# Rhodium Tests.



## Anonymous

I came across a pan load of this silverish-lightbrown reflective material in my gold pan. heavier than the black sand. Im not to sure what it is but I think it might be Rhodium. Would anyone know what i could use to test it? I have found platinum and gold in the same area.


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## lazersteve

Seco,

Welcome to the forum.

I found this info about Rhodium:



Standard Method of Chemical Analysis said:


> *Rhodium*
> *DETECTION*
> Rhodium is found only in platinum ores. It is a white metal, difficultly
> fusible, and insoluble in acids. Rhodium, however, dissolves in aqua regia
> when alloyed with platinum, to a cherry red solution. It is also soluble in
> molten phosphoric acid and dissolves when fused with acid potassium sulphate with
> the formation of K3Rh(SO2)3. If the metal is treated with chlorine in the presence of
> sodium chloride there forms a soluble salt, Na3RhCl4.
> Rhodium monoxide, RhO, is obtained by heating the hydroxide Rh(OII)3,
> by cupellation of an alloy of rhodium and lead, or by igniting the finely-divided metal in a
> current of air. It is a grey powder with a metallic appearance, and is not attacked by acids,
> and when heated in hydrogen is reduced with evolution of light.
> The oxide, Rh203, is obtained as a grey iridescent spongy mass by heating the nitrate.
> It is also formed as a crystalline mass when sodium rhodochloride is heated in oxygen.
> It is perfectly soluble in acids
> Rhodium dioxide,
> RhO2, is obtained by repeated fusions of the metal with
> KOH and KNO3. It is attacked neither by alkalies nor by acids and is reduced by hydrogen
> only at a high temperature.
> Hydrogen sulphide precipitates from hot solution and incompletely a brown rhodium sulphide, Rh2S4.
> Potassium hydroxide precipitates at first a yellow hydroxide, Rh(OHU -
> f-H2O soluble in an excess of the reagent. If boiled, a gelatinous, dark-brown hydroxide, Rh(OH)3,
> separates. A solution of NasRhCU does not show this reaction immediately, but the precipitate appears
> in the course of time. An addition of alcohol causes a black precipitate immediately.
> Ammonium hydroxide produces a yellow precipitate which is insoluble in
> HCl.
> Potassium nitrite precipitates from hot solutions a bright yellow precipitate
> of double nitrite of potassium and rhodium.
> Zinc, iron and formic acid precipitate rhodium as a black metal.
> Hydrogen reduces rhodium salts.
> To detect small amounts of rhodium in the presence of other metals,
> evaporate the solution and displace with a fresh solution of sodium hypo-
> chlorite; the yellow precipitate formed is soluble after an addition of acetic
> acid. After a long agitation the solution changes to an orange-yellow color
> and after a short time the color passes and finally a grey precipitate settles and the solution turns sky-blue.
> 
> *ESTIMATION *
> Rhodium is estimated mainly in ores, thermo couples and salts.
> Preparation and Solution of the Sample
> When rhodium is estimated in thermo couples or other alloys of platinum
> and rhodium the wire or sample is rolled to a thin ribbon and dissolved in
> aqua regia. Both metals will go into solution, forming the chlorides of rhodium and platinum.
> The aqua regia will have to be replaced from time to time, as the alloy dissolves slowly.
> 
> The rhodium from salts is precipitated with zinc and the black metallic
> rhodium cleaned with dilute aqua regia, filtered, washed, ignited and reduced with hydrogen.
> Some alloys and ores are alloyed with silver and the silver and platinum
> are dissolved in HNO3. The residue is cleaned with aqua regia, dried, and
> weighed as metallic rhodium. If the residue is ignited reduce with hydrogen.
> The material or residue containing rhodium is fused with KHSO4 for some
> time at a low red heat and the mass leached with hot water acidified with HCl.
> The rose-red solution contains the rhodium.



