# 2nd trail for processing fingers in AP



## ahmadbayoumi (Oct 27, 2014)

Hello ALL,

Seems that things get better from one trail to another.

For my 2nd experiment for processing RAMs, I started with 2ks of normal PC RAMs.

Then, ended up with about 140g of closely trimmed fingers and 570 IC chips.

1st, I started to process the 140g of fingers using AP.

tired this time to be patient as much as I can and to avoid all my mistakes from the previous experiment.

I followed the steps exactly as it should be and got a quite good gold powder precipitated in the bottom of my flask.

I washed 2 times with plain water but I faced an issue that there was always some gold powder floating on the water surface and I was unable to decant the water.

So I decided to boil the flask with the water (150 ml) and gold.

But I believe it was a bad idea as once the water started to boil, the gold powder stared to boil also and after evaporating all water the remaining gold powder was attached to flak and got stuck and I was unable to collect it.

So, I decided to dissolve again using AR.

I did the AR and again tried to be patient as much as I can and added NHO3 in very small increments.

The workaround worked quite good and I got again Aucl2 ready to gold precipitating.

I used a little bit of sulfamic acid to make sure no free NHO3 in my solution.

The gold powder precipitated this time was quite shiny and looks really like gold (not brown powder) and looks like very fine gold particles (mash) making ride stones.

This time I was able to decant almost all water and the then evaporated the remaining water by putting the flask in low heat.

Then left the flask to coll and collected the gold and it was 0.5g of shinny gold.

My question now, why in the after re-dissolving the gold I got this shiny gold mash rather than brown gold powder ?

My 2nd question is 0.5g of gold is good yield out of 140g of trimmed finger ?

Thanks for your usual support.


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## ahmadbayoumi (Oct 28, 2014)

Hello All,

Need you help here PLS


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## MarcoP (Oct 28, 2014)

Hi, I've read about the gold flakes instead of dark gold powder precipitate few times in forums but with my reading I never found an answer. To me it looks like it happens when there is an excess of sulfuric acid.

About the yield, from 2Kg of RAM modules I would expected 1.5gr from fingers only but it all depends what manufacturers, year was made, size etc. So you are either ok or lost ~0.2 somewhere.

Considering that losses will be the same (as quantity) in small and big batches I'm considering to recover as much I can and refine only once thus greatly lowering the percentage of the losses.


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## kurtak (Oct 28, 2014)

First off I think you are talking about a beaker not a flask (I don't see a taper to the vessel it looks to be straight walled)

then you say you got brown powder from the AP process - I have never used the AP process but as I understand it that is a recovery process & does not dissolve the gold so you should have got foils - not powder - as I understand the AP process to be a process to recover foils (I use nitric in for my foil recovery process as I get it for less the $3 a gallon)

So --- are you taking about using HCl/Cl to dissolve the gold the first time ?

I ask because you mention "re-dissolving gold 2nd time" ?

Kurt


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## ahmadbayoumi (Oct 30, 2014)

Hello ALL,

Seems I was not clear enough in my post.

1- I started with 2k of PC RAM sticks.
2- Cut the fingers and depopulated the IC chips to end up with 140g fingers and 570g of chips.
3- Took the finger for processing using the CuCl2 etching solution (from old batch) + 1000 ml HCL + Air bubbler (samuel-a's method)
4- After 4 days, all the gold foils were striped out of the fingers
5- Dissolved the gold foils using the HCL/CL
6- Heated up the solution to remove any excess CL
7- Used SMB to precipitate the gold
8- Washed the precipitate gold with water
9- There was some very fine gold powder particles that couldn't settle at the bottom of the beaker
10- Due to the above, I was unable to decant much of the water so I though I can boil the beaker to evaporate the water and the gold powder should left out at the bottom.
11- Seems that this was not a good idea as the water evaporated but the gold powder stuck at the beaker and I was unable to collect it.
12- Though again, that I can re-dissolve this powder using NHo3 + HCL and then I can try to precipitate it again and avoid what happened in step 10
13- After re-dissolving the gold powder, I got the yellow AuCL2
14- I used sulfamic acid to remove any excess NHO3 (seems I used too much which could be the source of sulfuric acid as mentioned by MarcoP)
15- Used the SMB again to re-precipitate gold which gave the above shiny gold flakes

That was the whole thing.

