol:

That said - I guess my first question is --- do you know what the original owner used as flux in his failed attempt at smelting ? (&/or can you find out)

Just borax ?

Just soda ash ?

Combination borax/soda ash (&/or possible other additives - like potassium nitrate, fluorspar, cryolite, etc.) ?

Kurt
 
Wow.

Can you take a sample that you can at least have reasonable confidence of being representative? If you can, take a 1 pound sample and see what basic flux components it takes to get a 1 pound sample molten with a nice fluid flux. Start with borax, soda ash and fluorspar.
 
4metals said:
Wow.

Can you take a sample that you can at least have reasonable confidence of being representative? If you can, take a 1 pound sample and see what basic flux components it takes to get a 1 pound sample molten with a nice fluid flux. Start with borax, soda ash and fluorspar.
Sounds like a plan.
 
Kurt has advised me to mill a reasonable sample and see if the flux is soluble in hot water. Then try dilute HCl. This is just to try and determine what they used for flux because really, it doesn't seem like they used very much of anything in the way of flux. It seems to be just enough to stick everything together, sort of. I haven't been able to reach the man to ask about any flux composition. I'm not sure he could tell me any way. His son is the one that tried to smelt it in a large electric furnace. The material came from the Norfolk Naval base so I am assuming it is something good locked inside. Of coarse I understand what assuming will get you. That's why I would really like to try and figure this one out. I really appreciate any and all help. I am going to start milling a nice large chunk of the material in the morning. I'll try and post some more pictures of the milled and washed material by tomorrow night. Maybe I'll find something that looks more like gold after it's been cleaned up a bit.
 
It seems that, when it comes to fluxing, most use the adage "when in doubt add borax". So Kurt's suggestion, while not something a commercial refiner might do, is very good. Borax will dissolve in very hot water, just keep it boiling for a while and be careful not to pour off any values with the borax water. Don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater!
 
Geo said:
The material came from the Norfolk Naval base so I am assuming it is something good locked inside.
I am amazed he got the stuff off the base Geo, Norfork used to be a closed base back in it's day. :lol: How many pounds do you have, if you don't mind telling :?: :D Most military stuff is good material. Congrats Geo on the find. I hope you get the goodies out.

Ken
 
Back
Top