# refining iridium



## imrani (Dec 8, 2018)

How I refine iridium from ore. Any suggestions . I lost iridium many times my process is failed plz guide me


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## jimdoc (Dec 8, 2018)

How do you know there is iridium in your ore? 
What are you successfully recovering from your ore?


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## imrani (Dec 8, 2018)

I m a mine owner in gilgit buldistan valley Pakistan . I have tested it in laboratory . Test report is 3%au±27%iridium+20%osmium +0.8%pd.
I tried many time to refine it but failed plz help me I have 11700kgs in my available stock I want to refine these metals


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## FrugalRefiner (Dec 8, 2018)

Those are astounding numbers! Was the test by XRF, or some other method?

Dave


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## imrani (Dec 8, 2018)

Here is the attachment of my report


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## FrugalRefiner (Dec 8, 2018)

That doesn't answer my question of how the test was performed. Was it XRF or some other type of test?

I also don't see anything in the report about the osmium and palladium you mentioned.

Dave


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## imrani (Dec 8, 2018)

This is a laboratory test not xrf . It's chemical laboratory test in this time I don't know about test name I will tell tomorrow and I also have xrf reports I m sharing you


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## imrani (Dec 8, 2018)

Here is xrf report


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## imrani (Dec 8, 2018)

We have only iridium finding test in Pakistan not osmium in chemical laboratory.


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## snoman701 (Dec 8, 2018)

imrani said:


> I m a mine owner in gilgit buldistan valley Pakistan . I have tested it in laboratory . Test report is 3%au±27%iridium+20%osmium +0.8%pd.
> I tried many time to refine it but failed plz help me I have 11700kgs in my available stock I want to refine these metals



You have 11700 kgs of a product that is 47% osmiridium?






Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## imrani (Dec 9, 2018)

Yes brother we have different types of xrf reports but chemical laboratory report we have 27% iridium


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## anachronism (Dec 9, 2018)

Osmium? Ouch - be careful it's the quickest way to go blind. Look up Osmium Tetroxide.


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## imrani (Dec 9, 2018)

Sir my answer is how I recover iridium from ore osmium is not necessary for me


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## snoman701 (Dec 9, 2018)

I guess that I'd be a bit wary of those assays. Your numbers suggest you have close to the annual production of iridium in one lot, that's a bit...how to say, hard to believe. 

Further, if you did have that quantity of iridium, with 3% gold nonetheless, you'd be best off just contacting someone like Lou, who routinely handles the separation, and paying them handsomely to help you set up a refining process. Or just selling the concentrate outright. 

Simply put, your assay sample was either cherry picked, or your assay is wrong. 

And correct me if I'm wrong, but I can think of no natural ore outside of the center of the earth where those numbers could possibly exist. And that kind of quantity in a recovery environment would already have technical expertise chasing the dollars.


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## imrani (Dec 9, 2018)

I know this but in nangaperbeth gilgit range in Pakistan you can find this . I found a lucky vain in my mine near nangaperbeth . If you want to check this I can send you samples just for your satisfaction.


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## snoman701 (Dec 9, 2018)

I appreciate the offer, but receiving anything containing a mineral specimen in the mail from Pakistan will just get someone at homeland security very excited, and I don't think anyone on the forum is looking for that kind of excitement in their life. 

I guess I'd recommend starting here. 

https://archive.org/details/mehtodforseperat63421gilc/page/422


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## imrani (Dec 9, 2018)

OK thanks for your indication .


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## imrani (Dec 9, 2018)

Guide me What I do sir I want to ask how I refine just iridium and gold from ore concentrate


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## jimdoc (Dec 9, 2018)

imrani said:


> Sir my answer is how I recover iridium from ore osmium is not necessary for me



You have to know of all the hazards in your ore, and how to deal with them.
You can not simply ignore them, if you value your health.


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## imrani (Dec 9, 2018)

OK good


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## Lino1406 (Dec 9, 2018)

If you are lucky and the iridium is very dispersed in nano scale, then Ar will dissolve it. Otherwise you need a dangerous material - sodium peroxide for melting it together - to make it a compound and then AR. The rest is precipitation with ammonium chloride


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## snoman701 (Dec 10, 2018)

Lino1406 said:


> If you are lucky and the iridium is very dispersed in nano scale, then Ar will dissolve it. Otherwise you need a dangerous material - sodium peroxide for melting it together - to make it a compound and then AR. The rest is precipitation with ammonium chloride



Won't the ammonium chloride also reduce the osmium in solution?


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## Lino1406 (Dec 10, 2018)

I assume there is a difference in behaviour. While the expected iridium oxide does not dissolve easily, the expected sodium osmate can be dissolved by water and decanted


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## snoman701 (Dec 10, 2018)

Lino1406 said:


> I assume there is a difference in behaviour. While the expected iridium oxide does not dissolve easily, the expected sodium osmate can be dissolved by water and decanted



I guess I'm going off the assumption that natural osmium and iridium would be alloyed together as osmiridium and would be pretty acid resistant. Thus, wouldn't it need the sodium peroxide to get it in to solution. Then isn't it "just a matter of" distilling off the osmium, leaving Au and Ir in solution?


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## snoman701 (Dec 10, 2018)

https://patents.google.com/patent/CN1428445A/en

There's a good patent to read. I better understand the sodium peroxide fusion process now. 

As you say, it's unlikely there would be osmium still present in the sample to GO in to solution by the time you have an iridium compound you can get in solution.


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## imrani (Jan 27, 2019)

Osmiridium


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## Lou (Jan 28, 2019)

Do you want to sell it?


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## imrani (Jan 29, 2019)

Of course . Why not.


