# Stock Pot Processing



## aga (Jan 22, 2017)

Having discarded any notion that i've got any kind of a clue at all, Processing the Stock Pot has begun , religiously following Hoke's instructions.

Firstly, the Zinc. All that is available is zinc ingots (kilos) and a very small quantity of zinc powder (a few 10s of grammes).

The ingots were drilled to produce twists/chips and this appears to work, as the solution eventually 'throws down' a precipitate and goes dark green, not light green or clear. The whole reaction was left overnight instead of 4 hours. This was tested on 1 litre of the stock pot contents rather than the whole 4 litres, just in case. 

On filtering, the filtrate is a pale green, leaving a dark powdery substance in the filter paper. Filtering is not finished yet, as it goes through the filter paper quite slowly. I could rig up a Büchner vac filter, but am reluctant to try to save time in case i just screw it all up again.

A big worry is whether too much Zinc was added, or too little.

The sheer volume of what looks very much like Copper in the precipitate is also troubling.

Hopefully this all sounds 'normal' to experienced refiners.

If not, Please suggest what's already gone wrong.

Edit: corrected typo(s)
Edit: more typos


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## Topher_osAUrus (Jan 22, 2017)

Thats the issue that I have with zinc, it throws down copper. 
Which is cause for basically rerecovering what pm's are there.

I like doing the copper stockpot #1 then decanting it to waste pot#1, which is loaded with lots of iron. Leaving the sludge on the bottom of stockpot 1, and adding new waste solutions to it, to cement out on the copper. That way I dont have to remove lots of copper feom the precious metals again, yes there are traces, but not nearly the amount that you will deal with when using zinc to throw down.

And, lazersteve mentioned that if you use zinc on waste stream that has SO2 in it still feom gold precipitating, you could inadvertently create hydrogen sulfide gas and murder yourself... So, that doesn't sound fun to me

Zinc is nice and quick though. ...compared to the copper stockpot which can take days to cement, longer if no agitation is applied.


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## justinhcase (Jan 22, 2017)

I Have just emptied the sludge for my stock pot into a 10L beaker.
It is the acumination from about two years work.
I take a much more stately pace as to management.
It is a 60L drum with copper as a back fall, but most of the silver is deposited as chloride.
I fill it to the top and leave it at least a week before half emptying to make space for more liquor.
Then there are all the little bits of junk and left over's that where too small or dirty to work into my main stream of processing that I add each week.
You have to expect a lot of other metallic compounds as well basically any by product that has a low solubility in water.
Of a 10L beaker about one third looks like a nice gray sediment, it is on its fourth wash trying to remove the soluble compounds.
I will not put that in the tumbler until the wash water is looking fairly clean or all the metallic compounds will cement when the iron is added. This takes quite a while as you can only fill with clean water, agitate and let settle by it's self.
The Chloride's will still have enough base metals which will convert back to metals as it is.
But I do not see base metals as that much of a problem, we need collector metals in any case.
The noble metal content will be above coin silver which is still profitable to digest in acid.
I do not have a problem until I have finished A.R. digestion of the residual detritus left over from my initial nitric wash.
The last few times I have detected Rhodium but not having the ability to process my self and the amount being below a level of commercial interest I just put that back into my stock pot and save it an other two years.
May be by then I will know what to do with it.
A great place to store wealth, very few thief's would look at a drum of sludge and see value.


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## Topher_osAUrus (Jan 22, 2017)

Justin, do you put your nitric digestion in that stock pot as well?

I have 2 stock pots, #1 for AR and #2 for nitric digestions of goldfilled, inquarts, silver (after cementing a couple days, it goes from my 3.5gal bucket to my 5 gallon "stock pot"#2).. Currently I have two of the #2 stockpots, as I kind of want to try to remove the copper by electrolytic means and reuse the nitric.

I just wondered when you said the majority of your silver is in chloride form. I have another 3.5gal bucket for storing my silver chloride from AR digestions.

