# Crock Pot



## cmethowusa (Jan 16, 2010)

I don't have a lot of good glass lab stuff. I do have an old ceramic crock pot with a heavy glass lid. If I use it to refine the silver with nitric, will the lid being on help or hurt the process? I am also concerned if I could build up pressure and have a catastrophe. Any suggestions?


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## Anonymous (Jan 16, 2010)

cmethowusa said:


> I don't have a lot of good glass lab stuff. I do have an old ceramic crock pot with a heavy glass lid. If I use it to refine the silver with nitric, will the lid being on help or hurt the process? I am also concerned if I could build up pressure and have a catastrophe. Any suggestions?




Search for watch glass then you'll have your answer on the glass lid. Have you read Hokes book on Refining Precious Metals Wastes, it's a free download located on this forum.


Next time your doing silver coins, it's best to melt them and pour the molten metal into cold water, making popcorn. The acid will have more surface area to attack and your silver will dissolve much faster.


Working in doors with a fan is not a good idea as stated by another member, either make a fume hood or move outdoors.


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## butcher (Jan 16, 2010)

You dont want to get nitric too hot depending on concentration, you can evaporate the acid, instead of having it work for you, if dilute mostly water vapors off, but this can concentrate the solution so that you are closer to concentrated azeotropic solution where your acid will boil off, warming (or just more time), should be all that you need to increase the nitrics dissolving power, I personally would not use the crock pot for nitric, as I prefer glass, the crock pot has a layer of glazeing that will break down with strong acids over time (pitting), I do not think pressure from lid would be an issue, the gas would escape, how about a coffee maker (or warmer burner) and old coffee pot, they just get warm and if you want more control a triac lamp dimmer can be added to make it more adjustable.
nitric when disolving metal can also create its own heat from the reaction, keep that in mind, also nitric can concentrate to a point with heat that it will start to foam and can boil over if unattended, keep that in there too, the red gas is terribly corrosive and dangerous, use fume hood , outdoors,a scrubber, or condenser, these fumes will ruin a shed for any other purpose, and could possibly make it more prone to being a fire hazard.


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## cmethowusa (Jan 16, 2010)

I understand what you are warning me against. The crock pot is probably not a good idea. I had not thought about using a coffee carafe. When I was in Houston the other day iI stopped by a lab supply store and was surprised at the cost of the distillation equipment and other glassware. I have a couple of 1 qt Pyrex kitchen type that I have been using in this little experiment. I may need to invest in some of the lab glassware.

I found a chemical supplier in Houston that sold me a 2.5 liter container of 68% nitric for about $50. I had tried making nitric with potassium nitrate but is was very weak and by the time I got done with buying Pot Nitrate, sulfuric, and the time involved in making nitric the $50 did not seem too bad. I may have got ripped off a bit but it is clear with no trash in it. I do not want to distill to get concentrated nitric.

I live out in the country and a little feed and seed store ordered me some sodium nitrate but it was $30 for 20#. I've had no problem getting concentrated Sulfuric but it is pricey as well.


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## qst42know (Jan 17, 2010)

That's a decent price for the sodium nitrate.


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## Richard36 (Jan 18, 2010)

qst42know said:


> That's a decent price for the sodium nitrate.



I agree, 

I would like to find some place close by that I could buy sodium nitrate for that price.
I use sodium nitrate for my chemical tests, and fire assays on sulfide ores.
In short, I go through a pound rapidly.
At $6.00 a LB, plus Hazardous Shipping cost, it gets expensive.

Sincerely; Rick. "The Rock Man".


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## cmethowusa (Jan 23, 2010)

Texas is not as restricted as some other States. The fertilizer/feed store mostly sells to local farmers and ranchers. He does not normally stock 16-0-0 fertilizer but has ordered it for me a couple of times. He also bought a case of concentrated sulfuric drain cleaner for me. We all know each other here so eyebrows don't raise as quickly as in the city.

I have local supplier of chemicals for a a couple of small gas plants in the area. He has been selling 70% nitric to me for $53 for 2.5 liters. I may be getting took a bit but it eliminates all the hastle of making nitric.


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## Richard36 (Jan 23, 2010)

Here are a couple of links where nitric can be bought, as well as sodium nitrate, and other chemicals as well.

http://www.actionmining.com/
http://www.abprospecting.com/

I hope that these help.

Sincerely; Rick. "The Rock Man".


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## goldsilverpro (Jan 23, 2010)

Action mining carries a lot of neat stuff. However, their prices for most everything are sky high. I hate companies that rape their customers.


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## Richard36 (Jan 23, 2010)

goldsilverpro said:


> Action mining carries a lot of neat stuff. However, their prices for most everything are sky high. I hate companies that rape their customers.



I agree.
I just checked their prices on sodium nitrate, and it is more that $6.00 a lb now.
Nitric acid is intolerably expensive.
A&B is by far cheaper, and you get a lot more for your money.
I am not sure about the shipping charge though.

Sincerely; Rick. "The Rock Man".


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## Gold Trail (Jan 26, 2010)

perhaps i recover / refine more so than others, maybe just a bit more into it than a hobby, but I buy my chems in BULK. I just checked action mining and the 100 pound bulk rate for sodium nitrate is 1.45 / lb not too bad. 

