# pH for cementation



## fishaholic5

I've been running some experiments on cementation using copper from chloride solutions from leaching ore.
At pH 4 I get a silver grey metal plating onto the copper as well as dropping a mix of brown and black powders
At pH 2 I get gold plating out as well as the powders, and the silver grey plating in the last stages of the cementation.
Its not really an issue as it dislodges from the copper when it is used for the next cementation.
Has anyone got any thoughts on the optimum pH for cementation of gold and pgm's from chloride leach solutions?


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## anachronism

Do use gloves. Look under your fingernails and on the end of your thumb. That's metal salts right there getting into your system not to mention the acid damage.


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## fishaholic5

Yes I use gloves.. The pieces in the pic have been well washed and put aside for reference. What's under my fingernails is from my day job


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## butcher

Cementing metals from solutions using copper, here we are discussing metal ions in solution, a metal ion which if upon the gain of electrons will become a metal atom, if enough of these metal atoms come together we will be able to see them as a metal powder which will gain enough mass to precipitate from solution by gravity.

When we have metal ions in solution and we add a metal atom (or a solid group of metal atoms like a mass or metal bar of pure copper) the copper metal which has all of the electrons in its outer shell) will donate its electron to any metal ion in solution which is lower in reactivity than the copper atom (see your reactivity of metals chart for more details). 

So upon a gain of an electron the metal ion in solution becomes a metal with a full shell of electrons.
the copper atom loses electrons and becomes an ion in solution.

Cementing and plating, are actually two different things, although the reaction is the same, or similar.
The name or term cementing comes from cementing silver out of solution where the silver metal powder resembles cement (wet concrete), plating the metal atoms plate the copper).

Note we can also copper observes a corrosion of the copper from salts, carbonates or hydroxides ... which can discolor the copper bar that may or may not be actual metal atoms ...

In "cementing" or displacing a metal in solution with another metal, like cementing silver from solution, some free acid can assist the reaction, it will help in keeping the copper atoms exposed to the silver ions in solution, reactions and bubbles can remove silver from the surface of the copper exposing more copper atoms to more of the silver ions in solution (the silver basically does not plate the copper blocking the copper atom from the silver ions in solution, in some way the bubbles act as we do when we shake the silver from the bass bar, the acid itself can help to take electrons from the copper.

Now let us look at the pH of a solution if we raise the pH we can get closer to hydroxides, this change of pH can even bring metals out of solution as salts, or compounds of metals (depending on what has lowered the pH).

Say we have metal ions in solution just a big soup of poisonous metal ions in a toxic solution (leaching ore produces many different species of the metal ions and toxic compounds depending on its makeup, say we actually did have ions of metals more noble than copper in solution, and we lower the pH, now we can have other salts or compounds of metal in solution, some of which may be coming out of solution by just the change in pH... 


I do not see anything "cemented" in your experiment of cementing metals, all I see in the pictures is some cut copper with discoloration, which could be a coating of metal or salts or compounds...

Where are the "cemented" materials (metal powders or salts), these powders will not be coating your copper they will be the powders which come out of solution (basically fall loose from your copper buss bar, and fall to the bottom of the reaction vessel) these powders can be tested to find out what metal or compound, or salt is coming out of solution.

Now you have a coating on the copper, you can brush or scrap off this coating and test it. 
Or continue your experiment with different pH until you actually get some cemented metal powders or salts, and test them.

My best guess says, that if you acidify the cement (from the pH 4 solution) much of the salts will go back into solution, as the acid takes electrons from the salts...

Leaching ore with a chloride solution, I surely hope you completely understand the dangers of your experiments, I can see you are struggling with the chemistry, which without an understanding of, in the case of leaching ore can surely lead to an early grave and no gold.