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## Iridium chaser (Mar 28, 2019)

Wow!That is unbelievable!I mean that is really a treasure worth at least 150 million dollars US for iridium and if you also have the amount of osmium that is stated here than you are already a billionaire!!!I mean if obviously the results are correct!

Yes and also don't listen to anyone about disposing of osmium,it might be the greatest mistake in your whole life!It's market price is over 13 US dollars per gram and you actually will never ever find a real piece of real osmium metal for less than 70 dollars per gram regardless of the quantity!Because market price is only nominal and speculative here and the real price is at least 70$/gram which is the same for quantities measured in tonnes:you will never ever find a tonne of real osmium metal for less than 70 million dollars US therefore!And trust me:if you will once put your tonne of real osmium metal for sale,after you refine it(which is actually the simplest thing you might imagine in whole chemistry!Will describe it in a moment!)-that will be sold out all over the world in less than 3 months,for the price that I mentioned!

So how to refine osmium!That is actually what I personally did for several times successfully and safely while being yet a simple guy with a garage!Just the only thing that you will require is a proper setup!So it must be sealed and must withstand temperature of around 1000°C in the processing vessel for hours and maybe days,while at the same time being coated with something that withstands an attack with hot osmium tetraoxide vapour(platinum is actually enough here,just a plating I mean),and so what you do is you put your material into that vessel and apply a constant flow of oxygen or at least air so it oxidizes osmium in your material into that vessel and the tetraoxide vapour is what you expect to build up in another vessel,where you have only osmium tetraoxide with no any oxygen from the first one and from the other pipe you apply hydrogen gas and simply heat either your tetraoxide vapour or better the hydrogen flow and so what happens when osmium tetraoxide meet hot hydrogen with no air present at all(which is crucial here!)-the osmium metal will be displaced by hydrogen and so you will get a water vapour(which should be removed from there)and osmium sponge accumulating on the bottom!So that is how you will make even more money than from iridium if the results of XRF are correct! 

Anyway about iridium refining that is another story,vastly more difficult and long,and need incomparably more effort to do so!So if you want to know that you can just write me that you are interested and I will describe the process that I used myself for this purpose and in brief it was done with using inquartation method which might be costly but it is really the only good way to do that!

So,waiting for you to respond,bro!And by the way I would also be glad to buy a sample from you-especially osmiridium!


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## snoman701 (Mar 29, 2019)

Iridium chaser said:


> Yes and also don't listen to anyone about disposing of osmium,it might be the greatest mistake in your whole life!It's market price is over 13 US dollars per gram and you actually will never ever find a real piece of real osmium metal for less than 70 dollars per gram regardless of the quantity!Because market price is only nominal and speculative here and the real price is at least 70$/gram which is the same for quantities measured in tonnes:you will never ever find a tonne of real osmium metal for less than 70 million dollars US therefore!And trust me:if you will once put your tonne of real osmium metal for sale,after you refine it(which is actually the simplest thing you might imagine in whole chemistry!Will describe it in a moment!)-that will be sold out all over the world in less than 3 months,for the price that I mentioned!



So are you offering to make finished products out of osmium? I want a ring. I'll source the osmium and send it to you. Sorta serious. Can you do it for $70 / gram? Even $100 / gram. 

Osmium's cost when buying has very little to do with it's rarity, but everything to do with the difficulty of getting it into a finished product. As you know, there are so few people that can work with it from a refining perspective, and even fewer from a finished product perspective.

I can buy literal tons of aerospace scrap for the cost of manufacture and virgin material costs of a single custom alloy machined part. It's all about the added value.


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## Iridium chaser (May 8, 2019)

Unfortunately I currently don't have enough tools for that:my finished product is usually done for now as refined and melted beads of 99.99% PGMs-that rather rarely but does include osmium metal beads.But here we are talking about enormous amount of osmium in such material:he literally has more than 5 times the annual world production of the second rarest metal among naturally occurring ones and so it is worth even building a small processing facility for such a giant amount!And obviously when it comes to specified equipment that will be there to process it-that will not be a big deal to safely work with it!


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## imrani (Jun 15, 2019)

Hello to all friends here is my latest development that I want to share any suggestions plz I will be very appreciate.


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## FrugalRefiner (Jun 15, 2019)

Will they buy it based on those results?

Dave


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## imrani (Jun 16, 2019)

My friend this result is for my satisfaction not for buyers .


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## Platdigger (Jun 16, 2019)

Must be very satisfying indeed!
Congrats


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## imrani (Jun 18, 2019)

Thanks my friend platdigger.


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## lilcherry2010 (May 23, 2022)

great and congrat Imrani. can you help me with that?


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## Razi (May 24, 2022)

Dear 

can you please tell me the origin of this material 
I have also same material 
I am working on this ore 

please contact me for more 
discussion 

Fayaz Ahmad 
what's app: +92 331 4229889
Cell: +92 322 4483096


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## zachy (May 31, 2022)

Iridium chaser said:


> Desafortunadamente, actualmente no tengo suficientes herramientas para eso: mi producto terminado generalmente se hace por ahora como perlas refinadas y derretidas de 99.99% PGM, que rara vez incluyen perlas de metal de osmio. Pero aquí estamos hablando de una enorme cantidad de osmio en tal material: ¡literalmente tiene más de 5 veces la producción mundial anual del segundo metal más raro entre los que ocurren naturalmente, por lo que vale la pena incluso construir una pequeña instalación de procesamiento para una cantidad tan grande! Y obviamente cuando se trata de equipos específicos que estará allí para procesarlo, ¡no será un gran problema trabajar con él de manera segura!


¿Conoces el reto de refinar Osmio? y lo peligroso que puede ser, creo que muy pocos aquí manejan estos trámites. pero me gustaria saber de donde es material sdalio


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