# Grind quads then centrifuge, dry or wet?



## 924T (Jan 14, 2013)

Finally, I've gotten a small 11" hammer mill, and will be able to grind IC's and small quads into powder.

After separating the metal plates plates and legs out, I'm thinking about using a centrifuge to separate
any loose particles of Gold wire (is that called millable Gold?) out, and then running the rest of the powder
through an Iodine leach (Povidone).

My question is, would it be best to centrifuge the powder dry, or should it be wet? I have no experience
centrifuging anything other than liquids, and even that experience is sparse, so I'd definitely be grateful
to hear how it should be done.

Cheers,

Mike


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## etack (Jan 14, 2013)

Why not just make a dore bar with it and refine that. 

I now that pat advocates the use of panning ,but why not melt it all together and refine like dirty carpets. Use a propane furnace and some flux, a collector metal like silver and pour it off. If you bought a hammer mill to do this you might investigate this as an option. This is just an idea but nickv has also suggested this and he might have a better idea about what flux to use. Panning seems like a waist of time to me.


Eric


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## rusty (Jan 14, 2013)

Water helps to make things mobile - wet.


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## patnor1011 (Jan 14, 2013)

You don't really need to pan if you do not want to.
Incinerating will reduce weight by about 50%, if you powder everything and carefully wash with water even in bucket you will be able to reduce mass and weight by washing out ashes till you get down to about 10% of mass of what you started with. Pretty much bonding wires, pins, Si chips and some garbage from not fully incinerated plastic. This you can leach in acid to remove base metals and then recover precious metals.


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## 924T (Jan 15, 2013)

Hmmmm, I'm not sure where panning entered the picture, although I did buy a pan (haven't learned how to
use it yet).

Here's my game plan:

I've got a 15" chain flail mill on the way, because the DIP IC's keep getting tangled up
in the 1/2" feed hole of the small hammer mill, so I'm going to do a preliminary grind with the flail mill just
to get the chips down to the size of sand; I'll use neodymium magnets from hard drives I've scrapped out
to pull out any Ferrous material out of DIP IC's [I'm not real sure how to get the metal plates from the quad chips out, though---I busted up some of them with a hammer, and the metal plates in the center of those chips definitely do not
respond to my magnet, so I suspect they're Aluminum] and then I'll run that "chip-sand" through the small hammer mill
to get it down to around 200 mesh.

At that point, I'll centrifuge the +-200 mesh material (a big thanks, Rusty, I had zero frame of reference as
to which would be better for running in a centrifuge, dry chip-sand or wet chip-sand------------wet it will be!)
to get whatever Gold has been liberated from the plastic (knowing that it won't be all the Gold, and that there
will still be clean-up and refining to be done).

Another question I simply don't have a frame of reference/experience to answer---------after centrifuging the
+-200 mesh material, how do you get the end result out of the centrifuge tubes? Does the wet material act like
a solid, and come out of the centrifuge tube somewhat like a column, that can then be cut into sections? I have
no idea.

Also, I was thinking about buying plastic 50ml centrifuge tubes. Is plastic better than glass for what I'm doing?

I have a wee bit of lead time here, because the flail mill and the centrifuge won't be here for about another 2 weeks.

I did buy a cyclonic dust control system to use with my shop vac, on the flail mill; the hammer mill is from Action Mining,
and runs apparently enough air through itself to get the ground-up material into a 2 gallon plastic bucket that has a Type C
vacuum bag filter on the exhaust port of the bucket. I researched Type C bags (they're paper), and found that they
only filter down to 30 microns, so I'm looking at buying a 1 micron polypropylene bag filter, because I sure don't want
any 200 mesh silica dust zooming around my garage.

I did take a preliminary shot at incinerating, and screwed it up several ways (I should probably post the 1 picture
I took of the end result), and then it got extremely cold here, so I haven't been able to give it another shot. I
can tell you, however, that I had a rather dense plume of acrid black smoke for about 4-5 minutes, but no ash.

And, spending the last of my 2012 summer and fall returns from computer scrapping (and a bit beyond that), I also
bought a Cyclonic Incinerator from Elastec, as a kind of fail-safe--------------I figure if I royally mess things up, I
can pop them into the cyclonic incinerator and reduce them to ashes that way [some concerns there, though: it
runs pretty close to 1000F if you're using oak as fuel, and I'm intending to take GSP's advice and use oak pellets,
so there appears to be some danger of overcooking the chips----I'm still planning out a series of timed test burns 
that could be done, with the burn duration regulated by the quantity of fuel that would be put in].

I'll probably get thrashed for running long and putting 3 posts worth of stuff into 1; somebody let me know if I
should break this up into a couple of other posts, please.

Well, as usual, I'm just thrilled to hear from you guys that have been there, done that!

I've been asking many, varied questions for a long time now, and it feels pretty good to know I stand a pretty 
good chance of reclaiming some Au from escrap, most likely in March '13, with most of the credit going to
all the help I've gotten from the GRF.

Cheers,

Mike


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## g_axelsson (Jan 15, 2013)

I can't see how a centrifuge could ever work for separating solids. If dry then it will just compress the material as it can't move around and if it is mixed with water it still can't move around and it will just make a compact wet mass.

The only way to separate gold and ash is to have it suspended in a liquid heavier than the ash but lighter than gold. I think I've heard about cerium chloride in water solution but don't take my word on it. I think any solution like that would be very expensive.

Göran


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## damezbullion (Jan 15, 2013)

patnor1011 said:


> You don't really need to pan if you do not want to.
> Incinerating will reduce weight by about 50%, if you powder everything and carefully wash with water even in bucket you will be able to reduce mass and weight by washing out ashes till you get down to about 10% of mass of what you started with. Pretty much bonding wires, pins, Si chips and some garbage from not fully incinerated plastic. This you can leach in acid to remove base metals and then recover precious metals.



