Processing Ruthenium Resistors

shop deals on amazon
Shop deals on ebay
Advertise with us
xelexo
Gold Refining Forum

Help Support Gold Refining Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
kurtak said:
PlainsScrapper said:
Well I just realized that what I wrote was wrong. Ruthenium is immune to hydrochloric acid, and that the best method to dissolve this metal is with ordinary household bleach. :oops: Also, I think that it is too much work for so little metal, unlike gold or silver. Also, thank you jimdoc, necromancer, and niteliteone, for all your helpful insight, and have decided to avoid this carcinogenic metal. :)
Click to expand...

PlainsScapper

bleach alone will not dissolve any of the platinum group metals -it is used along with HCL to make what we call "poor mans AR" - the bleach (chlorine) is a substitute oxidizer for nitric acid which is normally used in AR - it works slower then nitric to dissolve metal & so is used when nitric is hard or expensive to get - there are also "some" process applications where it may be a better choice --- my point being you have a lot to learn before you start asking questions here - start by spending several week searching & reading here on the forum & by all means download & read Hokes book which is a free download here on the forum - learn to use the search feature --- once you do as suggested you will be able to start asking questions we can actually help you with because you will then have a better idea of what you are talking about

Also here is a link to the resistors I believe you are talking about - the silver is not in the solder --- http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=9138&hilit=resistors#p86806

Kurt
Click to expand...
Ok. That idea of using poor mans AR to dissolve ruthenium is really bad. One, the temperature increase will easily cause the detonation of the RuO4. In theory the RuO4 would be reduced with the hydrochloric acid to form Ru+4 ions though it would have to be kept at below-10C in order to prevent a runaway reaction. Attempting the two reactions at once is probably is asking for trouble. Cutting corners to save steps could end up with a long time spent at the doctor's office. One word of warning with ruthenium is that ruthenium is carcinogenic. Those who wish to refine ruthenium really should invest in a glove box kind of like what they use in the NNL in Scotland. That's really your only way to ensure your safety. My recommendation would be to crush the SMDs up and fire them under say litharge to collect the metal to the bottom. Then cuple it like they do in fire assays. Then the bead remaining can be sold or refined. the reason for the fire assay is to remove ceramic which would adsorb the ruthenium ions in solution. Also once the ceramics are removed and it's a metal bead it can be dissolved under far more controlled conditions if you wish to refine it. Another reason is that the ruthenium in the SMD's is not elemental. It's Ru+4 oxide which unlike Ru+8 ions is a black solid instead of an explosive liquid more toxic than cyanide. Hope this helps. Sincerely, Rougemillenial
 
I agree that Ru isn't worth the time or the risk for the hobbyist. Especially @ $40/oz in the pure form at present market conditions.

And yes, it's immune to pretty much every aqueous solvent but hypochlorite. AR won't touch the pure stuff, even as powder. Mix it with other PGMs and some synergism happens and it will dissolve to varying degrees. The danger with the NaOCl digestion is when it is acidified because bleach often contains chlorate (especially when it gets heated) and that makes chlorine when added to HCl. Off then comes the RuO4 as a distillate. That usually gets collected in KOH traps. The whole "explosion" thing is due to chlorine dioxide produced from the chlorate acidification--in clean apparatus, the RuO4 can be redistilled in a current of air without decomposition.

I don't know how carcinogenic it is (never saw any IARC studies or listing, so please enlighten me if you have references) but I would treat any soluble metallic compound with great care.


FYI rougemillenial, Ru/Os/Ir/Rh have really poor solubilities in lead. Ir and Os probably the worst, in fact one can prepare pretty nice Os, Ir and alloys of the two from recrystallizing in molten lead!

Here's a great link to some Ru chemistry:

http://woelen.homescience.net/science/chem/exps/ruthenium/index.html

The ruthenium (IV) oxide present in the escrap does not dissolve well in bleach. It has to be prereduced back to metal first.
 
Lou said:
I agree that Ru isn't worth the time or the risk for the hobbyist. Especially @ $40/oz in the pure form at present market conditions.

And yes, it's immune to pretty much every aqueous solvent but hypochlorite. AR won't touch the pure stuff, even as powder. Mix it with other PGMs and some synergism happens and it will dissolve to varying degrees. The danger with the NaOCl digestion is when it is acidified because bleach often contains chlorate (especially when it gets heated) and that makes chlorine when added to HCl. Off then comes the RuO4 as a distillate. That usually gets collected in KOH traps. The whole "explosion" thing is due to chlorine dioxide produced from the chlorate acidification--in clean apparatus, the RuO4 can be redistilled in a current of air without decomposition.

