Average percentage of iridium in iron ore...

[flashfossilized]

My iridium source averages 3 to 8% iridium in the ore I'm mining. 90% of the ores iron, the rest is gold silver and copper all below 1%. My question is this, is there anyone out there mining iridium coming up with similar percentages? And is 3 to 8% a sensible percentage to try to process and refine?

 

[Yggdrasil]

My iridium source averages 3 to 8% iridium in the ore I'm mining. 90% of the ores iron, the rest is gold silver and copper all below 1%. My question is this, is there anyone out there mining iridium coming up with similar percentages? And is 3 to 8% a sensible percentage to try to process and refine?

How do you know it has Iridium in it?
Have you had an assay done, I mean not XRF but real PGM assay?

Edit to add:
Even 1% Gold is extremely rich, richer than anything I have heard about with 10Kg per MT.
Iridium is extremely rarer than Gold so at 30-80 Kg per MT it would maybe be the richest ore in the world.
So I think one need to question these numbers.

 

[flashfossilized]

I have not had it assayed so to speak but I have a jeweler who has an x-ray spectrometer and he's zapped it for me and told me what I know I've had quite a few samples tested with the spectrometer he has and each one averages a different percentage but suffice it to say that lo, the words I speak are true and the numbers are correct so I appreciate your positive words of inspiration. There's not a lot of information out there when it comes to the subject of iridium. I've tried to find out what the percentage is in the or they pull out of the mines in South Africa but I can't seem to locate the information. I'm just trying to get a general idea of what I've got compared to what there is when it comes to mining and processing iridium...

 

[Yggdrasil]

I have not had it assayed so to speak but I have a jeweler who has an x-ray spectrometer and he's zapped it for me and told me what I know I've had quite a few samples tested with the spectrometer he has and each one averages a different percentage but suffice it to say that lo, the words I speak are true and the numbers are correct so I appreciate your positive words of inspiration. There's not a lot of information out there when it comes to the subject of iridium. I've tried to find out what the percentage is in the or they pull out of the mines in South Africa but I can't seem to locate the information. I'm just trying to get a general idea of what I've got compared to what there is when it comes to mining and processing iridium...

If the XRF don’t have the correct libraries and are set up for geology mode, it will read Arsenic as Ir.
Are there Pt, Pd, Rh or Os in there too?
You will almost never find Ir alone.

Annual production world wide is about 3 MT, so for you to find 30 Kg per MT which is 1% of the total world production per MT in an Ore is close to unheard of.

But if it is true it is a major find, you need to do a proper PGM assay to verify the numbers.

 

[flashfossilized]

Thank you for your advice I'll check into the PGM assay you spoke of. There are small amounts of Pd, Pt, Rh in what I've found...

 

[orvi]

World iridium reserves gone through the roof everytime people XRF rocks from their backyard Here we go again. Iridium is one of the rarest elements on earth. So it is rhodium. And believing that some ore contains % ammounts of them is straight naive. At least, you need to consider the statistics - that is so improbable, that you better find out for sure you have even some in your sample.

Proper assay is needed. Not some XRF, which does not have Geochem mode. Even that is many times of no big help, since gold or PGMs runs at ppm levels in ores, and there is very high chance of overlaying peaks & diffraction distortion - so the XRF usually "make up" some metals that never been in the ore. Our like to create rhodium and osmium in low-density samples, or even deliberately on Geochem mode with various rocks, we see rhodium and platinum.

 

[orvi]

Thank you for your advice I'll check into the PGM assay you spoke of. There are small amounts of Pd, Pt, Rh in what I've found...

Are there some sulfides, some visible minerals, or it is just ordinary looking rock ?

 

[flashfossilized]

No there's definitely nothing ordinary about these "rocks" I've been finding. Most of them are chock a block full of carbon crystals and tiny diamonds. So naturally one can draw a conclusion that what I'm finding comes from a crashed asteroid. A lot of nickel some Cobalt titanium I'm no professional and I understand your skepticism chances of someone finding these things extremely rare as you say yes but doesn't change the fact that I did find them and I'll find out more about them as I go appreciate your input...

 

[MicheleM]

"So naturally one can draw a conclusion that what I'm finding comes from a crashed asteroid"
why do you think that?

 

[orvi]

No there's definitely nothing ordinary about these "rocks" I've been finding. Most of them are chock a block full of carbon crystals and tiny diamonds. So naturally one can draw a conclusion that what I'm finding comes from a crashed asteroid. A lot of nickel some Cobalt titanium I'm no professional and I understand your skepticism chances of someone finding these things extremely rare as you say yes but doesn't change the fact that I did find them and I'll find out more about them as I go appreciate your input...

