# Pyrite ore



## Brandt (Mar 28, 2009)

Pyrite ore processing been using HCL an H202 to pull the sulfur out then roasting. to burn the precipated sulfur then processing the gold out.


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## Noxx (Mar 28, 2009)

Ok.


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## SapunovDmitry (Mar 29, 2009)

You have to grind it to the fine powder first.Then roast and melt in the blast furnace.
I just returned from Kirovgrad ore processing plant yesterday.  I've seen it 3 times a day starting from this monday.


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## Harold_V (Mar 29, 2009)

Brandt said:


> Pyrite ore processing been using HCL an H202 to pull the sulfur out then roasting. to burn the precipated sulfur then processing the gold out.


Years ago, a guy brought me a few pounds of pyrite that had come from the conveyer belts at Kennecott. There were areas where it dribbled from the belt, and was fairly highly concentrated with fine gold particles. 

I roasted the pyrite on a stainless sheet, heated by my melting furnace, eliminating the sulfur for the most part. I then processed with HCl, which eliminated a great deal of the iron, then I roasted the remains a second time, eliminating yet more sulfur. A second digest with HCl, and a third roast eliminated all of the sulfur, then the material, now reduced to almost nothing but particles of rock and gold, laced with iron, was given a third digest in HCl, then I recovered the gold with AR. Worked perfectly well, but it was a lot of roasting and digesting. 

Note that I did the roasting under the exhaust hood for my melting furnace, to get rid of the SO2 that came from roasting. That hood moved 2,400 CFM air. It would be a horrible job without being able to get rid of the fumes. Might also kill you, assuming there's arsenic involved. 

Harold


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## SapunovDmitry (Mar 29, 2009)

So you washed all the iron off with the muratic?


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## Harold_V (Mar 29, 2009)

SapunovDmitry said:


> So you washed all the iron off with the muratic?


Yes. After the roasting process, it dissolved readily. I got the pyrite quite hot, a dull red heat. 

The material I received was already very finely crushed. I don't now how successful you'd be with coarse material. 

Harold


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## SapunovDmitry (Mar 30, 2009)

Was it worth using so much muratic? Or it was just "can i do it myself?" project.


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## Harold_V (Mar 30, 2009)

SapunovDmitry said:


> Was it worth using so much muratic? Or it was just "can i do it myself?" project.


In this case, it was worth it. I used to pay only $57 for 55 gallons of HCl, and the material yielded several ounces of gold. I made a profit and the customer got his gold. 

I would not recommend the process for typical material. Remember-----the stuff I had had visible gold within. 

Harold


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## Richard36 (Apr 14, 2009)

Hello Harold. Yes it is me again with my assay based procedures. I hope that it isn't an issue. If it were me, and the batch was of sufficient grade to process, I would consider smelting the sulfides with a 1 to 1 mix of Borax and Sodium Nitrate to burn up the sulfur. Use 1prt ore to 3prts flux. Use a large crucible, and fill no more than 1/3 of the way full or a boil over will occur. When all boiling and smoking stops, and the solution is of uniform color, pour this molten mass to a mold coated with a thin layer of a release agent such as motor oil, to cool. Then crush it fine, and leach the powdered slag for its values. Then recover the values from solution. I would use AR as my leach,( Poor Mans AR should work fine.) and follow the AR recovery method to recover the values from solution. I hope that this has been of some help. Sincerely; Rick.


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## Harold_V (Apr 14, 2009)

My first failed process in attempting to recover values from such materials was the furnace. I managed to fill the neighborhood with heavy SO2 fumes, and achieved no results. The concept of burning up sulfides equates to the liberation of considerable sulfur dioxide. The volume from a few grams sample may not be much, but when you heat huge volumes, that quickly changes. 

For the record, I grew up in a smelter town----Midvale, Utah. They closed the doors on the smelter in 1958. It was very common to breath air heavily contaminated with SO2, in spite of the more than 400' tall stack that was a part of the smelter. This was long before the days of EPA and emissions being controlled. 

I have mentioned in other posts that in many cases, you must abandon assay procedures in order to achieve success. They often do not scale up well, as was the case with the material I processed. I'm not arguing that it doesn't work, I'm simply suggesting that while it works well for small samples, when it is scaled up, it generally becomes unworkable and cost prohibitive. Crucible life, for one, is cut drastically short when fluxes are introduced. Unless the material involved is high in values, costs of the process would easily overrun the value of the material. 

I think the point that should be remembered is that an assay is not intended to be a recovery process for the sake of recovery, but to prove content of any given lot of materials. The value of the recovered material is generally not enough to pay for the process------so it makes sense that the same procedures, unless performed on exceedingly high values, would not be cost effective, in spite of the fact that they may work well. Readers should keep that in mind before attempting to process by furnace. 

Harold


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## Richard36 (Apr 14, 2009)

You are absolutely correct Harold. The cost involved is quite often high for the methods that I propose. Just tossing ideas out there based on what I know, or figure would work. We seem to be crossing paths on this forum often lately, and I tend to like it. Thanks for the feedback and rebuttal on the methods that I propose. Sincerely; Rick.


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## golden-puncture (Jun 28, 2018)

its pyrite. and i got this from an area enriched with minerals and never been introduced by prospectors. its like a hill. one side green yellow soil, the a 20 feet wide row of ironic rock with black rocks. then again a wide area with yellow soil and pyrite in it and at end a wide row of white yellow stones with red soil. is this pyrite good for processing and get the gold.?


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## 4metals (Jun 28, 2018)

How do you know there is gold in it? Have you sampled the material and crushed it and had it assayed? Iron pyrite is also commonly called "Fools gold" because it looks like gold and more times than not it does not contain enough gold to be profitable to recover it. 

Before you get too excited, sample from a few places on the hill, grind it up and have it assayed. When you come back with assay numbers, we can discuss your refining options.


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