Refining Pure Gold With Silver Inquartation - VIDEO

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kadriver

kadriver

Well-known member
Joined
Oct 25, 2010
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To save time, I sometimes just do multiple dilute nitric treatments and skip the aqua regia refining.

The gold comes out looking nice, and since it's going to the refiner, two nines is a hair-split from three.

Here's the process that I have used to make gold that assayed from 992 to 999

https://youtu.be/oXD9wT5tZro

kadriver
 
This refining was not done with aqua regia, the actual gold was never digested. As a result it is not of the .9995+ purity one can expect from refining with aqua regia and following all of the steps to clean up the precipitated gold. As a result this gold was expected to not be of the same high purity as gold refined with aqua regia. If you have watched other video's made by Kadriver in which he refined using classic aqua regia techniques, you will notice he did not need to use the niter to clean up the gold.

There is an age old process referred to as toughening where base metals which are in low concentration are removed as an oxide by slagging them out of the melt. The oxygen is provided by sprinkling a few granules of potassium nitrate on the molten metal, the niter will react with any base metals and oxidize them and they will collect on the surface of the melt. The result being cleaner and higher purity gold.

Please don't take this to mean that you can do a mediocre job of refining and clean it up by toughening, there is a limit to its effectiveness. In this case Kadriver knew he was not using all of the steps to refine this metal completely so he chose to use the niter to clean it up a bit more. It is a wise choice for this type of "semi refining" but if you need it to clean up your aqua regia refining, you will need to study some more and work on your technique.
 
Kevin, you can also do the nitre/borax rinse method on this sponge.

This should never be used if chlorides or silver chloride might be present. Very effective at mopping up Sn/Cu/Pb found in karat.


Regarding the direct melting of gold sponge from refining done with chlorides...
Best never to melt with flux and always to heat slow. The big benefit to the ammonia wash (more so than silver chloride removal) is the removal of free chloride which can oxidize the gold during heat up. I have seen operators losing 0.5+ percent level quantities of gold up the stack and into slag just by melting improperly washed gold sponge and using borax. Silver chloride also doesn't help, as it breaks down at temperature and is a good gold removal mechanism.

Lou
 
Lou said:
Kevin, you can also do the nitre/borax rinse method on this sponge.

This should never be used if chlorides or silver chloride might be present. Very effective at mopping up Sn/Cu/Pb found in karat.


Regarding the direct melting of gold sponge from refining done with chlorides...
Best never to melt with flux and always to heat slow. The big benefit to the ammonia wash (more so than silver chloride removal) is the removal of free chloride which can oxidize the gold during heat up. I have seen operators losing 0.5+ percent level quantities of gold up the stack and into slag just by melting improperly washed gold sponge and using borax. Silver chloride also doesn't help, as it breaks down at temperature and is a good gold removal mechanism.

Lou
Click to expand...

Excellent info, thanks Lou. Would ammonia wash/boil help here?

I hate using ammonia since I ruined a vacuum switch with it a while back.

kadriver
 
4metals said:
This refining was not done with aqua regia, the actual gold was never digested. As a result it is not of the .9995+ purity one can expect from refining with aqua regia and following all of the steps to clean up the precipitated gold. As a result this gold was expected to not be of the same high purity as gold refined with aqua regia. If you have watched other video's made by Kadriver in which he refined using classic aqua regia techniques, you will notice he did not need to use the niter to clean up the gold.

There is an age old process referred to as toughening where base metals which are in low concentration are removed as an oxide by slagging them out of the melt. The oxygen is provided by sprinkling a few granules of potassium nitrate on the molten metal, the niter will react with any base metals and oxidize them and they will collect on the surface of the melt. The result being cleaner and higher purity gold.

Please don't take this to mean that you can do a mediocre job of refining and clean it up by toughening, there is a limit to its effectiveness. In this case Kadriver knew he was not using all of the steps to refine this metal completely so he chose to use the niter to clean it up a bit more. It is a wise choice for this type of "semi refining" but if you need it to clean up your aqua regia refining, you will need to study some more and work on your technique.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the explanation. This process of refining is being used here in our place,except the addition of potassium nitrate.

Can I just ask one last question,This is about the percentage of pure gold for the inquartation. I buy gold from the mines so I use specific gravity and not karats for the purity. If the specific gravity of pure gold is 19.3,suppose I get a specific gravity of 17.3.Is is correct to say that the percentage of pure gold is (17.3/19.3)*100=89.637 pure gold?

Thanks again!
 
If the specific gravity of pure gold is 19.3,suppose I get a specific gravity of 17.3.Is is correct to say that the percentage of pure gold is (17.3/19.3)*100=89.637 pure gold?
Click to expand...

Not exactly, what you are really doing is a historical guesstimate. You are guessing that it is gold based on the history of what you have recovered in the past. You have done nothing to determine that everything in what you are buying is at least precious. That could be done by cupellation. If you were to run a doré bead by cupellation and measure the SG of that you would be reasonably sure that your answer is close and if it is off there are other precious metals making it off. If you are paying the customer based on SG you could get burned if someone does some creative alloying.
 