Steve


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## blueduck

seco said:


> I came across a pan load of this silverish-lightbrown reflective material in my gold pan. heavier than the black sand. Im not to sure what it is but I think it might be Rhodium. Would anyone know what i could use to test it? I have found platinum and gold in the same area.



you could have several metals other than Rh there, I pan on a creek here in Central Idaho and come up with a similat metalic lookin mineral every now and again but not in large enough quantity to do have done a fire assay, was suggested to me that it might be Monazite [scroll down to the characteristics, though SG may not be heavy enough to meet your specs you outlined] though I still dont know for sure [ i have a couple five gallon buckets of concentrates from that creek in the shop waiting for me to pan them down and I may have some of the same material] the other metals to wonder about is mercury pregnant with gold, and then some lead alloys

how much do you have of it? is it covered with a sulfide? Do you have sulfides on your ore bodies in that area? We have black telluride and brown as well and we even have some other rare metals in a couple streams around Central Idaho as well.... might want to find a shaker table to separate everything out to SG [specific gravity] and test from there Action mining M4 table is a neat little bench table I would love to get one day when i decide to get into testing things more and can justify something like that to my wife.....

William


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## Irons

Rhodium is closer to Silver and Palladium in density, so it would probably wash off with the float. It rarely can be found in a free state. When it does, its so small you can barely see it under a microscope.


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## Irons

I have noticed that when finely divided Rhodium is boiled in Sulphuric Acid, the solution may turn a faint but bright pink on heating (Rhodium Sulphate). The solution will turn clear as the solution cools and is left standing due to the precipitation of the Rhodium out of solution.

It is a very distinctive color.


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## blueduck

when you say "boiled" can you be a little more specific as to temperatire of the sulfuric acid.... is that a rolling boil or just high heat..... I myself am probably not gonna attempt boiling sulfuric at this time for my laboratory is just not equipped for enough safety redundancy..... and though I am not emergency room prone, I may wait for awhile before attempting that high of a temp.

William


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## Irons

30% H2SO4 heated to a simmer. Sulphuric Acid won't evaporate to any degree at that temperature. I would still take the appropriate safety precautions. 

Generally, I put the test container in a borosilicate (Pyrex or equivalent) dish with enough water to heat the sample. You don't want to add too much and have your sample become unstable. I never apply a direct flame to any sample that contain PGM's. I've seen unpredictable violent reactions when samples were superheated.

Remember, PGM's are very effective catalysts and react in unpredictable ways with materials in uncontrolled situations.

This test is faint, so you have to leach out other Elements that have colored ions that would interfere with seeing the Rhodium.

Unles your concentration of Rhodium is very high, say 10-20%, it would be too faint to see with the naked eye. If you're looking at ore samples, the concentrations would probably be in the Parts per Billion range and undetectable without very sophisticated apparatus.

This won't work as a field test because the Rhodium would probably be a component of an alloy of the PGM's. 

Any Iridium would probably interfere, as it is slightly soluble in H2SO4 and makes highly colored salts.

It was just an observation with a quantity of metal.

Before you fool around with Platinum Group Metals, you should study the subject.

Mistakes can be very expensive. A Troy ounce of Rhodium Spot price was $6, 030. today.

My advice is to pay the $350. or so to a reputable lab and let them do it.


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## Irons

http://www.platinummetalsreview.com/jmpgm/data/image.do?img_id=710&database=cesdatabase


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## goldsilverpro

Great chart but hard to read. Not much attack by anything for Rhodium. I notice that Rhenium (Re) is listed as a Pt Gp metal. Some list it and some don't. Since Platinum Metals Review is the definitive Pt Gp publication, I guess Re should be included.

I just noticed that the chart can be magnified.


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## blueduck

I saved the image and my viewer blew it up even better than my browser did.....

So if nothing is appreciable to corrode Rh how can one test for it?

I was watching the history channel the other day and wathed the folks in Kalifornia use Sulfuric on the alumina in cats to eat it all away before goong after the plat group..... their vat after it had been disolved and AR added was a really pretty yellow even on the tube..... they said a 400 pound barrel of cat alumina valued out at about $24,000.00 give or take when it was recorded Pt was at $1200.... so it give me some idea of what was in a cat to a degree, what they did not get into was the total process.... the show was on acids on modern marvels

http://store.aetv.com/html/product/index.jhtml?id=106420 

a person can buy it for $25, the segment did not last more than a few minutes.... but the whole show was worth watching as they had a chemist on there showing disintegration of a hotdog and a chicken bone in muriatic which he showed at about 9 hours as being gone...... so a fella dont want to fall into a vat of it eh?..... showed elector polishing stainless steel using acid a too and talked about that company cleaning the acid and reusing it by adding another chemical.... the program is worth catching again and might even be worth purchasing for safety lessons for some folks.