ChriEdited! to me that hit the nail on the head, the whole process in one sentence really, thanks for that ill be writing that down 

If I have to keep editing, I will just begin to delete these post. Butcher


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## 924T (Jan 16, 2013)

Hmmmmm, I have no plans for any ash to be created, unless I totally botch a run of chips, at which time
I'll give them a spin through the cyclonic incinerator.

The plan is to pre-grind, grind, and then run the resulting 100-200 mesh powder, wet, in a centrifuge. (and hopefully specific gravity will rule the day, and whatever loose Gold there is will be forced to the bottom of the test tubes) 

If that fails, then I'll move up to a small wave table, and those are proven to separate by specific gravity.

At this time, I can buy a used 20000 rpm centrifuge for 10% of what a small wave table costs, and that fits my
budget, so I think it's worth trying.

I failed in finding a post I'd read some time ago, wherein a GRF member described using a monster hammer mill
at his place of employment to powderize some Gold-bearing material, and then used a centrifuge to get the Gold.

I did that search under centrifuges, maybe I should search under hammer mills, because if this isn't going to work,
I'll just keep on chiseling chips off of boards, and save up for buying a wave table.

Again, I appreciate any and all input!

Cheers,

Mike


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## damezbullion (Jan 16, 2013)

damezbullion said:


> patnor1011 said:
> 
> 
> > You don't really need to pan if you do not want to.
> ...


im sorry is Christ about word on here!


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## Geo (Jan 16, 2013)

damezbullion said:


> damezbullion said:
> 
> 
> > patnor1011 said:
> ...



forum rules prohibit the use of politics and religion as well as abusive language and vulgarities.this forum is world wide and theres a large range of ethnicity and religious beliefs represented on the forum. these subjects have nothing to do with refining or precious metals and are in the least, disruptive. please dont take offence but it would be the same if another member invoked the name of their deity.


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## butcher (Jan 16, 2013)

Thanks Geo, for the explanation.

I will not take offence.
And I hope no one else does.

I really do not like use the bright letters, to get a point across.

Nor do I like editing posts of someone trying to get a point across.

I got tired of editing words in the posts made, I really do not have time to search for offensive words in every post, and delete them, to try and help keep the forum a place our grandmothers would say what gentlemen we are and something we can all be proud of.

Each member (gentleman or lady) can edit his or her own post.


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## damezbullion (Jan 16, 2013)

butcher said:


> Thanks Geo, for the explanation.
> 
> I will not take offence.
> And I hope no one else does.
> ...


no i didn't particularly like the use of big bright letters either! somewhat labeling me foul mouthed citizen, im sure the inbox feature would of satisfactory enough to inform me of this or deleting the post as i feel somewhat embarrassed as no one was none the wiser to the actual word you deleted!, i do apologize, but my grandma believes in free speech, imho id be offended if anyone was offended, wasnt like i was using the name in vain but to describe something as great, but yes, i get the point ,ill find other ways to express my charismatic ways


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## 924T (Jan 16, 2013)

It turns out that g_axelsson was right--------I called a buddy of mine that had worked in a factory metallurgical
lab many years ago, and it turned out they had used centrifuges, atomic spectrometers, etc., so he had a lot
of experience in these centrifuge matters.

He said it's called cohesive bonding, wherein one or more "layers" of similar material would probably form, thus
blocking other material from passing (if running a thick wet material). So, the only way for it to work at all would
be to run a small amount of material in a lot of liquid, which would take so bloody long for what I'm looking
at doing, that it wouldn't be worth it.

Ah, research! The results are what they are, whether they are what you wanted them to be, or not.

So, it looks like I'm down to 3 options: using ultrasonics to "settle" the ground-up material into layers,
a temporarily unaffordable wave table, both of which can be done indoors, or some variant of the Patnor Process,
which must be done outdoors.

Cheers,

Mike


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## patnor1011 (Jan 16, 2013)

Check NoIdeas video, his burner device produces very little if any smoke, works like charm and then just wash ashes away. I mean you probably will have to incinerate. Big boys also incinerate everything, whole boards but they do have safe way to do it and expensive hardware to process results efficiently.


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## rusty (Jan 16, 2013)

924T said:


> It turns out that g_axelsson was right--------I called a buddy of mine that had worked in a factory metallurgical
> lab many years ago, and it turned out they had used centrifuges, atomic spectrometers, etc., so he had a lot
> of experience in these centrifuge matters.
> 
> ...



Knelson claims patent of this centrifugal centrifuge, but the fact is there are may other companies that manufacture a similar piece of equipment.

http://www.knelsongravitysolutions....tworks-batch-english.swf&width=530&height=350

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O35w9NbSK4c[/youtube]


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## 924T (Jan 27, 2013)

Rusty,

I did some web searches, but all I could find were the Knelson concentrators-----------didn't find any clones.

Those things must be expensive, because none of the websites I hit gave a price, which usually means the
price is so high that they insist on the opportunity to have you call them to find out, so they can work a lot
of value justification into the conversation.

Cheers,

Mike


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## kjavanb123 (May 17, 2014)

Hi, 

Any follow up on this post? I am also trying to process 26lbs of ICs, and was thinking to grind to fine powder, remove the magnetite, separate the ash and non-ferrous, melt the non-ferrous to copper anode to be processed in a copper refining cell, use cyanide on magnetite parts, and use a blue bowl to get the gold from the fine powder. I tried incinereation, and still produced smoke, so it has to be done one by one using the method shown by smauel_a, which for me taking a long time for this quantity.

Regards
Kevin


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