# Refining Palladium



## jeweler1 (Jul 18, 2012)

Refining Palladium

I have metal, which contains Gold, Palladium, Nickel, Indium, and Cobalt. 
I have successfully dissolved it in poor man’s AR and precipitated the gold using SMB (with the help of this forum and Hokes book)
Now I want to precipitate out the Palladium 
I have read everything I can find about the process (Hokes book) (this forum) and the Gold –N-Scrap website.
Testing the solution with stannous first produces a brown (kind of rainbow) stain which turns dark blue green when dried.
The solution is very dark blue almost black Light will not pass through it. 
I put it in the freezer to precipitate out whatever I can and than plan to reduce it as far as possible with heat to eliminate any Nitric acid (I didn’t use any Urea to precipitate the Gold).
After watching the Palladium video on Gold-N-Scrap website. This seems like the best advice so far.
When the solution reaches syrup consistency I will add HCL to bring it back.
Now adding a saturated solution of Ammonium Chloride and observe?
Now I’m lost what am I looking for? How much do I add? Will the other metals affect this?
Than I’m going to add Chlorine? 
Since I do not have Sodium chlorate I need a substitute 
From reading the forum they say using Chlorine pool tablets will work. 
There are 2 chemicals from HTH pool chemicals
Sodium hypochlorite 52% 49% chlorine and
Trichloro-s-Triazinetrione 92.4% 84% chlorine 
Will either work or which one would you recommend?
This should give me a red percipient (I hope)


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## Palladium (Jul 19, 2012)

How much of these metals are we talking about? Weights and percentages?


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## jeweler1 (Jul 19, 2012)

I do not know the weights or percentages of this metal. I was told that it is mostly nickel. I have already precipitated the gold from the liquid. Based on the little information I received with the metal, I am guessing there should be 5 to 8 grams of Pd left in the solution.


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## Lino1406 (Jul 20, 2012)

If you do not have chlorates or bromates
which are nasty, there is another 
possibility, DMG precipitation
unless you have nickel in solution


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## Lino1406 (Jul 20, 2012)

Sorry, I see you have nickel


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## Lino1406 (Jul 20, 2012)

In this case dissolve the palladium with HNO3,
not AR


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## freechemist (Jul 20, 2012)

As far as I can see it from your postings, palladium to be recovered, is dissolved already, and gold has been removed by precipitation with SMB. It is possible, to precipitate Pd with dimethylglyoxime directly from this solution, as long, as the reaction mixture stays strongly acidic and never becomes alkaline. Nickel will only be precipitated from alkaline solution.
Alternatively you can cement Pd onto Cu or reduce it with Zn, filter, wash, dry and weigh the raw metal before redissolution with HCl/H2O2, HCl/bleach, HCl/chlorate and the like. Redissolution with AR can be very tricky. In my hands dissolution of finely divided metallic Pd with HCl/HNO3 some times led to sudden foaming-over under release of brown NOx-clouds.


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