William


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## goldsilverpro

http://www.mininova.org/tor/919340



> The residue left over from leaching the original mineral concentrate contains rhodium, iridium, ruthenium, and osmium. This is treated with molten sodium bisulfate to convert the rhodium to rhodium sulfate. The rhodium is then solubilized by water leaching, separated from the insolubles, and precipitated from solution by reduction with zinc powder. The crude rhodium metal product is converted to a soluble salt by treatment with chlorine and sodium chloride at high temperature, dissolved in water, precipitated with sodium nitrite, filtered, redissolved, and reprecipitated with ammonium chloride. This final precipitate is reduced to a pure metal powder.



This is quoted from here:

http://www.goldandsilvermines.com/platinum.htm

It sounds more like a refining method than a testing method. However, the first part is the same for the testing. You have to dissolve the sample in molten sodium bisulfate. I think the melting point is about 600F for the anhydrous variety. It's cheap as an industrial quality chemical. I would use a Coors porcelain crucible and a hot, hot plate. Rhodium, in nearly any form, will dissolve. What you do with the resulting rhodium sulfate is another story.


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## lazersteve

Here's the method posed by web elements:

Preliminary treatment of the ore or base metal byproduct is required to remove silver, gold, palladium, and platinum. The resulting residue is melted with sodium bisulphate (NaHSO4) and the resulting mixture extracted water to give a solution containing rhodium sulphate, Rh2(SO4)3.
The rhodium is precipitated out as the hydroxide by addition of sodium hydroxide, NaOH, and redissolved in hydrochloric acid, HCl, to give H3RhCl6. This is treated with NaNO2 and NH4Cl to form a precipitate of the rhodium complex (NH4)3[Rh(NO2)6]. Dissolution of the precipitate in HCl gives a solution of pure (NH4)3RhCl6. Evaporation to dryness and burning under hydrogen gas gives pure rhodium.

Steve


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## aflacglobal

I was jumping thru P2P sites earlier looking for that. Thanks chris. I'm going to put this on my aflac page. lol


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## goldsilverpro

That video is excellent, blueduck. Great visual evidence of the dangers of the acids we use. It's a must for everyone on the forum.


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## Irons

This is a useful site. This page provides data on emission lines.

Emission spectroscopy is an old technique and is not as sensitive as atomic absorption but it has the advantage of being able to use solid samples.

The sample is placed in a Graphite cup and a carbon rod is used as the other electrode to form an arc. The light emitted by the arc will have spectral lines that are specific to the elements present in the sample. A diffraction grating is used to break up the light into the component wavelengths and the respective emission lines show up as bright lines in the spectrum.

Try and build your own using an old CD as difraction grating. An old toaster makes a good ballast for the arc.

http://www.qivx.com/ispt/elements/ptw_045.php

It's one of my to do projects..


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## goldsilverpro

blueduck,

I watched the video and I think it said that the catalyst treated in sulfuric was an oil refining catalyst. The value numbers would most probably be different than autocats. Also the ceramic matrix could be different and the hydrocarbon residues on the autocat material could cause problems. The hydrocarbons could be burned off but, I read on another forum that calcining alters the ceramic composition and makes it much more impervious to the action of acids. Instead of burning, the HC could probably be removed with a solvent or, maybe, warm NaOH. All in all, though, it would be worth a trial to see if the sulfuric will dissolve the autocat ceramic, as is. The metals would then settle out. It may take a lot of acid, but the Pt Gp value is so high that it would probably be worth it. Also, the recovery would be near 100%. Large volumes of waste acid, saturated with the ceramic, would have be a big consideration.


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## blueduck

WEl then I guess the next step would be to tear one out and break some up and put some acid to it.....

now my question would be would the jug for replenishing a battery a fella gets down to the parts house be strong enough as is or does it need be refined/ distilled for use??? I know somewhere on the forum i read how to do so, and probably saved to disk the way to get it done and maybe it was even one of catfish's recipes that he emailed me but I know it is a source for Sulfuric, just cant remember the strength.... 