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## fishaholic5

butcher said:


> Cementing metals from solutions using copper, here we are discussing metal ions in solution, a metal ion which if upon the gain of electrons will become a metal atom, if enough of these metal atoms come together we will be able to see them as a metal powder which will gain enough mass to precipitate from solution by gravity.
> 
> When we have metal ions in solution and we add a metal atom (or a solid group of metal atoms like a mass or metal bar of pure copper) the copper metal which has all of the electrons in its outer shell) will donate its electron to any metal ion in solution which is lower in reactivity than the copper atom (see your reactivity of metals chart for more details).
> 
> So upon a gain of an electron the metal ion in solution becomes a metal with a full shell of electrons.
> the copper atom loses electrons and becomes an ion in solution.
> 
> Cementing and plating, are actually two different things, although the reaction is the same, or similar.
> The name or term cementing comes from cementing silver out of solution where the silver metal powder resembles cement (wet concrete), plating the metal atoms plate the copper).
> 
> Note we can also copper observes a corrosion of the copper from salts, carbonates or hydroxides ... which can discolor the copper bar that may or may not be actual metal atoms ...
> 
> In "cementing" or displacing a metal in solution with another metal, like cementing silver from solution, some free acid can assist the reaction, it will help in keeping the copper atoms exposed to the silver ions in solution, reactions and bubbles can remove silver from the surface of the copper exposing more copper atoms to more of the silver ions in solution (the silver basically does not plate the copper blocking the copper atom from the silver ions in solution, in some way the bubbles act as we do when we shake the silver from the bass bar, the acid itself can help to take electrons from the copper.
> 
> Now let us look at the pH of a solution if we raise the pH we can get closer to hydroxides, this change of pH can even bring metals out of solution as salts, or compounds of metals (depending on what has lowered the pH).
> 
> Say we have metal ions in solution just a big soup of poisonous metal ions in a toxic solution (leaching ore produces many different species of the metal ions and toxic compounds depending on its makeup, say we actually did have ions of metals more noble than copper in solution, and we lower the pH, now we can have other salts or compounds of metal in solution, some of which may be coming out of solution by just the change in pH...
> 
> 
> I do not see anything "cemented" in your experiment of cementing metals, all I see in the pictures is some cut copper with discoloration, which could be a coating of metal or salts or compounds...
> 
> Where are the "cemented" materials (metal powders or salts), these powders will not be coating your copper they will be the powders which come out of solution (basically fall loose from your copper buss bar, and fall to the bottom of the reaction vessel) these powders can be tested to find out what metal or compound, or salt is coming out of solution.
> 
> Now you have a coating on the copper, you can brush or scrap off this coating and test it.
> Or continue your experiment with different pH until you actually get some cemented metal powders or salts, and test them.
> 
> My best guess says, that if you acidify the cement (from the pH 4 solution) much of the salts will go back into solution, as the acid takes electrons from the salts...
> 
> Leaching ore with a chloride solution, I surely hope you completely understand the dangers of your experiments, I can see you are struggling with the chemistry, which without an understanding of, in the case of leaching ore can surely lead to an early grave and no gold.



Thanks for the reply and the health warnings, I am aware of the chemistry. 
I have only posted the pics of the plating, the cemented powders are mentioned in the post.
I have been extracting gold from this ore for over 2 years, dropping gold from the solution with ferrous sulfate then cementing out the remaining values with copper.. And yes, I take great care in the processing. 
These experiments were simply to compare the results and explore the viability of using copper instead of the ferrous sulfate during the recovery of the precious metals from the leach solution
I am not trying to cement at a high pH, my questions relate to the optimum pH for cementation from an acidic solution to reduce the plating.


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## fishaholic5

A couple of pics..


This is the cemented powders that have dropped part way through the cementation process. The bubbler has been stopped and the solution stirred to group them to the centre of the bucket


This is filtered powders from the cementation


This is the precipitate from using Ferrous Sulfate for precipitation from the leach


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## nickvc

Depending on the ore you could well have silver in it so perhaps a nitric leach first which will remove the silver and a lot of base metals and possibly PGMs if they are there and the silver and any PGMs can be cemented using copper, this should make extracting a clean gold product easier.


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## g_axelsson

Your filtered powder from cementation looks like iron oxides/hydroxides (rust) to me. Whenever I have cemented gold or PGM:s I have ended up with a black powder, not a yellow clay.

Can you dissolve it in HCl?

What is the assay of the ore? How many grams or ounces per ton? Sorry if you already wrote it, then I missed it.

Göran


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## fishaholic5

nickvc said:


> Depending on the ore you could well have silver in it so perhaps a nitric leach first which will remove the silver and a lot of base metals and possibly PGMs if they are there and the silver and any PGMs can be cemented using copper, this should make extracting a clean gold product easier.