I like the idea of just one main stockpot though, to keep it simple.
I just took hoke as bible truth, when she said to keep unused nitric from the stockpot... But, I would like to know more of your methodology.


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## justinhcase (Jan 22, 2017)

I did use to run a smaller stock pot just for my gold wash and spent liquor.
But I made the mistake of adding a solution with a little silver nitrate which mucked that up.
So as they both needed the same processing I have just been running the one stock pot for any thing that may have a little value. If My turnover improves I may return to a separate stock pot for my Ag liquor.
We do not have any sources of naturally occurring rich preciouses metal ore in Devon.
some Tin ,copper and tungsten mines that have a very low yield in comparison to some of the ore you have in the states. 
So I look at my stock pot as the closest analogy of natural ore I have to look at.
Very interesting.
My first few runs where a lot of work for not a lot of metal which is why I leave it longer and let the quantity's build up.
If you have enough copper in your stock pot any acid will be used up if it gets that far.


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## Topher_osAUrus (Jan 22, 2017)

I understand, and appreciate, that train of thought.

Do you reuse your copper powder thats displaced after treating with iron? I have just been saving mine up, but I think thats the route I am going to end up taking from here on out. Just to keep my expense on copper at a minimal level. The copper that has cemented out has all looked very clean, except for one stock pot batch that looked dark and terrible. So it went into a separate container.

My end goal with waste treatment is to become efficient to the point of it being self sustaining, with my only expense being NaOH and the HCl to adjust the pH. ...of course I will still have to source the iron, but, to call that an expense would be a gross exaggeration, since that is something that is free and very abundant (my father owns a fabrication/machine shop, father in law is a scrapper)

Edit to add:

I agree completely though, processing the slimes on a small and individual basis is kind of counter intuitive to the stock pot process as a whole. Afterall, if you are just processing a gallon of waste, and then redissolving those powders and going through the process, you in turn create that much waste again (or darn close, after washes, etc...) so, saving up the sludge for awhile and treating the barren liquid batch by batch is probably the best way to go about it.

But, I wouldn't mind being corrected on that. I'd like to know how others go about it as well.

Thanks Justin, aga, and anyone else who adds to this further


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## justinhcase (Jan 22, 2017)

Topher_osAUrus said:


> I understand, and appreciate, that train of thought.
> 
> Do you reuse your copper powder thats displaced after treating with iron? I have just been saving mine up, but I think thats the route I am going to end up taking from here on out. Just to keep my expense on copper at a minimal level. The copper that has cemented out has all looked very clean, except for one stock pot batch that looked dark and terrible. So it went into a separate container.
> 
> My end goal with waste treatment is to become efficient to the point of it being self sustaining, with my only expense being NaOH and the HCl to adjust the pH. ...of course I will still have to source the iron, but, to call that an expense would be a gross exaggeration, since that is something that is free and very abundant (my father owns a fabrication/machine shop, father in law is a scrapper)


My aim is not to have any noble metals in my liquor by the time it gets to the sacrificial iron.
I have saved all the deposits, It looks very interesting with black powder as well as lots of nice copper outcroppings.
I am saving all my old oil so when I have the space for a large oil fired furnace I can melt it all in a big crucible to see what kind of alloy I get for as little cost as possible.
I am hoping that eventually I may have enough to send on to a copper refiner who will pay for the nickel as well. The only fly in the ointment of that plan is the shear volume of alloy you would need to make it happen.
May be a good retirement egg?
I buy copper for about £3 a kilo, I can not see a way to produce it from impure waste for less.


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## aga (Jan 22, 2017)

Topher_osAUrus said:


> Thanks Justin, aga, and anyone else who adds to this further


I have not even recovered 0.0001g gold yet, so anything i could add would be worthless.

As per the OP, is this looking 'normal' so far, or has it all gone wrong again ?


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## aga (Jan 22, 2017)

aga said:


> Topher_osAUrus said:
> 
> 
> > Thanks Justin, aga, and anyone else who adds to this further


I have not even recovered 0.0001g gold yet, so anything i could add would be worthless.

