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Hi snowman FYI, I am the one taking the picture, not the one holding the equipment or the sample. but the next time I go over to the shop I will let them know they are doing just what you are talking about
 
truthmatters said:
All I am trying to do is find out do I have 0$ value or $3000.+ value.
And I've been trying to answer that as diplomatically as I can. You have $0.00. You previously precipitated the silver and gold from your solutions. You tested your remaining solution with stannous and the result was negative. As I said in my first reply, iron precipitates everything below it on the reactivity series. That can include Cadmium, Cobalt, Nickel, Tin, Lead, Tungsten, Antimony, Arsenic, Bismuth, and Copper.

I have never seen anyone try to take an XRF reading through a glass jar, especially while holding it in their hand. :shock:

Again, I'm not trying to be a jerk. I am trying to respectfully tell you the XRF readings are meaningless and that you have a jar of base metals.

Dave
 
Just a thought here...I know that the SOP here is to poo poo any XRF results from a powder, and I too question the results enough that I wouldn't expect it to be accurate, but it is possible for it to be.

I would PM Lou and ask him if he'd be willing to buy it based upon his ICP analysis if it's Pd.
 
Dave Thanks for your straight forward reply. What you are saying makes a lot of sense and I respect the knowledge of all on this site. However for me to be assured of what you are saying, i will go ahead and do a XRF test on the sample of the silver alloy pictured above, if neg for PGM's off it goes to the hazmat dump, pos it will get sent to confirm or reject the XRF results to one of the refining companies and will update you all.
In either case I thank you for putting up with my ignorance and spending your time trying to educate me.
 
You can't take an xrf reading through glass if that was how it was done.

I don't care if you are a backyard scientist in high school or a 63 year old Boeing employee, I was only discussing the results of the xrf. It just didn't make sense to me.

So... what you should do with your metals. One of the most basic reactions of silver is silver nitrate and chloride forming a white precipitate of silver chloride.

Dissolve some of your "copper" powder, then add salt or HCl. Did it form a white precipitate? Then you have either silver, lead or mercury.
No white precipitate? Then you don't have silver in solution. Period!

That is the truth. And if that matters that is the first test you can do.

Ok, I'm done, I rather spend some time watching youtube videos than giving advice to those who don't want to listen.

Göran
 
Snoman, I thought I saw the same thing.....holding a sample in ones hands while testing it with a XRF!! Sorry, safety first truthmatters. This is exactly what you do not do when using XRF.

I have posted this before, but there is a free online training course offered by Niton/Thermofisher. http://www.thermofisher.com/us/en/home/industrial/spectroscopy-elemental-isotope-analysis/portable-analysis-material-id/xrf-radiation-safety-training.html As you will see, even if you are not the operator of the XRF, you could be receiving a significant dose of X-rays just by watching. The training is free!!

Back to my first post in this thread. Did you check the XRF (not holding sample in your hand and testing) using a copper buss bar, .999 Ag bar? Those are two items you either probably have or could easily get. If your readings are not what you would expect, I really doubt the readings of the unknown material mean anything at all. Since even getting results you expect with known purity metal does not mean the result of an unknown will be known, except maybe if you had the geochem mode on that machine and ran the sample for two minutes.
 
With all this dickering i could have done run it and had the answers! :lol: :lol: :lol:
Xrf..... Yeah...........!!!! It's not as point and click straight forward as they would like you to believe!
That's why years ago i coined the term ( What comes out the beaker, comes out the beaker!)
Test are great, but physical metal tells the tell!
 
That is why I don't like discussions in PM with more than one person.

.. and the fact that we now have split the discussion about the liquid and cemented metal powder over two threads and one pm chain. In the reply I wrote I hadn't included Palladium, so I'm going to post my reply here too.

In reply to a long pm from truthmatters...
I would rather see this discussion being done in the open, if people are bored they just skip a thread.

One way science works is to put up theories and then test it. If it fails the test then try to find a better theory that matches the results better. If one aspect of a theory can be proven false then the whole theory is questionable.

In this matter the theory is that the xrf reading is correct and the sum of all metals are 100%.

If there is no copper in the results then a major part is missing and it would create some major doubts in the xrf reading.

If the liquid you started cementing from contained chloride ions then there should be no major amounts of silver in solution and consequently not in the resulting metal powder either.

So now I propose a new theory, that the xrf readings are faulty since the xrf doesn't know all elements in the sample. The program is doing it's best to match the readings from the sensor to the few elements it's been programmed with.

As an analogy, if you work at, for example Boeing labeling aircraft models then everything you need to know is the models made by Boeing. It works when you are in that environment, but if you are at an airport and there is an Airbus at the terminal you would probably come up with a 737 or similar model of Boeing aircraft because that is what it matches best.
If an outside observer was looking at a list you made of the aircraft visiting the airport for the last week and only saw different models of Boeing they would doubt the whole list, not just the one they could verify was false. If one model of Airbus was missing then some of the other models listed must also be in error or the sum wouldn't add up to 100%.