Thanks Nick,

The ore contains large amounts of Silver as silver halides, as well as Gold, Palladium, Nickel and Iron. There are trace amounts of Cobalt and some other Pgm's.

I'm trying to avoid using nitric for initial recovery. The aim is to achieve a reasonable separation of the gold and silver with easily available chemicals so I can refine them later and to use the silver to continue to finance the project

Grinding to <200mesh and leaching with HCl/bleach in a rotating drum has achieved a pretty good separation so far, using the Ferrous sulfate drops the gold easily.

As everything has to be refined after the initial recovery anyway, this experiment was to see if it was feasible to limit the use of sulfer in precipitants to the refining and reduce the amount of harmful gases from cementing solutions that contain sulfur after precipitating gold.

I'm happy with the results, the plating wasn't something I expected but it isn't an issue
The best results so far have been at pH 2 even though there is more plating onto the copper


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## galenrog

What does the assay show? Please be specific. Generalities such as “large amounts” and “trace amounts” do not mean much when determining how to properly treat ores, and in many cases can hinder forum members in helping answer your questions.

I think Goran hit the nail on the head. The yellow powder does look a lot like common iron oxides and iron hydroxides, but without accurate assay results it quickly becomes more guesswork than experience for some of us.

Time for more coffee.


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## fishaholic5

g_axelsson said:


> Your filtered powder from cementation looks like iron oxides/hydroxides (rust) to me. Whenever I have cemented gold or PGM:s I have ended up with a black powder, not a yellow clay.
> 
> Can you dissolve it in HCl?
> 
> What is the assay of the ore? How many grams or ounces per ton? Sorry if you already wrote it, then I missed it.
> 
> Göran



Thanks Goran,

I get a mix of fine yellow gold powder, brown and black powders as the plating on the copper drops off in the next cementation.

Its been rinsed in the filter with hot water and HCl. Its wet in the pic and clumped together, it crumbles to powder as it dries and it doesn't dissolve in HCl.




The initial assays on the surface Gossan gave results of over 180kg per ton of Silver, 800 to 1600g per ton of Gold and nearly 10g per ton of Palladium.
The deeper I go, the lower the silver content and the higher the gold content becomes. This is a small gold pipe that was overlooked by miners during the gold rushes here as the silver ores weren't worth the cost of processing at the time.

I'm not asking what i have, just asking whether there is an optimum pH for cementation directly from the leach solutions. 

Cheers Wal

Edited to change HCL to HCl


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## Platdigger

That is one nice find!


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## fishaholic5

Platdigger said:


> That is one nice find!



Thanks, its changed my direction considerably.
The ore is very variable, there is a lot of Chorargyrite and bromian Clorargyrite on the surface and more native silver and some sulfides as well as the Gold as I go deeper. I'm only four feet down at the moment.


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## nickvc

I’m wondering on the make up of your material, with the values are they in metallic form or as sulphides and how do you treat them to make processing possible, also what exactly are you using to dissolve the gold, I presume Hcl and what else?
I’m asking as we have some very clever refiners who may be able to help you fine tune your processing to get maximum yield using what you have easily available.


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## fishaholic5

nickvc said:


> I’m wondering on the make up of your material, with the values are they in metallic form or as sulphides and how do you treat them to make processing possible, also what exactly are you using to dissolve the gold, I presume Hcl and what else?
> I’m asking as we have some very clever refiners who may be able to help you fine tune your processing to get maximum yield using what you have easily available.



Thanks Nick,
The surface ore is highly oxidised, the Silver is mainly as Halides with some native silver, the Gold is mostly microscopic and doesn't respond well to gravity separation.
Deeper in the deposit there is more native metals, some sulfides, more gold and a mixture of the oxidised and halide ore. I expect that as I approach the water table the proportion of sulfides will increase.

At this stage I am only processing the surface ore and stockpiling the rest while I experiment with recovery methods.
I crush the gold bearing material, roast then crush to <200 mesh.
The leach is a HCl /Sodium Hypochlorite mix at a pH of 3 to 4, tumbled in a closed bucket for 24hrs. The ore is leached 3 times. I am still experimenting with leach times but this is working at the moment.
The solution is filtered, diluted and left stand to drop any silver chloride and gas off the free chlorine then precipitated with Ferrous Sulfate.
This is then filtered and washed and the remaining solution cemented with copper.