As per the OP, is this looking 'normal' so far, or has it all gone wrong again ?

Edit: or do i just have to run the whole process and find out for myself ?
Maybe that's the best route on the first try - maybe can understand better why people do it different after trying the 'standard' way.

Edit: missed quote tag


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## UncleBenBen (Jan 22, 2017)

Aga, this is one of those areas where Hoke's information kind of conflicts with processing escrap. She used zinc because she was processing mainly high PM materials with low base metal content.

With escrap it's just the opposite for the most part. By going to zinc in your case you dropped darn near every metal in the solution. That's why the two step stock pot is recommended. According to the reactivity series of metals copper will reduce the PM's leaving iron and most others in solution. After the PM's have cemented the solution can go to the next pot, leaving the values behind in the first. Then iron will cement the copper and most other metals so that the solution can go on to further waste treatment.

I think for what you have so far I would save the powders under water after rinsing well to remove as much acid as is practical and use those powders down the road to cement your newer stock pot later. That way the PM's that are already mixed can be recovered without trying to reprocess the powders now.


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## aga (Jan 22, 2017)

Oh dear.

So i screwed it up again, already. Too much Copper in there. 

May as well follow the Path (seeing as that's where i am already at with this batch) and find out where it leads.

The idea was to See all aspects of the process, but never thought it would wind up such a catastrophe !

Part of the idea was to see a tiny blob of Gold ... seems light years away now. 

Thanks for the pointers El Diablo.

Edit: typo


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## UncleBenBen (Jan 22, 2017)

:lol: :lol: :twisted: 


aga said:


> Thanks for the pointers El Diablo.



Still funny!! I'll say it again, aga. Don't over think it. Collect up a nice pile of scrap, fingers, pins, whatever. Then follow the appropriate process as laid out. You will likely be surprised when it clicks and you see how easy it "can" be. Get through one run beginning to end.

Then apply your chemistry knowledge. (Of which I hope to learn a bit!)


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## Topher_osAUrus (Jan 22, 2017)

Aga, you are doing fine. And are light years beyond were I was as a beginner.

Ben nailed it though, escrap isn't/wasn't Hoke's forte, but she wasn't in that era, so I don't hold it against her.

Zinc would be a good option for someone in a hurry, with cheap nitric, and very little base metals in the waste stream.. ..she had a disdain for silver (which I can understand why at times, but silver is beautiful in its own right.. If its not in chloride form :twisted: )

Justin, that is my plan too, to save up my little bits of pgm's and AgCl from AR runs and keep it for my rainy day/retirement fund. I believe I will follow the same path as Harold and use a good flux for silver chloride conversion and have it be the collector metal for the more precious ones. Then separate out the metals and run the silver through the cell. Afterwords running the cell slimes and pgm's to purity.


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## nickvc (Jan 23, 2017)

Topher the one problem with using the silver cell with your PGM accumulations is that the palladium will go into solution in the silver nitrate which can plate out with the silver or will need cementing out, my advice is to keep the silver separate and collect any PGMs and gold in a separate stockpot. If you do that you can dissolve all the values precipitate the gold and cement out the PGM as blacks, you can further separate the Pd by then using nitric and cementing that out leaving any other PGMs behind as powder. Refining PGMs is inherently dangerous so in my opinion avoid that, any PGM in solution is risky so limit your exposure to as little as possible.


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## g_axelsson (Jan 23, 2017)

Aga, I think you have started in the wrong end of the refining cycle. The stock pot is usually, and especially when Hoke's methods are considered, meant for accumulated values from refining.

What you have is a mess and I think you should look at those methods to recover the small amounts of values you have.

My first recovery of my stock pot was after I had refined over 50 grams of gold and I recovered about one gram from the stock pot. I never had more than half a liter of liquid in my stock pot. Coming from my refining it was never a lot of base metals in the liquids I put into it and I used copper to continuously cement any values in the stock pot.

When recovering and refining gold from electronic scrap you start by eliminate the base metals, then when you have a concentrate of gold or other precious metals you dissolve it and precipitate the gold. What you are left with is a weak pgm solution which sometimes contains both traces of dissolved gold and fine particles of metallic gold.