If there is Co and Ni present in the ore, and there are "black spots" with ore concentration, your chances raise. All PMs present in mine-able form on Earth comes from old asteroid collisions by one theory. But that does not matter much for now

I would advise to make a homogenous sample of the material. And then you can do practically two things:
XRF does work pretty OK with metallic samples. One option is to reductively smelt the ore with suitable collector metal (for this instance, copper could be the one of choice, if you have means how to heat it to above 1300°C or such). Prepare your sample by roasting it (if it contain sulfides), then add few grams of copper, flux and heat it pretty hot. Induction furnance will be the best, using graphite crucible. You will obtain metallic dore. If there were values in the ore, you will now clearly see them on XRF, when you shot the dore on Precious Metals mode. Order of a magnitude more reliably then shot of the plain ore sample. This is relatively low end and cheap approach. It doesn´t get you very accurate results, but you can fairly certainly prove that PMs are or aren´t in the sample.

Second option is to make homogenous sample and get it assayed by professional laboratory, which will perform professional PGMs assay, not just another XRF shot. Fire assay for PGMs coupled with probably ICP is the thing. This can cost some fairly high price, but you get bulletproof results which tell you what to do next

 

[flashfossilized]

Ok, I'll get back to you next week and let you know what I came up with...

 

[flashfossilized]

"So naturally one can draw a conclusion that what I'm finding comes from a crashed asteroid"
why do you think that?

I have my reasons and I'll elaborate on it more in the future...

 

[Martijn]

If i would have 8% Ir ore (80kg per ton), I would be sending out a request for quotation to multiple qualified, licenced and experienced big mining companies in stead of tying to mine this extremely difficult metal myself.
Let them have a piece of the pie and work for it.

Sit back and collect the money.
Rediculous amounts of money.
Piles and piles of it.

One ton of ore would yield 80kg of Ir. That's 80×140.000= 11.2m euro per ton of ore.
Indeed, that can only be an asteroid. I have no other explanation for that.

Time to invest imo.
I think i can make it work for 0.5% of the profit. Maybe even less.

For 11.2 milion per ton, you are relying on the xrf of a jewelers friend? How many times does the man scan jewelry with rocks in them? Or rocks with jewelry inside? Exept for the gemstones..
But really, i don't think a metal xrf based readout of rocks will ever be reliable.

Great numbers, but likely not real.

 

[slsmp40]

If the XRF don’t have the correct libraries and are set up for geology mode, it will read Arsenic as Ir.
Are there Pt, Pd, Rh or Os in there too?
You will almost never find Ir alone.

Annual production world wide is about 3 MT, so for you to find 30 Kg per MT which is 1% of the total world production per MT in an Ore is close to unheard of.

But if it is true it is a major find, you need to do a proper PGM assay to verify the numbers.

A concentration that rich 30Kg/1000 would probably have its own subduction fault system. Isn’t it funny how people have access to a way expensive piece of lab equipment and they never read the manual. Flashfossilized you need to find a lab with a mass spectrometer and someone who knows how to use it. The sample you are describing has to much light element content for xrf to be useful. I am reasonably sure that a concentration of Ir as high as you describe is over the most rich iron-nickel meteors by several orders of magnitude. And beyond rocky meteors by several hundred orders of magnitude. In the supernova events that create Ir it is just not a really preferred element. So if what you have is actually what you think you have I believe it can be used as direct evidence of alien civilization, because it had to be non-naturally concentrated.

 

[flashfossilized]

The jeweler that I'm speaking about was recommended to me by The jewelry exchange downtown. He knows what he's doing he's testing for gold and silver all day so I'm pretty sure he has his X-ray spectrometer set to the right settings. Usually charges $20 per test but he doesn't charge me for some reason I guess he likes me. I learned about the iridium content surely by accident, I originally wanted to know if the ingredients of the rocks I was finding were from outer space based on the tiny diamonds and carbon crystals so prevalent in all the specimens. At any rate once I realized there was a iridium in some of the rocks I was finding that started to recognize which ones would be the ones by their look and I started bringing more samples and having them tested and that's where I was getting my averages of how much within each rock 3 to 8%... Originally I was pursuing the fossil end of my findings but gave up on that. I failed to convince the science community that there was actually fossils to be found. All they wanted to see was pearlized bones of which I only had one these fossils I've been finding around cataloged there isn't even a classification for them. Anyway I'll post some pictures it's a long story it's part of my theory but it all pertains.