The ore residue is mostly silver halides and native silver so I'm just converting it with Caustic Soda and sugar at the moment. I will be looking at refining the Silver with a cell once I start smelting larger amounts.

I joined this forum to learn, I've learned a lot from the forum over the last few years and a lot of the methods I use were from my research here.

I'm sure that the best recovery methods will vary depending on the grade and type of ore. Its a small hand mining operation and I grade it as I go, separating the halide rich ore, gold bearing and sulfide containing material.

There is a roasting furnace design I commented on in another post that looks to be suitable for roasting these ores that will allow recovery of any silver chloride volatised during the roasting process

Cheers Wal

Edited to change HCL to HCl


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## nickvc

Refining the silver in a cell may well produce more gold, I’d certainly take a sample of the silver metal you have melt it and have a gold assay done, if it is only Au 001 you will still get $10000 Australian extra for every ton you mine and for every extra point you add another $10000 :shock: 
If you try to sell the hopefully gold bearing silver you will get screwed on the terms for either the gold or silver or both compared to selling it separately once refined.


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## g_axelsson

Thanks for adding a bit more details about the ore. Sounds like a very exciting project.

I hope the sample you assayed was a representative sample, those numbers are insane. I've seen even higher numbers in assays but that was for hand picked samples of the richest ore and not for a whole ore body.

I've never leached ore with acid or seen a process for that so I'm of no help there.

As for pH for cementing, the only thing I can think of is not too high so hydroxides forms. Keep it acidic. If the oxidizer is depleted even strong HCl won't put anyy precious metals back in solution... with the exception of palladium. Copper chloride can dissolve palladium.

Göran


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## fishaholic5

nickvc said:


> Refining the silver in a cell may well produce more gold, I’d certainly take a sample of the silver metal you have melt it and have a gold assay done, if it is only Au 001 you will still get $10000 Australian extra for every ton you mine and for every extra point you add another $10000 :shock:
> If you try to sell the hopefully gold bearing silver you will get screwed on the terms for either the gold or silver or both compared to selling it separately once refined.



Thanks for the the advice Nick, 
Setting up a cell for refining the silver makes a lot of sense


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## fishaholic5

g_axelsson said:


> Thanks for adding a bit more details about the ore. Sounds like a very exciting project.
> 
> I hope the sample you assayed was a representative sample, those numbers are insane. I've seen even higher numbers in assays but that was for hand picked samples of the richest ore and not for a whole ore body.
> 
> I've never leached ore with acid or seen a process for that so I'm of no help there.
> 
> As for pH for cementing, the only thing I can think of is not too high so hydroxides forms. Keep it acidic. If the oxidizer is depleted even strong HCl won't put anyy precious metals back in solution... with the exception of palladium. Copper chloride can dissolve palladium.
> 
> Göran



Thanks for your help,
That's interesting about the Copper Chloride and Palladium, I may need to explore alterative methods for the recovery there.
The Assay results were the average of 3 random samples from the surface. The ore was much higher in silver than underground.


This is much richer Gold bearing material from 4 feet down within the pipe, I have not had it assayed yet. 
The excitement hasn't kicked in yet, its been a little surreal so far and the level of secrecy I needed to get to this stage over the last few years helped keep a lid on the "Gold Fever"

Cheers Wal


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## fishaholic5

Thanks heaps to everyone for their time and input here, the methods I'm using so far have been a combination of the Newberry Vautin process and some very informative posts by Lazersteve, 4metals, Deano and everyone else on this forum.
Mining and mineral extraction are amazingly complex and the refining is a whole new world. 
Hopefully I can become proficient in it with time.

Thanks again for the help
Cheers, Wal


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## nickvc

Well I and I’m sure many others wish you well and hope you succeed, please keep us informed as to your progress and I’m sure others will chip in with help as things proceed.


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## fishaholic5

nickvc said:


> Well I and I’m sure many others wish you well and hope you succeed, please keep us informed as to your progress and I’m sure others will chip in with help as things proceed.