4metals said:
If the specific gravity of pure gold is 19.3,suppose I get a specific gravity of 17.3.Is is correct to say that the percentage of pure gold is (17.3/19.3)*100=89.637 pure gold?
Click to expand...

Not exactly, what you are really doing is a historical guesstimate. You are guessing that it is gold based on the history of what you have recovered in the past. You have done nothing to determine that everything in what you are buying is at least precious. That could be done by cupellation. If you were to run a doré bead by cupellation and measure the SG of that you would be reasonably sure that your answer is close and if it is off there are other precious metals making it off. If you are paying the customer based on SG you could get burned if someone does some creative alloying.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply 4metals. This method of buying gold by specific gravity is the one being used here in our place (Benguet Province, Philippines). I learned that tungsten has a close SG with gold, Is that what you mean by "creative alloying"? I buy gold from miners that I know only and alloying of different metals is one subject they don'e know. But assuming I have a legit gold with 17.3 g/cm3 specific gravity will my calculation work and is it safe to say or estimate that it has 89.637% pure gold?
I plan on inquarting the gold that I buy to increase their purity thats why Im asking the percentage.

Please forgive me if there are aspects in where I don't have enough knowledge. Im reading Hoke's and other books to learn about precious metals. Your answers are big help.

Thanks again.
 

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Aeon13 said:
I learned that tungsten has a close SG with gold, Is that what you mean by "creative alloying"? I buy gold from miners that I know only and alloying of different metals is one subject they don'e know. But assuming I have a legit gold with 17.3 g/cm3 specific gravity will my calculation work and is it safe to say or estimate that it has 89.637% pure gold?
Click to expand...
No. As 4metals mentioned, and as you seem to have some understanding, it depends on what metals are mixed with the gold. Consider the difference in specific gravity between aluminum and lead. If you add equal amounts of each to the same quantities of gold, the specific gravity of the two samples will be quite different, even though the amount of gold in each sample will be the same.

You have to know what metals are mixed with the gold to be able to calculate the gold percentage from specific gravity. In your example, you're ignoring the specific gravity of anything but the gold.

Dave
 
FrugalRefiner said:
Aeon13 said:
I learned that tungsten has a close SG with gold, Is that what you mean by "creative alloying"? I buy gold from miners that I know only and alloying of different metals is one subject they don'e know. But assuming I have a legit gold with 17.3 g/cm3 specific gravity will my calculation work and is it safe to say or estimate that it has 89.637% pure gold?
Click to expand...
No. As 4metals mentioned, and as you seem to have some understanding, it depends on what metals are mixed with the gold. Consider the difference in specific gravity between aluminum and lead. If you add equal amounts of each to the same quantities of gold, the specific gravity of the two samples will be quite different, even though the amount of gold in each sample will be the same.

You have to know what metals are mixed with the gold to be able to calculate the gold percentage from specific gravity. In your example, you're ignoring the specific gravity of anything but the gold.
Click to expand...
I'm gonna get convoluted and quite possibly wrong here:

If I'm not wrong, your math (SG of sample/SG of gold) determines the percent of gold only if your only other "contaminant" has a specific gravity of 0. What I'm thinking is something like (SGSample-SGbase)/(SGAu-SGbase) would tell you how close your sample is to gold, given the difference between the densities of gold and the base metal present. So if the only other possible metal was copper (SG=8.94), you'd get a final result of (17.3-8.94)/(19.3-8.94)=80.7%. But if your only other metal is aluminum (SG=2.71), your sample is 87.9% gold.

But that doesn't really work either. For it to work, you'd have to know the total density of everything else in the mix, given their concentrations. And if I recall correctly, alloys don't always average their densities. In other words, a 50/50 alloy of two metals does not necessarily have a density halfway between the two base constituents.

Fire assay?
 
FrugalRefiner said:
Aeon13 said:
I learned that tungsten has a close SG with gold, Is that what you mean by "creative alloying"? I buy gold from miners that I know only and alloying of different metals is one subject they don'e know. But assuming I have a legit gold with 17.3 g/cm3 specific gravity will my calculation work and is it safe to say or estimate that it has 89.637% pure gold?
Click to expand...
No. As 4metals mentioned, and as you seem to have some understanding, it depends on what metals are mixed with the gold. Consider the difference in specific gravity between aluminum and lead. If you add equal amounts of each to the same quantities of gold, the specific gravity of the two samples will be quite different, even though the amount of gold in each sample will be the same.

You have to know what metals are mixed with the gold to be able to calculate the gold percentage from specific gravity. In your example, you're ignoring the specific gravity of anything but the gold.

Dave
Click to expand...