Since I'm running a lot of small scale experiments the 50 grams I had refined was from around 50 recoveries, so about 20 mg per lot went into the stock pot after I collected my gold.

My recommendation is don't follow Hoke and cement out values with zinc, your mess is full of base metals and then you will be back on square one, less the plastics but with a lot more waste.

Göran


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## justinhcase (Jan 23, 2017)

nickvc said:


> Topher the one problem with using the silver cell with your PGM accumulations is that the palladium will go into solution in the silver nitrate which can plate out with the silver or will need cementing out, my advice is to keep the silver separate and collect any PGMs and gold in a separate stockpot. If you do that you can dissolve all the values precipitate the gold and cement out the PGM as blacks, you can further separate the Pd by then using nitric and cementing that out leaving any other PGMs behind as powder. Refining PGMs is inherently dangerous so in my opinion avoid that, any PGM in solution is risky so limit your exposure to as little as possible.


Is not the silver cell where you tap off the Pt and Pd from your system in any case.
All my runs have a mix of Ag,Au,Pt,Pd,Rh in one combination or the other.
Just about all the PGM's find there way to my silver cell on the first go around the round about.
If anything there level has been greatly reduced from the system by the time any liquor gets to the stock pot in comparison to the first inquartation.
I Have found that if you let your spent gold liquor settle well first and are carefully with decanting you can recover all but forensic traces of Au from the A.R. digestions,I thought most of the extra value will have piggy backed into the silver chloride in all the junk and flux as undigested particles after my best effort to separate has failed to be 100% effective .
I will be running my slop in the weeks to come so I will see what kind of alloy the system produces.But I am expecting may be 10g Au to over a kilo of Ag and much less PGM as most have already been taped off in the cell slime and electrolyte,I do maintain my cell to prevent plating unwanted elements in any case 
.


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## Topher_osAUrus (Jan 23, 2017)

nickvc said:


> Topher the one problem with using the silver cell with your PGM accumulations is that the palladium will go into solution in the silver nitrate which can plate out with the silver or will need cementing out, my advice is to keep the silver separate and collect any PGMs and gold in a separate stockpot. If you do that you can dissolve all the values precipitate the gold and cement out the PGM as blacks, you can further separate the Pd by then using nitric and cementing that out leaving any other PGMs behind as powder. Refining PGMs is inherently dangerous so in my opinion avoid that, any PGM in solution is risky so limit your exposure to as little as possible.



I will most certainly follow that advice and keep my silver out of my stockpot then, and keep the agcl in its own bucket until it warrants refining. I only thought it may be good to do the way I mentioned, as its AgCl from AR runs, so it has gold in with it. But, I will keep them as separate as possilble. Thank you for the advice nick


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## Topher_osAUrus (Jan 23, 2017)

justinhcase said:


> Is not the silver cell where you tap off the Pt and Pd from your system in any case.
> All my runs have a mix of Ag,Au,Pt,Pd,Rh in one combination or the other.
> Just about all the PGM's find there way to my silver cell on the first go around the round about.
> If anything there level has been greatly reduced from the system by the time any liquor gets to the stock pot in comparison to the first inquartation.
> ...


I see where nick is coming from, and your points as well. The Pd is a problem with the cell as its soluble in the electroyte and will codeposit with the silver crystal if it gets to a high enough % or gram per liter. So you would be forced to remake electrolyte, also separating the silver and palladium from the old one. -which is more work and a pain, as silver chloride is being created again.

My AgCl from AR digestions is basically in two "forms" -powder/cottage cheese curds, and crusts from goldfilled runs.... I may have a bit of a problem in the fact that, also there are Rhodium foils in the mix too, and according to Lou, Rh is not miscible in silver unless there is ample gold to put it in the matrix and hold it in the alloy so it doesn't phase out.

I cant wait to see/hear your results on doing your sludge run.
Is the majority of the material you run jewelry, escrap, ore, or...?