Now if there is excess of sulfuric acid, How can I remove it ?

Also, you mentioned MarcoP, that you would expect 1.5g from the fingers only .. Did you mean it really .. 1.5g out of 140g foils !!

I have seen in the forum many yields for gold foils but not as much as you said

So would you PLS confirm and if so would you PLS tell which method you are using to achieve these yields.


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## ahmadbayoumi (Oct 30, 2014)

Forgot to mention that I got 0.5 g of gold flakes out f the whole 140g of fingers

Also, sorry for writing that I used a flask .. it was a beaker as you stated kurtak  :lol:


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## mls26cwru (Oct 30, 2014)

sounds like you are on the right track. In short, you did a second refining of your gold, which is common practice, to achieve a higher purity. You should look around the forum to figure out how and why this works. I would also read up on Harold's washing proceedures and the theory behind why the proceedure is useful and why you should incorperate it into your process. 

As a general rule, the purer your gold is the lighter the powder will be. also, a more dilute the Auric Chloride solution will tend to form smaller 'crystals' and be 'sparkly' when it precipitates. So a combination of both these factors is why your gold looks they way it does on the second time.

as far as quantity of gold you recovered. In my experiments, I have found an average yield of 1.8g of gold per pound of gold fingers (with a range of 1.6g - 2.1g). 

So figuring the standard to metric conversions: 1.8g [Au] /453g [fingers] = ~0.004 or 0.4wt%
using your yield numbers: 0.5g [Au] / 140g [fingers] = ~0.00357 or 0.357 wt% 

you are measuring such a small amount that scale tolerances could be effecting your measurment, but i would be happy with that yield.


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## MarcoP (Oct 30, 2014)

Sorry, I've got it all wrong. In my head 1Kg were about 100 RAM sticks but looking at my own weights 100 ram sticks are about 2Kg so I doubled the results.
54 double sided RAMs weights 1136gr.
76 single side RAMs weights 1281gr.
With a return of 750gr of TSOP packages.

However the eScrap Refiner's Gold Mining Guide Rev. 0.7 states 0.6-0.9gr Au from 100 sticks and it seems excluding TSOP from the count.


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## ahmadbayoumi (Oct 30, 2014)

Thanks mls26cwru and MarcoP for the info.

But seems there a big variations between different yields.

According to mls26cwru ; I'm very close to the average yields.

However as per MarcoP; seems I'm far beyond the good results.

So which results are the real one ?!


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## FrugalRefiner (Oct 30, 2014)

ahmadbayoumi said:


> So which results are the real one ?!


The only results that are real are the ones you get.

I know it's nice to compare your results with those of others to know if you've lost anything along the way, but the best way to be sure you're not leaving any behind is to test. Yield results are all over the place because there is so much variation in the starting material, as well as variations in the proficiency of different refiners.

Dave


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## mls26cwru (Oct 30, 2014)

I would not go by the notion of how many "grams of gold per # of sticks or RAM." There are far more variables in the weight of the ram stick (ie: chip count, chip weight, chip density, size or board, type of ram, heat sinks, etc). About the only general rule of thumb I can attest to is that each stick of RAM will give about 1 gram of cleanly cut fingers. Other than that, the yield numbers are all over the place.

The numbers are much more consistant when you talk about just fingers. After a number of refinings of fingers I found the "grams per weight of fingers" ratio fall within a much more narrow range. Ultimatly you will have to figure out which weights and ratios for specific material work best for you... and you will need to find that out by trial and error and good record keeping


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## MarcoP (Oct 30, 2014)

...and I would make sure that your AP is saturated with copper so any dissolved gold would precipitate as dark powder the same powder stuck in your filter if you filtered your foils. I'm just making sure you don't lose values as I did in past.
Learned the lessons and I'm not filtering or changing vessel anyone, at least were not due.