No worries, I appreciate the support. Its a steep learning curve
After thinking about Goran's comment on the solubility of Palladium in Copper Chloride I think my next run of experiments will be to precipitate from the leach solution using Ferrous Sulfate then attempt to precipitate any Palladium before cementing the rest of the solution with copper.

Until I have the extraction and separation of the metals from the ores sorted out I'm going to concentrate mainly on smelting the Chlorargyrite and mining.

Cheers Wal


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## geedigity

> then attempt to precipitate any Palladium before cementing the rest of the solution with copper.



Based on the reactivity series, copper should really only drop mercury, silver, gold, and PGMs from a solution with those metal dissolved in it. The other metals that are more reactive will not be reduced to their metallic form by the copper metal. As Göran posted, too high of a pH and hydroxides will start to precipitate even without the addition of copper metal.

So, why not drop the gold, then add copper to drop the metals listed above and then refine the resulting black powders? If your palladium is not concentrated enough in solution during the recovery process, it will be challenging to precipitate clean Pd. Not sure how well DMG would work for dropping Pd from the dilute solution.


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## fishaholic5

geedigity said:


> then attempt to precipitate any Palladium before cementing the rest of the solution with copper.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Based on the reactivity series, copper should really only drop mercury, silver, gold, and PGMs from a solution with those metal dissolved in it. The other metals that are more reactive will not be reduced to their metallic form by the copper metal. As Göran posted, too high of a pH and hydroxides will start to precipitate even without the addition of copper metal.
> 
> So, why not drop the gold, then add copper to drop the metals listed above and then refine the resulting black powders? If your palladium is not concentrated enough in solution during the recovery process, it will be challenging to precipitate clean Pd. Not sure how well DMG would work for dropping Pd from the dilute solution.
Click to expand...


Up until these experiments that is what I had been doing with every batch, dropping the Gold first with Ferrous Sulfate then cementing with Copper and collecting the black powders to refine later.

The thought to try to precipitate any Palladium before cementing with Copper was in relation to Goran's remark that Palladium could be soluble in Copper Chloride solutions.
I'm assuming that would mean some Palladium could be held in solution as the Copper content increased and the solution turned blue

Cheers, Wal


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## g_axelsson

I wouldn't worry about the palladium. It represents less than 0.5% of the value according to your assay.

If you lose just a percent extra of silver or gold because you try to get the palladium first then you have lost more than any palladium you would recover.

If you have a working method, use that and then send in a sample of the tailings when you have recovered all you can. This will tell you what values you missed and you might adjust your process from that.

Göran


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## anachronism

Frankly if I had a claim like this that assayed at the figures you suggest I would be concentrating on it.


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## fishaholic5

anachronism said:


> Frankly if I had a claim like this that assayed at the figures you suggest I would be concentrating on it.



Maybe I worded that wrong, its a time issue at the moment. In a few months the wet season starts and I won't be able to mine once its waterlogged.
That's why i'm concentrating on mining, I still spend around 4 hours a day on the experimenting with recovery methods and learning refining processes.. Not to mention the research here. 
I'm not sure what sleep is anymore :lol:


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## fishaholic5

g_axelsson said:


> I wouldn't worry about the palladium. It represents less than 0.5% of the value according to your assay.
> 
> If you lose just a percent extra of silver or gold because you try to get the palladium first then you have lost more than any palladium you would recover.
> 
> If you have a working method, use that and then send in a sample of the tailings when you have recovered all you can. This will tell you what values you missed and you might adjust your process from that.
> 
> Göran



Thanks Göran,
Although I am getting good results so far I always feel like I could do things better.

Cheers Wal


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## nickvc

Many if not all ores require a compromise somewhere in recovering values so perhaps Göran has hit the nail on the head,the value in the metals is largely gold and silver so concentrate on them and perhaps research if there is a method to concentrate the palladium and if so simply send to another refinery Whalen you have decent amounts.


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## fishaholic5

nickvc said:


> Many if not all ores require a compromise somewhere in recovering values so perhaps Göran has hit the nail on the head,the value in the metals is largely gold and silver so concentrate on them and perhaps research if there is a method to concentrate the palladium and if so simply send to another refinery Whalen you have decent amounts.