Have you ran your silver cell slimes at all? What were your results if so? A couple books I have report the numbers from refineries that run silver cells and the anodic sludge "impurities" they capture and refine... And I have read Harolds statement that he recovered roughly 1ozt of gold per 1000ozt silver ran through the cell.

I am sure it will be different per every individual, especially with the variety of scrap everyone is processing. Regardless, it's interesting to know and hear other's results.


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## justinhcase (Jan 23, 2017)

90% of my stock is scrap jewellery and one or two teeth a month.
I did do some electronics and other lot's last year,But on the hole I prowl the Auctions and have walk in clients.
Pt and RH are mostly in small quantity's as plating and setting's,the Pt mostly form the teeth and the odd bit of high quality white gold.
My primary turnover is the Au and then I have a nice chap who takes my Ag or that would not be profitable to do.
The Cell slime has just been building up,I some times run it through a sulfuric wash to reduce down the amount of Ag that has accumulated in the black over time.There is about half a 1000ml beaker unprocessed as is.
The Pd I remove from my cell once I have recovered the silver Nitrate by crystallization.the residue liquor is treated with DMG before cementing out the reaming silver to put back in the cell.
You either have to alter your processes each week or convince your stock to fit in with your established system.


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## Topher_osAUrus (Jan 23, 2017)

justinhcase said:


> The Cell slime has just been building up,I some times run it through a sulfuric wash to reduce down the amount of Ag that has accumulated in the black over time.There is about half a 1000ml beaker unprocessed as is.
> The Pd I remove from my cell once I have recovered the silver Nitrate by crystallization.the residue liquor is treated with DMG before cementing out the reaming silver to put back in the cell.
> You either have to alter your processes each week or convince your stock to fit in with your established system.



8) thats alot of cell slime...
What do you do with your sulfuric that has Ag in solution/ Silver Sulphate? I have read about a couple ways of reducing it down to metallic silver, but have yet to try it on my silver sulfide I have...maybe one day when silver skyrockets or I accumulate enough of it.

I like that idea of crystalizing out the silver nitrate and dealing with the pd that way. I was just going to convert to AgCl then cement or scavenge with dmg. But, your process sounds much better.
Thanks for that


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## nickvc (Jan 23, 2017)

Topher DMG will produce voluminous quantities of precipitate, it's best used as a test for Pd, I would still go for the simple way i outlined if you have no or little silver to worry about, you can still separate the Pd and Pt using nitric if it's worth the effort or simply keep the blacks for later treatment.


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## justinhcase (Jan 23, 2017)

[/quote]

8) thats alot of cell slime...
What do you do with your sulfuric that has Ag in solution/ Silver Sulphate? [/quote]
I treat silver sulfate the same way as silver nitrate just drop the silver with copper.
The only difference is it is more selective about what it puts into solution.


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## justinhcase (Jan 23, 2017)

nickvc said:


> Topher DMG will produce voluminous quantities of precipitate, it's best used as a test for Pd, I would still go for the simple way i outlined if you have no or little silver to worry about, you can still separate the Pd and Pt using nitric if it's worth the effort or simply keep the blacks for later treatment.


it is only voluminous if you have a lot of Pd.
I do not find that much ,over two years I only have a very small amount.hard to quantify as I do not handle it and put it straight into the storage jar.
Unless you have kilo's of dental alloy I can not see that the chloride rout has any advantage. as you are tying up a commodity you can trade readily for a future pay day.
I actively try not to buy P.G.M.'s as they so far have only ever tied up my investment indefinitely and the specialist processing needed from out side firms make it very much less profitable.
They may be valuable impurity's but trace impurity's none the less


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## Topher_osAUrus (Jan 23, 2017)

nickvc said:


> Topher DMG will produce voluminous quantities of precipitate, it's best used as a test for Pd, I would still go for the simple way i outlined if you have no or little silver to worry about, you can still separate the Pd and Pt using nitric if it's worth the effort or simply keep the blacks for later treatment.