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## ahmadbayoumi (Oct 30, 2014)

Thanks a lot dear .. I'm really enjoying these discussions 8) 

Definitely, the real yields will be those I get.

But for me I just need to know the typical yields range, this is regardless of the process and/or the refiner proficiency .

This would help me understand if I'm near to this typical yields or I'm far beyond.

I'm asking for the typical *range* and I'm saying range because I know that there are many variations in the RAMs themselves (chip count, chip weight, chip density, size or board, type of ram, heat sinks, etc)


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## kurtak (Oct 31, 2014)

mls26cwru said:


> sounds like you are on the right track. In short, you did a second refining of your gold, which is common practice, to achieve a higher purity. You should look around the forum to figure out how and why this works. I would also read up on Harold's washing proceedures and the theory behind why the proceedure is useful and why you should incorperate it into your process.
> 
> As a general rule, the purer your gold is the lighter the powder will be. also, a more dilute the Auric Chloride solution will tend to form smaller 'crystals' and be 'sparkly' when it precipitates. So a combination of both these factors is why your gold looks they way it does on the second time.



Correct :!: especially the underlined in the above quote :!: 

Kurt


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## bswartzwelder (Oct 31, 2014)

It is also quite common to use a different chemical to precipitate your gold on the second refining process. Using the same precipitant will usually give the same results, but that's not what you want. You want different results. You want the gold to be purer and that means less stuff (other than gold) precipitating out of your solution. There are quite a few different precipitants that you can use. Each has its own pros and cons.

Having said that, I believe it was Lasersteve who says he only ever uses SMB and gets quite good results. It's just something to consider.

Also, having a little sulfuric acid in your mix is not necessarily a bad thing. It will help get rid of either lead or tin (don't remember which) and its use is well documented here on the forum. Sounds like you are making progress. Keep up with reading Hoke and the forum.


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## hatemelborai (Nov 3, 2014)

ahmadbayoumi said:


> Hello ALL,
> 
> Seems I was not clear enough in my post.
> 
> ...



Dear Ahmad
Normally the output of gold from 1 kg of RAM (finger + chips) is between .7 -1.1 g


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## ahmadbayoumi (Nov 5, 2014)

Thanks a lot dears .. seems I'm on the right track till the moment  

Will process the chips this week and will share the results with you 8) 8)


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## ahmadbayoumi (Nov 7, 2014)

I started processing the the IC chips removed out from the 2Ks RAM.
The total amount of chips was 570g.

I started the process by incineration. However due to lack of some resources, I was unable to perform a complete incineration but almost 70-75% of the chips were white/grey.

Anyway, I'll re-incinerate those didn't well incinerate today or tomorrow.

Now, I'm concerned about washing the resulting ashes.

I know that this step is essential to remove all plastic and non metallic staff.

But, this would be very time consuming process and would require more that 10 washings/pourings, so I'm thinking about adding some table salt (salinated water)(instead of the dish soup) to the washing water to speed up the process.

I don't know the effectiveness of this approach but I saw it somewhere here in the forum as a suggestion.

I know that there are some alternatives for this step but all are not available currently. So the only way is water washing so I need to find a workaround to speedup this step.

Also, I read here that I would be better not to drain the water away but I should use a larger bucket, and I think that it may require a bathtub to hold all the washing water which is definitely not practical and not logic.

So, I'm thinking about a time effective and efficient way for using the water washing process here and need your help.


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## ahmadbayoumi (Nov 7, 2014)

Hello All,

Need you help here PLS


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## MarcoP (Nov 7, 2014)

I would have waited to gather at least 1Kg of ram chips because the low return (about 0.01-0.04%) you will get from half kilo.
As I can see your only choice is to use salt water or a gold pan.

I already have all it occurs to make a blue bowl, cheap water pump used on boats, a sausage funnel, a common funnel, the right size and shape bowl (hard to find), hose and connections but all I need now is the material and a good way to incinerate. I have already about 2Kg of low and middle yield chips and I'm waiting for some good yield material to pile up before proceed.