I am spread so thin sometimes I just cannot remember the really simple things.....

William


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## aflacglobal

The battery acid is about 30-35 % if i remember right. You can boil it to remove the water and concentrate the acid. Water boils at a lower temperature that the sulfuric acid, so the water will boil off first if you don't raise the temp to high. You will wind up some where in the 90% range. :arrow: :arrow: :arrow: 


How to produce concentrated sulfuric acid from battery acid. 

Use regular battery acid acquired from your local NAPA store. This can be purchased in one (1) quart, 1 ½ gallons, or 5 gallons quantities. This diluted acid is inexpensive. 

Assumptions: 

Regular battery acid is 65% water (H2O) and 35% sulfuric acid (H2SO4). This computes to 1.25 grams specific gravity per cubic cm or 1 ml. (Often referred to as 1250 specific gravity.) This is only 1.25 x 1000ml, another way of saying it. 

Distilled water is 1.0 grams specific gravity per cubic cm or 1 ml. 

98.3% pure sulfuric acid weighs 1.84 grams specific gravity per 1ml. 

Heat required = mass x specific heat x temperature change. 1 gram of water (H2O) takes 1 calorie to change the temperature 1 degree C. 

Water (H2O) boils at 212 F or 100 C. 

Sulfuric acid (H2SO4) boils at 640.4 F or 338 C. 

To make concentrated sulfuric acid: 

Take 100 ml of battery acid and place in a heat resistant container, Pyrex or equivalent and heat on a hot plate or equivalent heat source. Preferably out doors. 

Weigh 1 ml of distilled H2O in a 10ml test tube or equivalent container on a small electronic scale in grams with at least + or – 1/10th gram accuracy. This should weigh 1.0 grams. Remember to zero your meter with empty test tube on it in-order to get an accurate specific gravity weight. 

Weigh 1 ml of the battery acid H2SO4 using the same procedure and you should come up with 1.20 to 1.25 SG per 1 ml. This can vary somewhat due to the charged state of the electrolyte (battery acid) no problem, this is just a relative reading. 

Place hot plate in a metal container in case you have breakage or mishap. I use a metal foot tub. This also blocks the wind from the hot plate and allows it to be more efficient in heating. 

Place a good grade glass thermometer in the solution and monitor. 

Place on high heat and watch temperature until the solution reaches ~230 F or 110 C. 

The solutions will be at a low boil and you will be able to see the boiling action and also observe the steam rising off it. 

Maintain the temperature at 230 F until all boiling action stops. The steam will stop rising too. Note: the amount of time for the solution to boil off all the water will be determined by the mass of your solutions. 100ml takes about 40 to 45 minutes. This may vary due to several factors, such as ambient temperature and quantity or volume of your solution. 

Let the solution cool to room temperature and take 1 ml of it and weigh it like you did the battery acid. Take the remaining solution and measure the volume that is left. It should be ~ 35 ml this time you should have a specific gravity of ~1.80 per ml. if you have boiled all the water off the solution. 

The remaining acid should be 90% plus if you measure 1.80 or above. Remember that pure H2SO4 (98.3% concentration) weighs 1.84 grams per ml. Just do the math and 1.84 -1.0 =.84 /.855 (theoretical 100% Concentration) = 98.3% Realistic concentration. Divide 1.855 into your last specific gravity weight and this product will be the percentage of concentration of your finished product. Example 1.80 -1.0 =.80/.855 = 93.6%. This should meet any requirements you may encounter in the gold recovery/refining business. 

This sulfuric acid is very pure and has no additives or inhibitors. It is great for the electrolytic cell and many other uses such as making nitric acid. 

Be careful. Hot acid burns. 

If you have any questions send me an email or post. 

Catfish


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## blueduck

Thanks

As soon as i started reading the procedure i knew where i have it located, now i have it printed out and put inside my notebook where it should have been but i had not got to it yet..... 

William


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## goldsilverpro

I don't know what strength you need, blueduck. It didn't say. The battery acid may be strong enough. It may even be too strong. Temperature could be a big factor. I would do some small experiments in, say, 5 or 10 gram samples. When you experiment, weigh and measure everything and keep records. It makes your life easier when you gear up.