OK, if I cement out the copper using Iron I should eventually have a concentrate that I can recover any Palladium from later


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## geedigity

> OK, if I cement out the copper using Iron I should eventually have a concentrate that I can recover any Palladium from later



Yes, you could drop out Pd using iron, but you will drop everything less reactive than iron including Cd, Co, Ni, Sn, Pb, Sb, As, Bi, Cu and then also Hg, Ag, *Pd*, and Pt. Theoretically, of course. 

So, why not just use copper and limit your metals to Hg, Ag, Pd, and Pt?


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## fishaholic5

geedigity said:


> OK, if I cement out the copper using Iron I should eventually have a concentrate that I can recover any Palladium from later
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, you could drop out Pd using iron, but you will drop everything less reactive than iron including Cd, Co, Ni, Sn, Pb, Sb, As, Bi, Cu and then also Hg, Ag, *Pd*, and Pt. Theoretically, of course.
> 
> So, why not just use copper and limit your metals to Hg, Ag, Pd, and Pt?
Click to expand...


All the Gold, Silver, the bulk of the Palladium and other pgm's have hopefully been removed from the solution already before cementing with Iron.
I have tons of material to process, I'm just hoping to recover any Pd that remains in what's left of the leach solution by using this step and reprocessing later

Cheers Wal


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## g_axelsson

fishaholic5 said:


> nickvc said:
> 
> 
> 
> Many if not all ores require a compromise somewhere in recovering values so perhaps Göran has hit the nail on the head,the value in the metals is largely gold and silver so concentrate on them and perhaps research if there is a method to concentrate the palladium and if so simply send to another refinery Whalen you have decent amounts.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> OK, if I cement out the copper using Iron I should eventually have a concentrate that I can recover any Palladium from later
Click to expand...

That sound reasonable. You can always melt down the copper into anodes and run it in a copper cell. The palladium, gold or silver present ends up in the anode slime. 

And it's a good way to remove a toxic component (copper salts) from your waste.
I do it with all my waste and saving the copper powder to refine sometime in the future when I have access to a suitable furnace.  

Göran


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## fishaholic5

Thanks,
I've decided to drop the pH to close to 1.5, I have metal crystals growing in the last stages now at pH2.


I'll keep the experiment running alongside the cementations with the solutions from dropping the gold first with Ferrous Sulfate for the next few months until the wet season.
It definitely reduces the amount of toxic gases produced in comparison.

Cheers Wal


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## fishaholic5

I solved the plating issues by increasing air flow to the bubblers, the increased agitation gives me a black powder now.

Cheers Wal


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## DarkspARCS

That is indeed a terrific fund you have made!

I personally have discoveries where I too am in need of discovering a scientific method for dropping out the pm/ pgm content free from the other metals in the mix. Here's one example:


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## fishaholic5

Cool, it looks pretty interesting.
I'm not sure how useful this is but I have a couple of thoughts.
I've moved away from pressurised leaching due to the dangers and the fact that PGM recoveries appear to be better for me at a near neutral pH.
The high Iron content in your ore will mean that once the iron content in a Chloride leach solution gets too high the PM's and PGM's will start to drop again unless you use enough leach solution to chlorinate all the metal content of the ore. This can be minimised by shorter leach times but this will also limit the PGM's recovery. Salt in the leach solution will also help keep the metals in solution.
I I have little experience with Rhodium but I've learned that it will dissolve in a Chloride leach if finely divided (thanks Harold and Lou) Most PGM's particles in ore are micro particles so in theory it should dissolve.
PGM's in ores often respond to magnets, it may be possible to separate the bulk of the PGM's content with the iron as well as a percentage of the Gold that contains PGM's or is bound up with the iron and process it separately. Gravity separation may help obtain a concentrate containing most of the values too. I'm still experimenting constantly with methods to reduce the amount of material I actually have to leach.
The Silver and Lead will stay in the ore residue from a Chloride leach, Lead Chloride can be removed with hot water and the Silver Chloride converted to Silver using dilute Sulfuric acid and Iron. You then have to work out how to recover it from the residue.
Chloride leaches on Silver containing ores need to be agitated or rotated constantly to stop the Silver Chloride passivating the other metal particles.
I'm not sure of the effectiveness of Cyanide leaching on Rhodium or its adsorption onto Carbon. Deano or others here have a lot of experience with complex ores and recovery methods. It may be worth exploring as an option for the recovery of the metals on a mining scale as may smelting with Copper as a collector if the values can be concentrated and recovering the Silver, Gold and PGM's during the refining process. If there is enough Gold in the concentrate it should theoretically pick up the Rhodium and other PGM's.
Just thoughts, I'm no expert and still learning and experimenting as I go... A lot of what I know is from the forum anyway and the thing I do best is digging holes