I probably will follow your outline above for the time being. I am not set up to properly handle and manage pgm salts. And besides lacking the equipment necessary, I lack the knowledge as well. While I do have dmg, my use with it begins and ends with testing white gold for palladium and/or nickel.

So I will just keep on cementing and saving the blacks for some time to come. I dont get alot of them in my scrap, so that may take awhile to accumulate enough to justify processing.

@justin. When treating silver with sulfuric, Im going to assume you use diluted sulfuric since you are cementing it out with copper? Im not 100% sure, but I believe that makes silver bisulphide not silver sulfide... Thats just conjecture though, I'm no silver scientist
Either way, that sounds much easier than smelting with rebar or pouring ferrous sulfate over the silver sulfide crystals.


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## justinhcase (Jan 23, 2017)

Topher_osAUrus said:


> @justin. When treating silver with sulfuric, Im going to assume you use diluted sulfuric since you are cementing it out with copper? Im not 100% sure, but I believe that makes silver bisulphide not silver sulfide... Thats just conjecture though, I'm no silver scientist
> Either way, that sounds much easier than smelting with rebar or pouring ferrous sulfate over the silver sulfide crystals.



Ag2SO4 to Cu2SO4 by replacement of copper by reactive series I hope I have not inadvertently produced any sulfides .
Not sure of the affect on my waste stream which is where such a compound would end up.
Hopefully the re-bar I put in when melting my chloride conversion's would help .


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## Topher_osAUrus (Jan 23, 2017)

Hopefully GSP can shed a little light on this. But, its my understanding concentrated sulfuric creates silver sulfide which is soluble in concentrated sulfuric, if the sulfuric acid has steam passed over it slowly down to 60% concentration, the silver sulfide crystals will precipitate out of solution. But, (this is where Im unsure) dilute sulfuric will also dissolve silver, but make silver bisulfide instead (which is a white mushy crystal, instead of nice dense yellow ones). The silver sulfide is easier to reduce with chemical means (by my understanding anyways)... 

But, if you are cementing with copper, via displacement reaction it wouldnt matter -so long as the silver sulfide is in solution still, the silver would be returned to metallic state, and the copper would be the sulfide then... I was curious about the concentration you were using, as I'm not sure how the copper displacement would work in concentrated sulfuric (assuming yours is), since concentrated sulfuric doesnt readily act on copper... But, I guess the chemistry would/could be different since there is a more noble metal in solution?

Hell, I don't know... But I would love to find out!


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## justinhcase (Jan 23, 2017)

Topher_osAUrus said:


> Hopeflly GSP can shed a little light on this. But, its my understanding concentrated sulfuric creates silver sulfide which is soluble in concentrated sulfuric, if the sulfuric acid has steam passed over it slowly down to 60% concentration, the silver sulfide crystals will precipitate out of solution. But, (this is where Im unsure) dilute sulfuric will also dissolve silver, but make silver bisulfide instead (which is a white mushy crystal, instead of nice dense yellow ones). The silver sulfide is easier to reduce with chemical means (by my understanding anyways)...
> 
> But, if you are cementing with copper, via displacement reaction it wouldnt matter -so long as the silver sulfide is in solution still, the silver would be returned to metallic state, and the copper would be the sulfide then... I was curious about the concentration you were using, as I'm not sure how the copper displacement would work in concentrated sulfuric (assuming yours is), since concentrated sulfuric doesnt readily act on copper... But, I guess the chemistry would/could be different since there is a more noble metal in solution?
> 
> Hell, I don't know... But I would love to find out!


Are you mixing up Sulfide and sulfate?
Sulfuric reacts with copper quite well how else do you make copper sulfate? hydrogen sulfide is the normal way to form Sulfides.
I can not think of a place out side a stripping cell you would use acid so concentrated it would pacify copper as it only takes a trace of H2O to start the reaction.


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## aga (Jan 23, 2017)

g_axelsson said:


> What you have is a mess


Yep. You can say that again !