 

[Yggdrasil]

The jeweler that I'm speaking about was recommended to me by The jewelry exchange downtown. He knows what he's doing he's testing for gold and silver all day so I'm pretty sure he has his X-ray spectrometer set to the right settings. Usually charges $20 per test but he doesn't charge me for some reason I guess he likes me. I learned about the iridium content surely by accident, I originally wanted to know if the ingredients of the rocks I was finding were from outer space based on the tiny diamonds and carbon crystals so prevalent in all the specimens. At any rate once I realized there was a radium in some of the rocks I was finding that started to recognize which ones would be the ones by their look and I started bringing more samples and having them tested and that's where I was getting my averages of how much within each rock 3 to 8%... Originally I was pursuing the fossil end of my findings but gave up on that but I failed to convince the science community that there was actually fossils to be found. All they wanted to see was paralyzed bones of which I only had one these fossils I've been finding around cataloged there isn't even a classification for them. Anyway I'll post some pictures it's a long story it's part of my theory but it all pertains.

Radium is highly radioactive and I have so far not heard of it in meteorites.
How did you test for Radium?
This picture do not seem like a Meteorite and at least not an Iron meteorite.
The Jewelers usually do not have geochem libraries in their XRFs.
And using a XRF all day shooting Gold and Silver do not mean you know how to shoot a rock in a proper way.

 

[kurtak]

I have not had it assayed so to speak but I have a jeweler who has an x-ray spectrometer and he's zapped it for me and told me what I know I've had quite a few samples tested with the spectrometer

flashfossilized - per the bold print (above quote) you NEED to better understand how these XRF (x-ray spectrometers) actually work &/or how they are programed

Not all XRFs are created equal (programed the same)

XRFs are programed with a library of different elements in the library

The more elements programed into the library the more expensive the cost of the XRF is

Therefore the people that buy/use XRFs - buy them with a library of elements that best suits the needs of their business

In other words they buy an XRF with a library limited to the elements need in the library to conduct their daily business

Examples; --------

Jewelers - precious metal buyers & refineries will have an XRF with a library of all the PMs plus some of more common base metals found in PM alloys but it won't have all the base metals in the library --- there is no need for them to pay the extra cost for a complete library because they are only looking for the PMs & the more common base metals - so their XRF don't need a library of all elements

Scrap yards deal mostly with base metal alloys but not with PMs (Precious Metals) so they buy an XRF with a good BM (Base Metal) library but no PMs (other then maybe silver) in the library

Mining companies that work with ores (rocks) will have the most complete libraries because they are looking for both PMs & BMs as will as non metal elements such a silica

So XRFs are sold as -----------

1) XRF programed primarily for PM readings & limited BM readings
2) XRF programed primarily for BM readings & limited PM readings
3) XRF programed for Geo-Chemical to read both PMs & BMs as well as non metal elements

Therefore - if you shoot something (like a rock) with an XRF that has a limited library in the programing - & the XRF sees something in what you shoot that is not in the library - it will then guess at what it is & then tell you it is something that is in the library --- in other words it will lie to you

Here are two examples of my personal experience with XRFs

When I first started refining I took my first gold button into a scrap yard that had an XRF - it was a BM XRF so when they shot the gold button it called the gold tungsten --- that is because the library did not have gold in the program but it did have tungsten - so it guessed it was tungsten & therefore lied about what it was seeing

Then a few years ago some of use got together over in England - Jon had a PM XRF - Goran brought a piece of arsenic ore with him - we shot the ore with Jon's XRF - because arsenic was not in the library & therefore did not recognize the arsenic it guessed at what it was seeing & called it iridium

You can read about that here ---------

https://goldrefiningforum.com/threads/false-iridium-finds.28009/#post-295508
So --- more then likely - the Jeweler you are taking your rocks to has a PM XRF & it more then likely has the same PM programed library that Jon's XRF has --- therefore it likely does not have arsenic in the library - so when it sees the arsenic - but does not recognize it - it guesses at what it is & calls it iridium

I could be wrong - but I am willing to bet that is the case

The only way to tell for sure is to have an actual PGM assay done on your rocks

In no way would I trust the XRF reading from your Jeweler because he is likely using a PM XRF with a limited library - that does not have arsenic in the library - & therefore is calling arsenic iridium

Kurt

 

[flashfossilized]

The jeweler that I'm speaking about was recommended to me by The jewelry exchange downtown. He knows what he's doing he's testing for gold and silver all day so I'm pretty sure he has his X-ray spectrometer set to the right settings. Usually charges $20 per test but he doesn't charge me for some reason I guess he likes me. I learned about the iridium content surely by accident, I originally wanted to know if the ingredients of the rocks I was finding were from outer space based on the tiny diamonds and carbon crystals so prevalent in all the specimens. At any rate once I realized there was a radium in some of the rocks I was finding that started to recognize which ones would be the ones by their look and I started bringing more samples and having them tested and that's where I was getting my averages of how much within each rock 3 to 8%... Originally I was pursuing the fossil end of my findings but gave up on that but I failed to convince the science community that there was actually fossils to be found. All they wanted to see was paralyzed bones of which I only had one these fossils I've been finding around cataloged there isn't even a classification for them. Anyway I'll post some pictures it's a long story it's part of my theory but it all pertains.