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## fishaholic5

This are microscope pics of the dried powder obtained from these cementation experiments.


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## fishaholic5

Some more Ore pic's


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## fishaholic5

Gold enrichment zone. This can be smelted as is


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## fishaholic5

PGM crystal on the surface of cap gossan
Field of view is 3x4mm


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## fishaholic5

Late stage hydrothermal deposition on Garnet Eclogite recovered from the top of an intrusion.
Field of view is 3x4mm


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## fishaholic5

Hydrothermal Gold in Quartz


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## fishaholic5

Gold in Quartz


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## fishaholic5

Silver Chloride "Wires" growing from drying ore.


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## fishaholic5

The same ore after light exposure, the "Wires" rearrange themselves into a fuzzy surface coating


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## fishaholic5

Over 90% of the gold and PGM grains in this deposit and the associated enrichment zones are <60micron, the material responds better to leaching after being dried for 6mths plus... This appears to be due to bacterial activity in the wet ore.
I'm currently running a seeding experiment in an adjacent enrichment zone to grow ore nodules, as well as experiments using carbon to collect metals from transport fluids in the active deposition zones.

The primary ores below the Oxidised zone in this deposit contain PGM's, Gold and Silver Telluride's, Sulfides, Antimony and Bismuth compounds as well as Cobalt.
Learning to process these will be interesting.
This will be an ongoing project and after discussions with an Israeli Geologist has expanded to researching similar occurrences and deposition zones in other areas now too.

Cheers Wal


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## DarkspARCS

Ive had to endure swtnack after setback since this virus scare went down. I finally recieved my furnace and some chemicals. I need to secure a rock crusher and ph meter then I should be set to start extracting values. 

I have access to several super rich locations and am anxious to begin my own experimentations. Here are some of the ores I will be working with:

Pgm


Gold/ pgm/ silver 
silve/ pgm

silver

copper saturated with gold


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## fishaholic5

Each ore type will need experimentation to work out the best method of extraction, leach method and times. High Sulfides in an ore will be acid consumers in a leach so this needs to be allowed for.
The Silver sulfide rich ores may be easier to crush, gravity separate and smelt with iron if they contain no Halides. There are methods elsewhere on the forum for the oxidation of sulfides using Hydrogen Peroxide on a lab scale or Sodium Hydroxide on a larger scale for the oxidation of Sulfides.

It looks like you have a lot to play with, I hope it goes well

Cheers Wal


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## FrugalRefiner

fishaholic5 said:


> It looks like you have a lot to play with, I hope it goes well



I hope so too! Best of luck with all of it. Very exciting!

Dave


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## fishaholic5

During excavation of the pipe I was initially discarding the light friable soil amongst the interlocked Silver rich surface ore nodules in the first couple of feet. Later I decided to pan it, expecting it to be leached of anything significant. 
The result was interesting, it held quantities of tiny PGM grains, native Silver, Gold and Silver Sulfides. Most was too small to gravity separate, easily floating on the surface tension of water.
Magnetic separation collected a large proportion of the PGM's but left some of the Gold, Silver and Sulfides so this material is now being leached too

Cheers Wal


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## fishaholic5

Tiny PGM grains from panning, field of view is 4x3mm


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## fishaholic5

Floating metals


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## fishaholic5

I've put a few ore pics in this thread, here's a few more. This one is a PGM rich Gold bearing Jasperoid,


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## fishaholic5

Chromite, this mineral is often found in association with rich PGM deposits


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## Topher_osAUrus

Thanks for keeping this going. I love looking at the various ore types. I'll never find any in my real life, so I live vicariously through you.