I do agree thought that there 1 pound rate at 8 something is a tad rediculous.

Ryan


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## goldsilverpro (Jan 26, 2010)

Goldtrail,

That's not too bad but you can be sure they're doubling their money.


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## patnor1011 (Mar 2, 2010)

I was thinking of using crock pot filled with sand to half of capacity and placing pyrex container on top of that sand say little bit burried into that sand. That will be used with AP on pins. Is that good idea to use sand?


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## samuel-a (Mar 2, 2010)

pantor, it a great idea.

i'm using it for quite some time now.

i took a 2 gallon pickels tin can, place a 2 cm layer of sand on the bottom, place 1 liter erlenmeyer on it, cover it all the way to just above the liquid line.
and place it on a hotplate.

during the day, when i need, i just take it off and using the hotplate and put it back when i'v finished.
the AP will remain hot for at least 4 hours.


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## patnor1011 (Mar 2, 2010)

Thanks Samuel, I want to speed things little bit becouse I have pins in AP and it takes weeks to show any progress. I want to introduce little bit of heat and shorten reaction time.


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## Barren Realms 007 (Mar 2, 2010)

patnor1011 said:


> Thanks Samuel, I want to speed things little bit becouse I have pins in AP and it takes weeks to show any progress. I want to introduce little bit of heat and shorten reaction time.



Do you have a bubler on them? That would help your progress.


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## Palladium (Mar 2, 2010)

I've been trying some experimenting with my AP processing. I use highly aerated air passing thru my material. It sets in my shop at anywhere between freezing and 70 degrees. The majority of the experiment has been done around 50 degrees to help contain the cl levels. It's quick even at this temperature with all the added air. The trick is the air must pass thru the material from the bottom and percolate through the pins like an absorption column .


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## patnor1011 (Mar 3, 2010)

yeah that will be good idea too with air bubling. I am doing that to revive AP but never used that in process of dissolving pins. it is time to check some pet shop again. I think that I saw some small containers that are used as feeders in fish tank when feeding fish with small worms - these containers have small holes on bottom and probably can be fixed somehow into another ones with bubbling stone underneath feeding container.


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## Palladium (Mar 3, 2010)

I tried the cell and had problems because of the little pieces of wire left from cutting the ends off. It causes the pieces to not touch in the basket so they don't de-plate very good. The contacts are small so AP works good for me. Put about 4 inches in the bottom of a five gallon bucket and bubble air thru them. Takes about 3-4 days to process a batch at 50-60 degrees F. Don't put more than that at one time. Also make sure the air bubbles thru the pins and not just into the AP. Take one five gallon bucket and drill holes thru the bottom so it will drain like a strainer. Then take that bucket and place it in another five gallon bucket. Make the air source feed under the bucket with the holes in it so the bubbles bubble thru the holes and then thru the material.


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## patnor1011 (Mar 13, 2010)

few pics from last experiment. that was 100g of very low grade pins. resulting buton was size of rice grain 0.2g. i dont have picture of that buton as I have combined that with some powder from fingers. I will post pic in galery later...


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## Platdigger (Mar 13, 2010)

So wait, you "deplated" these pins with a/p, or perhaps just hcl?
And then recovered the gold from the solution?


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## patnor1011 (Mar 13, 2010)

Yeah, I have used small pyrex bowl, let them sit there in AP with air bubler until there was no visible gold on pins. Then I filtered solution, wash, then HCl/Cl. Normal AP process. There might be some gold dissolved and still in AP but I will get that later right now there are more pins in crock pot...


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## Platdigger (Mar 14, 2010)

OK, still trying to understand what you did here. Were did you get this .2 gram gold bead from?
Were there gold foils you were able to seperate from the pins?
If so, how did you seperate them? Just by rinsing?
I would say, especially with this bubbler, and the fact it seems little copper was disolved, that
a fair amount of your gold (percentage wise) from this little experiment, is still in the solution.


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## patnor1011 (Mar 15, 2010)

There was gold visible in bowl in form of milions little fine powder like flakes. I have got out some amount of very fine brown/blackish powder too. I have filtered all that, rinsed pins several times with HCl and water. AP was dark brown/black. From all this I got that little bead. I have combined that with powder I got from from some fire alarm panels contact areas which were gold plated and few fingers from video cards and ram sticks. Resulting buton is in galery section. Today I will take picture of that fingers, processed pins to see what amounts were involved. As I stated these were low grade pins - I meant that they were all from old computers but not fully plates only in contact parts.
Now I have another cca 300g pins processed in the same maner and I am dropping gold from AuCl so in the evening I will have another gold bead. I will try to put together weights of materials involved. All this were only experiments - small test batches to find out if my set up is working, if I am not loosing gold out somewhere in the process. It is very hard to properly rinse bigger amounts of pins as I still can see some small mini flakes in my waste bucket with pins processed. I am not throwing anything out as I am not fully confident that I have mastered out AP process.
To your question Platdigger yes some of them were slightly magnetic. I will send that bead to my friend to xray that to find out more about quality of that gold.


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