If i add zinc to the rest of the stock pot solution, the precipitate will contain all the PMs, all the original copper +more from the 'cementing out' copper, tin, lead, iron, plus added zinc if i add too much, which i certainly have on the 1st litre.

At the bottom of the stock pot (5L HDPE water jug) there is a small amount of fine black powder, which is probably the best material out of the whole mess.

A concern is the colours on the copper pipe used for cementing out. Some were white ! 
All the junk that would wash off the pipe was washed back into the pot.

I should stop calling it a 'stock pot' as it is basically a bottle in which the mess is kept, rather than the selected liquids after certain refining steps.

So, Copper is the largest enemy in the mixture (apart from my idiocy) so best get thinking and researching before doing anything else.


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## Topher_osAUrus (Jan 23, 2017)

justinhcase said:


> Are you mixing up Sulfide and sulfate?
> Sulfuric reacts with copper quite well how else do you make copper sulfate? hydrogen sulfide is the normal way to form Sulfides.
> I can not think of a place out side a stripping cell you would use acid so concentrated it would pacify copper as it only takes a trace of H2O to start the reaction.



I use 95% in my cell and it doesn't attack the copper, much lower and it will. 

https://www.911metallurgist.com/blog/refining-gold-sulphuric-acid

That is where I was reading of sulfuric and silver. The site was posted on here awhile ago, and members mentioned it was just snippets of old books compiled together and branded as a website.


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## upcyclist (Jan 23, 2017)

Topher_osAUrus said:


> justinhcase said:
> 
> 
> > Are you mixing up Sulfide and sulfate?
> ...


That's J's point--you were talking about producing silver sulf*ide*, both he and the source you quoted discuss silver sulf*ate*.


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## Topher_osAUrus (Jan 23, 2017)

I got ya' now.. Sorry, took me a minute longer to get there.. But, I'm here now. Hello. :roll: :?


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## justinhcase (Jan 23, 2017)

Sulfides are very interesting when we look at ore ,all thous volcanic vents producing Hydrogen sulfide.
Under pressure becoming soluble in liquid salts,then getting transported and deposited in concentrated seams.
Lovely,much harder to do in captivity. 
But an easy mistake to make,Sulfides Sulfates ,chlorides Chlorate's ,Nitrates Nitrites,thank the lord we are not involved in organic chemistry isomers and the such my head would explode.


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## Topher_osAUrus (Jan 23, 2017)

:lol: 
Yeah, I tend to read things too quickly at times and misread the words. Which mistakes minute differences. ...that aren't really minute at all in this case. Definitely not a good thing to do in the world of complex chemistry. ...I've read lots of threads where people mistake sodium metabisulfate for sodium metabisulfite.....now I am one of those people.


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## aga (Jan 23, 2017)

Topher_osAUrus said:


> I've read lots of threads where people mistake sodium metabisulfate for sodium metabisulfite.....now I am one of those people.


Don't feel too bad.

X-ite and X-ate are quite confusing to begin with in chemistry.

Thankfully we have IUPAC trying to make it clear and easy.

Water is now called Oxidane, to avoid (!) confusion with Oxirane (ethylene oxide).


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## upcyclist (Jan 23, 2017)

If only it were easier than the current series of clicks to do subscripts here on the forums. Then we could just easily crank out "Ag2SO4" and we wouldn't have to worry about catching ___ite or ___ate or ___ide. Heck, even when we do, autocorrect still ruins it


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## Geo (Jan 24, 2017)

aga said:


> Water is now called Oxidane, to avoid (!) confusion with Oxirane (ethylene oxide).



dihydrogen monoxide.