If you believe you are going to incinerate again, I'd suggest to make your self a blue bowl otherwise separate with soap and or salt, a good boil helps too and if the wires aren't broken you could skim the ash while boiling as long the container (beaker ecc) it's tall enough.

P.S.: In the last few days I was able to steal about 0.03gr (estimate, will weight tomorrow) off ram sticks depopulated with dilute HCl by processing the sludge left over at the bottom. As I believed, some soldering contact were gold plated and the plating will alloy with the solder upon soldering. HCl will break it apart freeing some gold.
Next time I will make sure to process gold plated sticks separately and save the sludge with other low grade material.


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## ahmadbayoumi (Nov 7, 2014)

Thanks a lot MarcoP for your reply.

I'm trying small batches for sake of mastering the process itself then would go for larger batches.

Currently, the only available process is the the water wash as mentioned earlier by Pat.

I managed to re-incinerate those chips that haven't in the initial incineration.

Them smashed/crushed them all (including the silicone wafer) to powder. Then removed the metallic legs using a strong magnet.

The next step should be now the water wash and I'm intending to use the salinated water to help reduce the number of water washings/pourings required.


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## MarcoP (Nov 7, 2014)

How much have you been able to reduce your concentrate to, 300ml?



ahmadbayoumi said:


> Thanks a lot MarcoP for your reply.
> 
> I'm trying small batches for sake of mastering the process itself then would go for larger batches.
> 
> ...


Oh that's a small test batch, in my tiny and irregular supplies I can only afford testing incineration with part of my low yield chips, but can fortunately afford plenty of time observing and taking care of procedures. I'm on the early stage learnings of this in-house adventure and I'm still having hard time reducing the spills and changing containers to an acceptable level.

Any particular reason why you pulverized the silicon wafer instead of just pulling them away? Legs may still have some gold attached to them, but as I'm aware the wafers are bare of any metal and easier to pull them away when integers. Pulverized silicon wafer will remain with the wires increasing the volume of the concentrate but it's not entirely a bad thing, I think it could trap and hold bond wires giving you a bigger margin of error on your washes. I would have started from the legs, then what's left from wafers and for last ashes, but I might be wrong.


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## ahmadbayoumi (Nov 7, 2014)

The reason I crushed the silicone wafers long with the gold wires is that for my understanding, no one in this forum advised that they should be removed.

Also, these wafers may contain very fine gold wires/powder.

For the legs, I'll process them separately in AP


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## ahmadbayoumi (Nov 7, 2014)

Sorry MarcoP, I didn't answer your question  

Till the moment, I didn't start the water washes for the ashes and I'm asking here which is the best practice for this step


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## patnor1011 (Nov 7, 2014)

ahmadbayoumi said:


> The reason I crushed the silicone wafers long with the gold wires is that for my understanding, no one in this forum advised that they should be removed.



It is better to remove them, no point to introduce crushed glass in concentrate.



ahmadbayoumi said:


> Also, these wafers may contain very fine gold wires/powder.



Wires -no, powder -dont think so. There may be some plating on one side but that is negligible. They are better off collected, you can give them a wash in warm AR to get rest of gold solder if there is any on sides. If they are crushed they are like glass.



ahmadbayoumi said:


> For the legs, I'll process them separately in AP



That you may reconsider, it will take enormous amounts of acid and a lot of time. Not to mention that some do have Ag plating and some do contain Ag/Pd solder. They will be dissolved quickly with HNO3.


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## ahmadbayoumi (Nov 8, 2014)

Many thanks for you Pat  

Will try to remove them in my next batch but at least no harm in crushing them along with the gold wires .. isn't it ?

For the legs, do you mean to drop them directly in HNO3 to dissolve Pd/Ag ?