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## lazersteve

I don't have any beads on hand, but I do have some honeycomb. I could run a quick test for the forum and let you guys know if it works.

I have some beads coming next week. 

I'll try diluted and concentrated acid to see which works, if either.

Steve


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## blueduck

steve,

that is about all i can do too, just use some busted up honeycomb which it appeared that the comb that was show on the history channel modern marvels was pulverized of some way.....

what little i know about the auto cats is they have hydrocarbon residue on them, in sulfide form [ergo the rotten egg smell you get behind a car once in awhile] will sulfuric attack through the sulfide? 

if indeed it takes care of the alumina will then the sulfide residue be left in the metals? [only having high school chemistry under me has its drawbacks, I can remember certain things about sulfur precipitates, but we only went so far] In the action mining catalog they make reference that if your ore [and this constitutes an ore of type] has sulfides you need some different chemicals added to your leach mix [for their leach process which is around $8000.00 to purchase and of course is outside my budget at this time in history.... and i probably could build the unit if i thought about it and wanted to run 150 pounds of cats every few days..... which sounds like harder work while in the learning curve, but ive been wrong before]

as far as type of cats go, i believe that they are all the same strucure and composition, some are larger and some newer ones [2005 and newer] have a little more precious metals inside them, though I am still not clear on the quantity increase but under stand it may be a couple grams of Pt at the least. So the ones from refinerys will have more in them and probably cost more to get aholt of [not knowing anyone in the oil refinery business is a drawback] the ones from woodstoves in parts of the several states that require such will have PGM's as well and are bigger than auto cats and probably wont have the sulfide problem that autos do....if it is a problem.

thanks guys, you all have brought me back to where i jumped into this forum several months ago, but I am armed with greater knowledge by far than what i would have had on my own..... and a few folks i consider as friends, if only in a forum of electrons on a screen, you all are awesome mentors.

William


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## lazersteve

All,
I boiled a sample of honeycomb material in sulfuric acid (1.64 spgr = 74%) for 30 minutes. The acid darkened , but did not test positive for any precious metals. I suspect the darkening was from the carbon residues on the honeycomb as I did not incinerate the sample first.

I then treated the washed sample with boiling AR. The material fizzed with bubbles as typical with AR reactions and turned ever so slightly yellow but did not test positive for PGMs. 

The sample I tested was very small and this may account for the unsuccessful results. 

Given an average total honeycomb mass of 2.273 kg (5 lbs) and estimated PGM content of 2 grams the overall concentration of PGMs is:

2 gm / 2273 gm = 0.0009 PGM concentration ratio

If the PGM content were 4 grams per converter the concentration ratio for an entire converter would be 0.0018.

These concentrations are very low and hence small samples may not yield measurable results without sophisticate test equipment. 

From this experiment I can conclude that even if extraction from small samples was possible for the home refiner, the yields are so low as to be immeasurable. To achieve a measurable sample from a 2 gram per cat honeycomb, you need to process a minimum sample size of 285 gm to yield 0.2565 gm of PGMs.

This all tells me to achieve success on a scale and be cost effective you need to process large quantities of cats. The matter is complicated further by the excessive size of the material compared to the amount of acid required to digest the PGMs. Large scale reactions require larger labware, and the requirement of heating large volumes adds more complexity. Here's a photo of a 10 pound bag of honeycomb material:







Digestion of the substrate seems to be the logical method of achieving success, but digesting the substrate is indeed a problem. Direct AR attack of the metals would be very costly due to the larger volume of the substrate.

I'll post more when my beads arrive.

Steve


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## blueduck

Steve 

in the 30 minutes of boiling in sulfuric, did the substrate dissolve and or burn away? That is what i believe the bit on Modern Marvels revealed, the use of sulfuric was to eat/dissolve the substrate first, they did not say how long, such was in a vat, if they churned it, or if heat was added..... 