Radium is highly radioactive and I have so far not heard of it in meteorites.
How did you test for Radium?
This picture do not seem like a Meteorite and at least not an Iron meteorite.
The Jewelers usually do not have geochem libraries in their XRFs.
And using a XRF all day shooting Gold and Silver do not mean you know how to shoot a rock in a proper way.

Radium was obviously a typo I fixed just now. The only reason you're questioning my jewelers capabilities is because you are reluctant to believe. So how about we save all the doubt and give me a week to come back with more solid and compelling evidence que no?

 

[flashfossilized]

flashfossilized - per the bold print (above quote) you NEED to better understand how these XRF (x-ray spectrometers) actually work &/or how they are programed

Not all XRFs are created equal (programed the same)

XRFs are programed with a library of different elements in the library

The more elements programed into the library the more expensive the cost of the XRF is

Therefore the people that buy/use XRFs - buy them with a library of elements that best suits the needs of their business

In other words they buy an XRF with a library limited to the elements need in the library to conduct their daily business

Examples; --------

Jewelers - precious metal buyers & refineries will have an XRF with a library of all the PMs plus some of more common base metals found in PM alloys but it won't have all the base metals in the library --- there is no need for them to pay the extra cost for a complete library because they are only looking for the PMs & the more common base metals - so their XRF don't need a library of all elements

Scrap yards deal mostly with base metal alloys but not with PMs (Precious Metals) so they buy an XRF with a good BM (Base Metal) library but no PMs (other then maybe silver) in the library

Mining companies that work with ores (rocks) will have the most complete libraries because they are looking for both PMs & BMs as will as non metal elements such a silica

So XRFs are sold as -----------

1) XRF programed primarily for PM readings & limited BM readings
2) XRF programed primarily for BM readings & limited PM readings
3) XRF programed for Geo-Chemical to read both PMs & BMs as well as non metal elements

Therefore - if you shoot something (like a rock) with an XRF that has a limited library in the programing - & the XRF sees something in what you shoot that is not in the library - it will then guess at what it is & then tell you it is something that is in the library --- in other words it will lie to you

Here are two examples of my personal experience with XRFs

When I first started refining I took my first gold button into a scrap yard that had an XRF - it was a BM XRF so when they shot the gold button it called the gold tungsten --- that is because the library did not have gold in the program but it did have tungsten - so it guessed it was tungsten & therefore lied about what it was seeing

Then a few years ago some of use got together over in England - Jon had a PM XRF - Goran brought a piece of arsenic ore with him - we shot the ore with Jon's XRF - because arsenic was not in the library & therefore did not recognize the arsenic it guessed at what it was seeing & called it iridium

You can read about that here ---------

https://goldrefiningforum.com/threads/false-iridium-finds.28009/#post-295508
So --- more then likely - the Jeweler you are taking your rocks to has a PM XRF & it more then likely has the same PM programed library that Jon's XRF has --- therefore it likely does not have arsenic in the library - so when it sees the arsenic - but does not recognize it - it guesses at what it is & calls it iridium

I could be wrong - but I am willing to bet that is the case

The only way to tell for sure is to have an actual PGM assay done on your rocks

In no way would I trust the XRF reading from your Jeweler because he is likely using a PM XRF with a limited library - that does not have arsenic in the library - & therefore is calling arsenic iridium

Kurt

More will be revealed...

 

[Yggdrasil]

Radium was obviously a typo I fixed just now. The only reason you're questioning my jewelers capabilities is because you are reluctant to believe. So how about we save all the doubt and give me a week to come back with more solid and compelling evidence que no?

So now you removed the Radium?? I don't know your typing skills, but mine don't make words by themselves
When you edit a post, plaese give a short notice of what has been done, to keep replies before the editing in context.
Interesting that you know my intents by replying, this time though you are wrong.
The Iridium paradox is something we see all the time, so we try to give advice, so the members are prepared for the crash that usually comes.
Several members has given you good advice.
Only one thing can verify the content and that is a full PGM assay.