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## patnor1011 (Nov 8, 2014)

I tend to incinerate properly and remove wafers and pins. Magnetic ones with magnet and non magnetic with HNO3. Point is that you then work with wires which easily accumulate - tangle together. Rather than with super fine powder/particles from disintegrated wires. Another point is that when you crush hard your not burned IC where you do have hard plastic present along with metallic legs gold bonding wires tend to smear on pins. You will notice them to become "golden".
Do not focus on Ag/Pd at this stage, that may be interesting only if you do work with significant quantities of IC. Whatever Ag and Pd get dissolved in HNO3 and AR will be recovered from stock pot provided you are saving your waste solutions.

Minutes extra spend on incineration will save you hours when crushing and washing.


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## ahmadbayoumi (Nov 11, 2014)

Thanks Pat 

Noted and would try to incinerate the chips very well to to remove Si wafers from the beginning.

But what do you think about using salinated water (Water+Table salt) for separating junk/plastic staff from gold wires/powder ?

As I want to speed up the ash washing part and to avoid losing values as much as I can.


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## patnor1011 (Nov 11, 2014)

I have no idea what you mean. I always incinerate completely so I do have just ash to deal with. Ash with metallic parts. I do not have any plastic or junk so I cant really say what water and salt will do. Simple water with washing up liquid works for me fine. Water can be reused if you let it sit till ash settle down.


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## ahmadbayoumi (Nov 12, 2014)

I'm concerned about washing the resulting ashes.

I know that this step is essential to remove all non metallic staff.

But, this would be very time consuming process and would require more that 10 washings/pourings, so I'm thinking about adding some table salt (salinated water)(instead of the dish soup) to the washing water to speed up the process using the relative density theory.

I don't know the effectiveness of this approach but I saw it somewhere here in the forum as a suggestion.

I know that there are some alternatives for this step but all are not available currently. So the only way is water washing so I need to find a workaround to speedup this step and to avoid losing any values during pouring.

Also, I read here that it would be better not to drain the water away but I should use a larger bucket, and I think that it may require a bathtub to hold all the washing water which is definitely not practical and not logic.

So, I'm thinking about a time effective and efficient way for using the water washing process here and need your help.

Also, what do you mean by "Water can be reused if you let it sit till ash settle down"


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## bswartzwelder (Nov 12, 2014)

Adding dish soap or a product like JetDry breaks up surface tension and helps things drop more easily. Everything you add could possibly react with your ashes and may have to be removed later on in the process. That's why people keep saying "Don't try to reinvent the wheel.".


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## ahmadbayoumi (Nov 13, 2014)

Thanks a lot bswartzwelder  

However, I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel but rather I'm trying to find a workaround to over come the issues with the plain water washes.

For my and as I'm not experienced enough, I'm afraid of losing values .. this is the whole point here 8)


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## bswartzwelder (Nov 14, 2014)

I believe that Patnor1011 is saying to let everything sit in the water. After a while, everything will either settle to the bottom or float to the top. If it floats to the top, stir or agitate the top level a little violently to make sure everything gets quite wet. That's where the soap or Jet Dry will help. Once a piece of gold gets completely wetted, even the smallest pieces of gold will eventually sink to the bottom. If you do this several times, all the gold will eventually sink to the bottom.

Do this several times and anything that still floats can be poured off (and saved if you think it still has gold). Let the water stand for a day or so and everything else will sink to the bottom. Decant the water on top and save it for reuse. The gold will be in the ashes left on the bottom. No need to add salt or anything else. Anything you add that isn't gold will have to come out again at some time in the future possibly complicating things. Salt is made of sodium and chlorine and while I have never heard of the chlorine evaporating out of the solution (the worlds oceans have been salty for eons), it does add another chemical to the mix which we will want to get rid of if we truly want to refine to the highest purity.

Adding salt is doing what most people on the forum regard as reinventing the wheel. You're doing something that has probably been tried by someone else at one point and it didn't work. If it had, everyone would be doing it as an accepted practice. It's not unlike using Urea. That was once the norm and many people used it. Now, almost no one uses it where gold is concerned, but it does make your grass greener.


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## ahmadbayoumi (Nov 14, 2014)

Many thanks for you bswartzwelder  

I really do appreciate your below valuable information.

I'm convinced about your point of view about adding table salt and I'll not use it.