It may be we will have to fire the substrate first to remove any hydrocarbon residues..... according to the first information i "bought" that would be an hour at 1100 degrees stirring wile it is "cooking/baking" I got the parts for a flowerpot heat container for using charcoal and a blower to bring the temp up that high or higher. In another thread here there was discussion of a professor who passed away and he burnt his concentrates from panning for gold on a chunk of sheet metal over an open fire [ok he was in central america where the EPA and snooty neighbors probably dont exist in the manner they do elsewhere] but the result is the same heat eats away the sulfides as when the rotten egg smell is gone the "ore" is ready for acids. the information is stored at http://www.prospectorsparadise.com/html/basement.html under the telluride section.... 

William


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## lazersteve

William,

The substrate tested measured 1.00 gram +/- .05 gram before the digestion experiment.

The dried substrate after the experiment weighs 1.00 gram +/- .05 gram.

Either I need to use full strength 98% H2SO4 or sulfuric acid won't dissolve this substrate. I suspect the latter. 

Hopefully I get better results using the beads.

Lastly, my scales are not accurate enough to determine if this very small sample actually changed weight by 0.09 - 0.18%. In the near future I will perform a larger scale experiment and include incineration and full strength 98% concentrated H2SO4. I will weigh the dried substrate after each stage of processing to determine if the substrate is being cleaned, leeched, or dissolved.

Steve


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## blueduck

lazersteve said:


> .....
> Lastly, my scales are not accurate enough to determine if this very small sample actually changed weight by 0.09 - 0.18%. ......
> Steve



I hear ya on the measurement my scale is in no way able to tell on such a small amount either..... in fact i can only measure to a tenth of a gram so I figure I wil have problems weighing anything out to specific gravity until I am able to upgrade to a better device...... I have of course my powder scale for reloading but it is so small and would be hard to use for this purpose...

Thanks for the attempt..... the information is valuable.

William


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## Comanche

Steve, 
I have to presume at this point that you are referring to fusion with sodium bisulfate.
I did not even know that a rhodium mineral would fuse with sodium bisulfate.

I was taught to fuse any mineral suspected of having rhodium or any powder or metal suspected of being rhodium should be fuse with potassium sulfate, which is a much more powerful oxidizer, so that is what I do.

After dissolving the completed fusion in water and filtering to a clear solution, then a small amount of ethyl alcohol is added, which reduces only the rhodium as it's metal out of the solution as a fine black powder. It works for me.


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## Comanche

*Please excuse me! I meant POTASSIUM BISULFATE!!! Not potassium sulfate.*


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## macfixer01

blueduck said:


> I saved the image and my viewer blew it up even better than my browser did.....
> 
> So if nothing is appreciable to corrode Rh how can one test for it?
> 
> I was watching the history channel the other day and wathed the folks in Kalifornia use Sulfuric on the alumina in cats to eat it all away before goong after the plat group..... their vat after it had been disolved and AR added was a really pretty yellow even on the tube..... they said a 400 pound barrel of cat alumina valued out at about $24,000.00 give or take when it was recorded Pt was at $1200.... so it give me some idea of what was in a cat to a degree, what they did not get into was the total process.... the show was on acids on modern marvels
> 
> http://store.aetv.com/html/product/index.jhtml?id=106420
> 
> a person can buy it for $25, the segment did not last more than a few minutes.... but the whole show was worth watching as they had a chemist on there showing disintegration of a hotdog and a chicken bone in muriatic which he showed at about 9 hours as being gone...... so a fella dont want to fall into a vat of it eh?..... showed elector polishing stainless steel using acid a too and talked about that company cleaning the acid and reusing it by adding another chemical.... the program is worth catching again and might even be worth purchasing for safety lessons for some folks.
> 
> William





I wouldn't want to test anyone's moral character here. I just wanted to mention for those interested though, that I noticed the Modern Marvels episode about acids is available out on BitTorrent.

http://www.bt-chat.com/download.php?id=20008

macfixer01


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## Irons

with areas polluted by backyard metal recovery oprations.

There was an outfit down the street that used to salvage electronic scrap on a big scale and ship it to China for reprocessing but they can't export it anymore because of all of the environmental devastation caused by people who didn't know what they were doing, polluting by dumping spent solutions improperly.
I have a feeling that this is going to overtake Meth labs in illegal polution.


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## lazersteve

Irons said:


> I have a feeling that this is going to overtake Meth labs in illegal polution



Let's hope all of our members will be responsible with the disposal of their reaction by products.