Thanks for further explaining Dave. These gold buttons are from the small scale miners, they use cyanide leaching, then recovery using zinc dust with lead nitrate. And finally treat it with nitric acid to dissolve other materials except gold. But I think other metals are still present (palladium,lead,etc.) that's why the specific gravity of the final product is below 19.3.
But this way of buying gold here is done for many years now, which means that profit is being made by the refiners which are the final buyers. There is this table that all these buyers use to calculate the payment.I will post this table. The column in bold is the specific gravity and beside it is the percentage of gold. I am new to this business that is why I am wondering if this table is accurate/true.
This is how they taught me on calculating the price:
Determine the specific gravity, then look at the table for the corresponding percentage. example: SG of 17.3 that would be 86%. I then multiply this 86% by the spot gold price minus 2 dollars (.86*(Spot - 2$)). The final answer is the price of the gold.

I hope I explained properly. Thanks again guys.
 

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upcyclist said:
FrugalRefiner said:
Aeon13 said:
I learned that tungsten has a close SG with gold, Is that what you mean by "creative alloying"? I buy gold from miners that I know only and alloying of different metals is one subject they don'e know. But assuming I have a legit gold with 17.3 g/cm3 specific gravity will my calculation work and is it safe to say or estimate that it has 89.637% pure gold?
Click to expand...
No. As 4metals mentioned, and as you seem to have some understanding, it depends on what metals are mixed with the gold. Consider the difference in specific gravity between aluminum and lead. If you add equal amounts of each to the same quantities of gold, the specific gravity of the two samples will be quite different, even though the amount of gold in each sample will be the same.

You have to know what metals are mixed with the gold to be able to calculate the gold percentage from specific gravity. In your example, you're ignoring the specific gravity of anything but the gold.
Click to expand...
I'm gonna get convoluted and quite possibly wrong here:

If I'm not wrong, your math (SG of sample/SG of gold) determines the percent of gold only if your only other "contaminant" has a specific gravity of 0. What I'm thinking is something like (SGSample-SGbase)/(SGAu-SGbase) would tell you how close your sample is to gold, given the difference between the densities of gold and the base metal present. So if the only other possible metal was copper (SG=8.94), you'd get a final result of (17.3-8.94)/(19.3-8.94)=80.7%. But if your only other metal is aluminum (SG=2.71), your sample is 87.9% gold.

But that doesn't really work either. For it to work, you'd have to know the total density of everything else in the mix, given their concentrations. And if I recall correctly, alloys don't always average their densities. In other words, a 50/50 alloy of two metals does not necessarily have a density halfway between the two base constituents.

Fire assay?
Click to expand...

Thanks for the opinion upcyclist. I can't really do the measurement of specific gravity of the "contaminant". The only instrument I use is an Ohaus scale that has .01g accuracy and with weigh below hook. This is the one all of the gold buyers here use to determine the specific gravity. Fire assay also is not practical in my opinion because the gold buttons are of small quantities and I cannot afford to assay each of these every time I buy gold. Thanks again.
 
Aeon13 said:
Determine the specific gravity, then look at the table for the corresponding percentage. example: SG of 17.3 that would be 86%. I then multiply this 86% by the spot gold price minus 2 dollars (.86*(Spot - 2$)). The final answer is the price of the gold.
Click to expand...
If I understand this, you're paying $2.00 per ounce less than spot for the gold you buy? If you're not further discounting the price you're paying, I fear you may find yourself losing money quickly. It would mean you're paying around 99.84% of the full gold value. Where are you going to resell your gold to make any money? And since the gold price can rise or fall by tens of dollars in a single day, you could find yourself underwater very quickly.

I'm not trying to be critical. Just trying to provide some food for thought.

Dave
 
FrugalRefiner said:
Aeon13 said:
Determine the specific gravity, then look at the table for the corresponding percentage. example: SG of 17.3 that would be 86%. I then multiply this 86% by the spot gold price minus 2 dollars (.86*(Spot - 2$)). The final answer is the price of the gold.
Click to expand...
If I understand this, you're paying $2.00 per ounce less than spot for the gold you buy? If you're not further discounting the price you're paying, I fear you may find yourself losing money quickly. It would mean you're paying around 99.84% of the full gold value. Where are you going to resell your gold to make any money? And since the gold price can rise or fall by tens of dollars in a single day, you could find yourself underwater very quickly.

I'm not trying to be critical. Just trying to provide some food for thought.

Dave
Click to expand...

Thanks for the input sir FrugalRefiner. I am sorry for the lack of information. I buy $2.00 per gram less than spot gold. I am reselling it to a bigger gold buyer which has I believe have contacts to refiners. He made me a deal that he will pay me one step higher on the table that I posted here. So if I bought a button that has SG of 18.3, he will pay me the same weight but at the price of 18.4 SG. I am on this business for only 2 months and earning small every transaction. To be safe on price variation of gold, I sell them the same day I bought them. That is why I wonder how these bigger buyers and refiners profit.

Thanks again good sir.
 

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