My latest Pd drop

All,

Hope everyone is well. I just percipitated 19g of Palladium using DMG for a client. Just like to share the photos and thanks the forum.

That's 19g?

This was recovered from a copper based solution, total of 7 liters. I tested 600ml of solution with DMG and recovered 1.6g of refined Pd sponge, so I figured in 7 liters of the same solution should have around 19g of Pd.

The source of his materials are cell phone boards.

Will keep you posted on final Pd sponge weight and Pd button.

Regards
Kj

Wow.

Thats some very voluminous pd!

Very pretty yellow

God blesses freechemist's soul, as it was his post about DMG formula that helped me on this project.

humm... Why DMG??

kjavanb123 said:

God blesses freechemist's soul, as it was his post about DMG formula that helped me on this project.

Click to expand...

Remember that freechemist died because of his exposure to PGM salts. If you really feel it's worth it to expose yourself, or those who work for you, to the risk, at least put on, or have your workers put on, some gloves!

Dave

DMG is quick and easy and voluminous which is why it finds use as an indicator and in assays. There are alternatives that are cheaper.

All,

My solution was mostly copper nitrate mixed with palladium nitrate and some 400g silver.

I tried a 600ml of solution, with silver in it, and precipitated palladium with DMG, but the color of the salt was not canary yellow, so I figured silver also formed a complex with Palladium.

So I dropped silver as its chloride salt from the solution first, filtered it and did the DMG.

As for alternative and cheaper methods, I only learned sodium chlorate, zinc cementing, both of which at least I have worked with solution that are palladium mostly.

Since this solution was mostly copper based, zinc would not work since it would cement both copper and palladium from solution.

Using sodium chlorate, on this 7000ml solution would have taken a long time to concentrate the solution to be able to proceed with sodium chlorate.

I only used 60g of DMG, for this 7000ml solution and got to the canary salt part quickly. Filtering and conversion to black powder did not take more than 2 hours.

As for the safety, we all wear mask, and I wore gloves since I was doing the work, also the Pd salts are wet when we work with them, I assume they pose smaller threat as they can not be air bourne.

Regards
Kj

how about dropping with formic acid?

I am against the killing of millions of ants to make formic acid :wink:

I like the zinc powder and hcl acid method better.

Regards
Kj

You didn't follow up on the resin?

Hi Lou,

Yes I did and recieved an offer from them as well, just trying to allocate capitals for it.

I will traveling globally and with their volumes of materials that IBC system comes very handy.

Here is the final Pd sponge being dried,





Thanks and regards
Kj

Lino1406 said:

how about dropping with formic acid?

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Lino

I was not aware that you could "drop" Pd with formic --- Hokes (on page 158) instructs using formic acid to reduce PGM salts that have been precipitated from solutions (which I have done) & as well there are other instructions posted here on the forum for using formic acid to reduce PGM salts - after they have been precipitated --- but this is the first I have heard of using it to "drop" the PGMs

could you elaborate ?

Kurt

It is not entirely selective and takes several hours of good heat..

You can also use ascorbic acid.

kjavanb123 said:

I am against the killing of millions of ants to make formic acid :wink:

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You wouldn't be, if you'd been bitten by a dozen myrmecia the size of crickets. Each one with a sting like being smacked with a wet lettuce, wrapped around a #5 iron. I discovered the nest by kneeling on it, weeding.

The process I know is mixing boiling Pd solution with boiling 15-50% formic acid solution or acidic ammonium formate. Sometimes it is immediate. And there is no need to kill ants for it - although some say they are the successors of human species. Ref: C.W.AMMEN

kurtak said:

Lino1406 said:

how about dropping with formic acid?

Click to expand...

Lino

I was not aware that you could "drop" Pd with formic --- Hokes (on page 158) instructs using formic acid to reduce PGM salts that have been precipitated from solutions (which I have done) & as well there are other instructions posted here on the forum for using formic acid to reduce PGM salts - after they have been precipitated --- but this is the first I have heard of using it to "drop" the PGMs

could you elaborate ?

Kurt

Click to expand...

The terminology is a bit problematic here.
In our perspective, a 'drop' or precipitation is a physical occurrence, which usually is derived from a chemical reaction, it could be:
- Reduction - A good example is reducing gold from solution with SMB, this reduction causes a precipitation action.
Oxidation - An example for that could be found with Pd, where one would oxidize Pd(II) salt in soultion to form insoluble Pd(IV), and thus precipitate the salt.
Displacement - The classic example for it would be the precipitation of Silver Chloride from silver nitrate solution. The Chloride ion replaces the Nitrate ion to produce the insoluble AgCl.

Fromic acid is a reducing agent in that aspect (and not a selective one as Lou advised), it will reduce PGM's and thus drop it out of solution.
The chemical action would be much similar as tough it would have happened with the precipitated colored salts.
As side note - i found that precipitating dirty PGM's with formic acid usually results in an ink like suspension which is hard to deal with.

Hi,

I think confusion dervied from the usage of formic acid in regards to conversion of yellow salt to Pd sponge instead of zinc and hcl cemeting which I used.

And not the usage of formic acid to precpitate palladium from solution.

Regards
Kj

All,

Some update on this project. After we dried the Pd sponge we produced, it weighs 53g which is almost 3 times as much as expected of 20g.

In order to test it, we melted 2g of Pd spong powder using oxygen torch, which I thought was forbidden to use on Pd melting, but mu client who is also a smelter melted 2g sample powder into the following button that weighs 1.7g.



So I suggested he melt the entire 53g of Pd sponge using oxy hydrogen torch. I shall continue this project and report the latest.

So today we melted the remainder of 53g Pd sponge using oxygen torch and it melted to this 43g ingot shape as following photos,








Off to go doing assay on Wed.
Best regards
Kj