Steve


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## Irons

lazersteve said:


> Irons said:
> 
> 
> 
> I have a feeling that this is going to overtake Meth labs in illegal polution
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Let's hope all of our members will be responsible with the disposal of their reaction by products.
> 
> Steve
Click to expand...


I'm not so worried about the people on this forum. There is plenty of safety information here to make most people think things through before they proceed.
What worries me is the yahoo that watches the video once and knows it all, with the resulting mess and improper disposal.

One thing to note as well is that PGMs are pretty inert in massive metallic form but become very poisonous compounds when put in solution.

This is very serious business. Mistakes can be costly in many ways.


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## goldsilverpro

I think the most important thing is to treat and handle the waste chemicals legally and properly. There should be many more threads concerning this subject.

I once heard a real horror story about one of the osmium compounds - some form of osmium chloride, I think. It evaporates at room temperature and the fumes can deposit a metallic osmium coating on the lens of your eye. Scary.


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## Irons

goldsilverpro said:


> I think the most important thing is to treat and handle the waste chemicals legally and properly. There should be many more threads concerning this subject.
> 
> I once heard a real horror story about one of the osmium compounds - some form of osmium chloride, I think. It evaporates at room temperature and the fumes can deposit a metallic osmium coating on the lens of your eye. Scary.



That's one I worry about too. Some Native PGMs contain a couple percent Osmium. It can really ruin your day if you try to smelt it without adequate protection and collection.

It doesn't do any good to make a few bucks and ruin the value of your property in the process.
Cleanups can be very expensive, costing in the Millions and the environmental boys will hand you the bill.


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## goldsilverpro

At last count, there are 5 refineries that I worked for that eventually became EPA SuperFund sites. This was in the '60's, '70's, and early '80's. Everyone dumped everything down the drain back then. No good. There are other ways to do it.


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## Irons

goldsilverpro said:


> At last count, there are 5 refineries that I worked for that eventually became EPA SuperFund sites. This was in the '60's, '70's, and early '80's. Everyone dumped everything down the drain back then. No good. There are other ways to do it.



With the value of Gold and PGM's these days, it's also very profitable to recover everything.

The main problem is dealing with heavy base metals and finding a market. With natural sources of even base metals becoming depleted, recovery is going to be an important resource in the future.

The ideal operation is where inexpensive and benign reagents are used and all effluent and water is recycled in a closed loop. It's expensive to set up but really the only way to go to do it properly.


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## goldsilverpro

The standard methods of refining are generally polluting and people spend tons of money in equipment to handle the pollution. I've always felt the best way would be to develop new non-polluting methods. For example, there are companies, especially in California, that are using purely mechanical methods with no chemicals. The recovery technology in Europe is light years ahead of that in the US.

Where are you in Maine? I spent 3 years near Caribou in the Air Force. Really loved it up there. Would like to return some day.


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## Irons

goldsilverpro said:


> The standard methods of refining are generally polluting and people spend tons of money in equipment to handle the pollution. I've always felt the best way would be to develop new non-polluting methods. For example, there are companies, especially in California, that are using purely mechanical methods with no chemicals. The recovery technology in Europe is light years ahead of that in the US.
> 
> Where are you in Maine? I spent 3 years near Caribou in the Air Force. Really loved it up there. Would like to return some day.



I live near Acadia National Park. 

Back in the 1880's there was a big mining boom in this area. The people who made money were the ones who initially sold the stock in the ventures. I have a bunch of old maps from the perod showing where all the "Gold" and "Silver" mines were.

There is Gold and Silver but the land is worth much more for residential development.


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## jimdoc

goldsilverpro said:


> I notice that Rhenium (Re) is listed as a Pt Gp metal. Some list it and some don't. Since Platinum Metals Review is the definitive Pt Gp publication, I guess Re should be included.



I would say rhenium should be classified a precious metal with this article;
http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUKL2586811220070925?rpc=44&sp=true

http://www.commodityonline.com/news/topstory/newsdetails.php?id=2993


I guess the only scrap source of rhenium would be from the aerospace
industry?


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## Palladium




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## Palladium

:wink:

Start here :arrow: http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=994&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0


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## Platinum

8)


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