I don't know how carcinogenic it is (never saw any IARC studies or listing, so please enlighten me if you have references) but I would treat any soluble metallic compound with great care.


FYI rougemillenial, Ru/Os/Ir/Rh have really poor solubilities in lead. Ir and Os probably the worst, in fact one can prepare pretty nice Os, Ir and alloys of the two from recrystallizing in molten lead!

Here's a great link to some Ru chemistry:

http://woelen.homescience.net/science/chem/exps/ruthenium/index.html

The ruthenium (IV) oxide present in the escrap does not dissolve well in bleach. It has to be prereduced back to metal first.
Click to expand...

Rougemillenial said:
kurtak said:
PlainsScrapper said:
Well I just realized that what I wrote was wrong. Ruthenium is immune to hydrochloric acid, and that the best method to dissolve this metal is with ordinary household bleach. :oops: Also, I think that it is too much work for so little metal, unlike gold or silver. Also, thank you jimdoc, necromancer, and niteliteone, for all your helpful insight, and have decided to avoid this carcinogenic metal. :)
Click to expand...

PlainsScapper

bleach alone will not dissolve any of the platinum group metals -it is used along with HCL to make what we call "poor mans AR" - the bleach (chlorine) is a substitute oxidizer for nitric acid which is normally used in AR - it works slower then nitric to dissolve metal & so is used when nitric is hard or expensive to get - there are also "some" process applications where it may be a better choice --- my point being you have a lot to learn before you start asking questions here - start by spending several week searching & reading here on the forum & by all means download & read Hokes book which is a free download here on the forum - learn to use the search feature --- once you do as suggested you will be able to start asking questions we can actually help you with because you will then have a better idea of what you are talking about

Also here is a link to the resistors I believe you are talking about - the silver is not in the solder --- http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=9138&hilit=resistors#p86806

Kurt
Click to expand...
Ok. That idea of using poor mans AR to dissolve ruthenium is really bad. One, the temperature increase will easily cause the detonation of the RuO4. In theory the RuO4 would be reduced with the hydrochloric acid to form Ru+4 ions though it would have to be kept at below-10C in order to prevent a runaway reaction. Attempting the two reactions at once is probably is asking for trouble. Cutting corners to save steps could end up with a long time spent at the doctor's office. One word of warning with ruthenium is that ruthenium is carcinogenic. Those who wish to refine ruthenium really should invest in a glove box kind of like what they use in the NNL in Scotland. That's really your only way to ensure your safety. My recommendation would be to crush the SMDs up and fire them under say litharge to collect the metal to the bottom. Then cuple it like they do in fire assays. Then the bead remaining can be sold or refined. the reason for the fire assay is to remove ceramic which would adsorb the ruthenium ions in solution. Also once the ceramics are removed and it's a metal bead it can be dissolved under far more controlled conditions if you wish to refine it. Another reason is that the ruthenium in the SMD's is not elemental. It's Ru+4 oxide which unlike Ru+8 ions is a black solid instead of an explosive liquid more toxic than cyanide. Hope this helps. Sincerely, Rougemillenial
Click to expand...

I understand what both of you mean. Way too much trouble for me to deal with it. I found out about this component on youtube, so I just hope other people on youtube that know about the ruthenium in surface mount resistors not process them, as the danger is just too great for most people to be worth the end product. Both of your comments are greatly appreciated.
 
ruthenium is an interesting metal. though, if I needed ruthenium for something I'd probably just buy it. unless you have large quantities and the equipment/ experience to make the process doable which means that your garage isn't the place, I would not suggest trying it. I wouldn't go the bleach route either way. i'd probably use 200C lye solution under pressure to dissolve ceramics, tin, zinc, etc. then dissolve iron, copper, nickel etc. in HCL/H2O2. then you're left with rhenium, platinum, ruthenium, gold, silver, rhodium among other things. then use aqua regia to dissolve the gold, rhenium, and platinum. then dissolve the rhodium with molten sodium bisulfate as rhodium sulfate. then oxidize the ruthenium dioxide to sodium ruthenate using molten sodium peroxide.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top