But I'm not sure what is the point of reusing the decanted water .. Why I should save this water for to be reused ?


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## patnor1011 (Nov 15, 2014)

I meant little different thing. Pour waste water to large bucket, when that waste settle there will be ash on bottom and you can reuse that water again. I do it when I use my sluice. I direct waste water to large container (about cubic meter). Next day water is fairly clean when all ash and dust settle in bottom. I decant that water for reuse and let settled ash to dry. When I do have bucket full of that ash and dust I usually run it through sluice again, just to make sure any gold escaped during initial wash. Better safe than sorry.

Make yourself this one cheaply. With combination of large container to catch waste water and cheap pump it will work just fine for you.


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## Shark (Nov 15, 2014)

Trying to balance the correct amount of salt to water ratio can be very tedious and time consuming. Patnor has a great suggestion and pictures that really help explain what he suggests. To much salt and the tiny metal wires will float on the surface, not enough and some ash will sink. I gave up on the idea just because of the time it was taking me. I built a blue bowl type wash and it worked pretty good,it was more complicated and expensive than Patnor's idea, and I also think his idea is easier to adjust and fine tune to the materials we usually work with.


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## ahmadbayoumi (Nov 18, 2014)

Thanks a lot Pat 

I'll try to make my own sluice but 1st I'll try the washing/pouring method.

I do understand the need to why I need to let the ash settle in bottom and because it may contain very fine gold traces.

But really I need to understand why I should reuse a dirty an unclean water again .. what is the point behind this ?

Also thanks a lot Shark 

I'll not use the salt water in my washings but rather I'll use Pat's method (washing/pouring)


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## patnor1011 (Nov 19, 2014)

ahmadbayoumi said:


> Thanks a lot Pat
> 
> I'll try to make my own sluice but 1st I'll try the washing/pouring method.
> 
> ...



You said that a lot of water is used, in that way you will save on water.
That water will be perfectly usable if you leave it sit long enough for ash to settle on bottom. It will not be drinkable but can be reused for washing. When all ash settle water will be slightly cloudy but fairly clean.


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## ahmadbayoumi (Nov 19, 2014)

Thanks Pat 

I got your point .. Sure saving water from the environmental point of view is required as at the end we have limited resources in our planet.

Great thinking 8) 

I just though there's any technical point here but seems not


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## MarcoP (Nov 19, 2014)

A blue bowl will run better with soapy water, not sure about sluice tough.


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## patnor1011 (Nov 19, 2014)

ahmadbayoumi said:


> Thanks Pat
> 
> I got your point .. Sure saving water from the environmental point of view is required as at the end we have limited resources in our planet.
> 
> ...



It is more about saving money in the long run.
Technical point, yes there is one. If you manage to set up sluice with large enough vessel to catch waste water this can be sucked up with pump with filter and it will be like closed loop system where you will have the same water circulating. You just need to set up and watch out filter so it will not clog up and burn your pump. Then washing will be easy and fast. It is nothing new, many people use similar set up to wash dirt in places where it is not a lot of water available, something like this:
https://prospectorschoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/mini_highbanker_070.jpg

or this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgFH4KtGwTM

but I would use much bigger vessel for water.


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## Shark (Nov 20, 2014)

MarcoP said:


> A blue bowl will run better with soapy water, not sure about sluice tough.



There is a hint I might try, hadn't thought about using soap in the blue bowl. I have almost 12 pounds of IC's saved up, but winter is making hard to play in the water right now.


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## kurtak (Nov 20, 2014)

Shark said:


> MarcoP said:
> 
> 
> > A blue bowl will run better with soapy water, not sure about sluice tough.
> ...



Jet-Dry is a better choice to break the surface tension & yes it works for running a sluice in a closed loop system (pumping your water from a reservoir)

Kurt


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## Shark (Nov 20, 2014)

Got to thinking about a sluice and realized I had one of those mini sluice in storage. I got it dug out and one of the legs is broke, should be an easy fix though. I think I will try it on the next round of IC's and see how it works out. Might be a while as the cold this year seems to extra hard on me.


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