Not sure why I thought of this, but, I'll share it because I saw iron rich something ore other (see what i did there? Lol)
Anyways, at an old gold smelters, they would always use iron hooks to scrape slag off the molten gold. The iron eventually became coated in gold, so they needed to reclaim it. They would take their gold laden ladels and use them to stir a silver melt. While gold can mix with iron, silver cannot/will not. It is completely immiscible. So the gold would mix in with the silver, (iron free!) which would then be ran through silver cells to recover the gold via anode slimes. The iron ladels/scrapers would go back to their slag removal duties.

Maybe its just me, but, that is fascinating. Will I ever be able to use that fact? Probably not. Will someone else though? Surely someone. Sometime, somewhere. Might...


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## Yggdrasil

fishaholic5 said:


> Chromite, this mineral is often found in association with rich PGM deposits


Looking at those I just wonder what I passed by in my life.
Quite innocent looking rocks.
Thanks for sharing.


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## fishaholic5

Topher_osAUrus said:


> Thanks for keeping this going. I love looking at the various ore types. I'll never find any in my real life, so I live vicariously through you.
> 
> Not sure why I thought of this, but, I'll share it because I saw iron rich something ore other (see what i did there? Lol)
> Anyways, at an old gold smelters, they would always use iron hooks to scrape slag off the molten gold. The iron eventually became coated in gold, so they needed to reclaim it. They would take their gold laden ladels and use them to stir a silver melt. While gold can mix with iron, silver cannot/will not. It is completely immiscible. So the gold would mix in with the silver, (iron free!) which would then be ran through silver cells to recover the gold via anode slimes. The iron ladels/scrapers would go back to their slag removal duties.
> 
> Maybe its just me, but, that is fascinating. Will I ever be able to use that fact? Probably not. Will someone else though? Surely someone. Sometime, somewhere. Might...


That's interesting, a combination of Silver and Iron is used by some refiners during smelting tmine concentrates to create two feedstocks before chemical seperation.

Gold is often associated with Iron, especially in enrichment zones formed from the breakdown of Sulfide deposits.. the classic Iron Hat or Cap over a rich deposit is a good example but in some cases what looks like an Iron rich ore or a Gossan can contain very little Iron at all 

This button was "smelted" using Silver as a collector on the Jasperoid


Cheers Wal


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## fishaholic5

Yggdrasil said:


> Looking at those I just wonder what I passed by in my life.
> Quite innocent looking rocks.
> Thanks for sharing.


No worries, I wish I'd known what I've learned about ores, enrichment zones and bacteria over the last few years a long time ago. 
You never really know what's under your feet till you take a closer look

Cheers Wal


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## Yggdrasil

fishaholic5 said:


> No worries, I wish I'd known what I've learned about ores, enrichment zones and bacteria over the last few years a long time ago.
> You never really know what's under your feet till you take a closer look
> 
> Cheers Wal


I'm not worried, just heartbroken and on the verge of collapse


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## fishaholic5

This is from the bacterially active enrichment zone associated with the Jasperoid.


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## kjavanb123

fishaholic5 said:


> Chromite, this mineral is often found in association with rich PGM deposits


Hi

I live close to a chromite ore mining district. Should I test the serpantine or perodite for pgm?


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## fishaholic5

Both, as well as any gossanous material or enrichment zones associated with or adjacent to it


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## kjavanb123

fishaholic5 said:


> Both, as well as any gossanous material or enrichment zones associated with or adjacent to it


Hi 
Thanks for your reply. Somehow I missed this. I have started from dried river bed that came from those mountains with chromite mine and Serpentine. 

I have a post about this titled placer rhodium. 

Thanks and best regards
Kj


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## fishaholic5

No worries, it looks like you are doing really well with it.
As a follow up to this thread this is the bacterially recovered Gold concentrate from my latest processing experiments.
Grain size is up to 6mm, achievable in a 2 month period from solution.



Cheers Wal


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## fishaholic5

The cheap Chinese dry blender I use for crushing ore samples for extraction experiments


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## fishaholic5

Thankyou for the many people that have contributed to the knowledge on this forum, without it my journey of discovery in this field would not have been possible.
After many years I feel that I can finally call myself competent at extraction and refining Gold by a range of methods.

Cheers Wal


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