That is why I seriously doubt the list from that xrf. Lead for example is one element I believe could mess with an xrf looking for precious metals. I think it usually pops up as platinum but I might be wrong there.

I am a man of science and I gave you an easy way to prove me wrong. Dissolve the copper powder in nitric acid. Any rhodium should remain as solid and any silver would end up in solution. Add HCl and it would precipitate silver chloride.
My prediction is that since you cemented this on iron from a solution where all gold has been removed. (negative stannous test) the metal should be easily dissolved in nitric acid and not precipitate when you add HCl.

If you are afraid of the truth then you don't want to do the test. Doing the test would prove that your dream about a huge payout is false. We have seen that many times over on the forum, someone married to a dream refuses to accept facts as it would crush their dream, especially people believing they found a huge ore and that they are rich now.

You say truth matters, I say proof matters.

Göran

I also wrote
By the way truthmatter, I have nothing against you. I don't know you and until the contrary is proven I'm quite sure we would have a good time, trading life stories over a couple cold beers. :D

... it is that XRF-reading I'm attacking. :wink:

Göran

I will not comment any more via PM, it sucks. I might be part of a discussion here if I feel I have something to contribute.

Göran
 
I agree with Göran that I'd prefer to continue these discussions on the open forum instead of PM. I also agree that the discussion has been confusing, in part because there was a separate thread about a stannous test which has become part of the discussion here, so I've merged the threads.

truthmatters, I hope you have a jar full of money there, but logic tells me otherwise. On the other hand, we have a member who seems to have found an electronic component that contains almost 20% by weight of gold. The numbers don't seem to make sense, but we will see.

As Ralph says, what comes out the beaker, comes out the beaker!

Dave
 
You wrote
Dissolve the copper powder in nitric acid. Any rhodium should remain as solid and any silver would end up in solution. Add HCl and it would precipitate silver chloride.
My prediction is that since you cemented this on iron from a solution where all gold has been removed. (negative stannous test) the metal should be easily dissolved in nitric acid and not precipitate when you add HCl.

I will perform the test you have outlined first thing tomorrow. Is this the formula I should use: 3/1 water/nitric and observe reaction and see what goes into solution. Any thing that does not dissolve, decant and add HCL and observe any silver chloride that may or may not drop?

Thanks Bill
 
6 hours into my putting the 250 gr sample into solution.
1) Initial reaction vigorous with 300Ml H2O and 100Ml nitric, action considerably slowed within .5hrs (start-1hr)
2) Added another 50Ml nitric pace picked up and with in an hour approx 60% has gone into solution (1hr - 3hr)
3) Action nearly stopped until stirred. but would nearly stop. Added 50Ml nitric, action picked up. (3 - 3.5hr)
4) Added 50Ml nitric and put on low heat. Approx 90% metal in solution, the remainder is being very slow to go into solution. Consistent stirring needed to keep action moving. (3.5 - 4hr)
5) Have been adding 25Ml at about 1 hr intervals on low heat to keep action going along. At this point 5 hours into process the last remaining seem to be very stubborn to go into solution and am hesitant to keep adding more nitric until i get some clearity as to how far to go.
Im thinking about decanting what solution I have and starting with anew with what I am having a problem getting to go into solution. Anyway I did take some stannous chloride samples 1 hour apart, what's your thoughts.
Bill
Stannous Chloride test.JPGAmounts of solutions.JPG
 
6 pm and no more action in solution. Put away for the night, will pick up again in the morning by decanting solution off and try to drop any AG from solution and will start with a 50/50 H2O nitric solution with what is remaining solids.action has stopped.JPG10 % left.JPG6pm stannous samples.JPG
 
Do you have any white precipitant from the AR process or is it as per the last picture?

With the 19% reading of silver I would expect a lot of silver chloride if it was correct. That would be my personal judgement standard on the viability of this particular XRF reading.

If there's not a boatload of silver chloride then the signs are not good.
 
Maybe i missed it but if you only added Nitric there should be no gold in your solution, you dissolved all base metals and silver. I would put a drop off hcl in the filtered solution to see if it makes a white cloud off silver chloride to see if there is any silver dissolved. Adding HCL to the remaining solids would create AR with the remaining nitric in it, or adding a litle bit nitric to see if the solids dissolve.

Paul

edit for spelling
 
Yes Slochteren I misread and thought he had dissolved in AR.

You're quite correct the next step is to take some of the Nitric solution and put a drop of HCl into it and see if it precipitates out the Silver Chloride. If it doesn't then the rest of my original post applies.
 

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