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## justinhcase (Jan 24, 2017)

As I had mentioned how little P.G.M. I have had through so far.
I thought you might would like to see what I was talking about.
The beaker on the left is the silver cell slime,Not so slimy any more quite nice and black from the sulfuric washing.Next second left is the only bit of Pt I have ever processed.Regrettably I was talked into running about 40K of jet blades against my better judgment and got just under half a kilo of Platinum Ammonium Chloride.Git did not pay me ,Said one of the best refinery's in the U.K had mismanaged the sale.So had to dumped that chap and walk away from a lot of planing to set up a facility.That is all I got to keep from the first test run.
Second right is all the Rh.I can just get enough into solution to test but nothing else.
And far right is the Massive amount of Pd I have trapped using dimethyl Glutamate.
Quite glad it is so small after hearing all the health problems people have experienced.
Glove up at all times.
Deleted redundancy


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## Topher_osAUrus (Jan 24, 2017)

Your silver cell slime (..I know, this dog just can't let go of that bone)... Do you use a filter material that you can wash off and reuse, or do you use muslin cloth and incinerate the entire filter? Then begin your sulfuric leach?

Ive been using muslin cloth, but have been reading about the reusable ones and am intrigued.


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## justinhcase (Jan 24, 2017)

Topher_osAUrus said:


> Your silver cell slime (..I know, this dog just can't let go of that bone)... Do you use a filter material that you can wash off and reuse, or do you use muslin cloth and incinerate the entire filter? Then begin your sulfuric leach?
> 
> Ive been using muslin cloth, but have been reading about the reusable ones and am intrigued.


For the Cell basket I use a Polyurethane felt that shrinks when boiled.
I fit it to my basket and put in hot water,This brings the fibers closer together.Two layers seems to trap all the little particles.
I wash with distilled water until It is clean and reuse.May be a little nitric wash to take the last of the small Ag particulate ,But then just install again.
To clean the cell I just leave to settle no filtering at all,It is just too fine.washing takes weeks but I am in no hurry.


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## Topher_osAUrus (Jan 24, 2017)

Where might a guy in the states (the middle of nowhere, actually) go about finding that material? Is it a specialised order online, or something you go to the store for?


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## justinhcase (Jan 24, 2017)

Topher_osAUrus said:


> Where might a guy in the states (the middle of nowhere, actually) go about finding that material? Is it a specialised order online, or something you go to the store for?


One of the cheapest materials around,any haberdashery should have some.
I would not expose it to strong acids but mine has held up in the cell for over two years.


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## anachronism (Jan 24, 2017)

If you want something you can re-use then look at something like polypropylene filter cloth. A quick Goggle brings this up as an example in the US.

http://www.kavonfilter.com/filter-cloth.html


Lou's pretty good at suppliers of this kind of thing, so he'll probably make this link redundant quite quickly. It doesn't have to cost much and you can buy it by the square yard. For the slight uplift in cost you can get by mesh size


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## Topher_osAUrus (Jan 24, 2017)

I hadnt heard of the polyurethane being used, but am interested. I liked the idea of rinse and reuse as soon as I read another member was using polypropylene.

Thank you for that link Jon, I may just have to order and patiently wait. I prefer to go in to a store, grab it, and be gone. But, in our world a vast majority of things aren't so easy to come by (not cheaply anyways)

Thanks gentlemen


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## anachronism (Jan 24, 2017)

You're going to get very little of the "real stuff" you need for refining over the counter in your local store Toph. That's a fact of life that you're gonna have to come to terms with I'm afraid. Once you progress beyond a certain point, it's specialist stuff but the time it saves you is worth every penny.

Jon


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## Topher_osAUrus (Jan 24, 2017)

Indeed.
I learned that the hard way, after buying small amounts of nitric for silver runs, to a bulk order... Had to wait a few days, but the money I saved was immense...


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## aga (Jan 24, 2017)

Wow ! I thought you experienced refiners could get Gold out of anything, but this takes the biscuit !


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## aga (Feb 8, 2017)

It's about a month now since the Mess was made, with daily tinkering to try to recover the situation.

Today i managed to get all the potentially gold-bearing portions back into one place (a small glass tray) with the majority of the copper and zinc removed.

If i'm lucky, there'll be about 0.3g of gold at the end.

To help the 'luck' i did some trial melts with very small piles of copper powder and borax.
On the first trial i blew all the powder out of the crucible with the torch  
Glad it wasn't gold powder !

Each step of this recovery/refining game is clearly a Skill that has to be learned and practiced.


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