# Gold Adsorbents



## SAMMS Adsorbents (Jan 16, 2013)

Has anyone had success using Adsorbents to recover gold form mining waters, stream runoff, or even waste waters?


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## NobleMetalWorks (Jan 16, 2013)

SAMMS Adsorbents said:


> Has anyone had success using Adsorbents to recover gold form mining waters, stream runoff, or even waste waters?




Is this Spam?


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## SAMMS Adsorbents (Jan 16, 2013)

No, I don't think it is ? I just had a few questions for recovery from Adsorbents. I am working on a few things in the lab and just need advice.


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## Traveller11 (Jan 16, 2013)

SAMMS Adsorbents said:


> No, I don't think it is ? I just had a few questions for recovery from Adsorbents. I am working on a few things in the lab and just need advice.



I've had great success. I live near the ocean and I pump sea water through a whole house activated carbon water filter. For every cubic metre of sea water I put through the filter, I recover .05 mg of gold. Just think, if there are 31.1 grams or 31,100 milligrams in a Troy ounce, I only have to pump 622,000 cubic metres of sea water through my filter to recover an ounce of gold!


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## SAMMS Adsorbents (Jan 16, 2013)

I am not interested in the low levels found in ocean water, @ .05 - 5 ppb it's not economical as you just pointed out.


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## jimdoc (Jan 16, 2013)

I call it spam.

Jim


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## SAMMS Adsorbents (Jan 16, 2013)

I just needed advice on leachate differences from different adsorbents.


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## jimdoc (Jan 16, 2013)

If you want to stick around, then I suggest you lose the link from your signature. It is OK to have it on your profile page, but having it on every post is not allowed. 
You can post in the for sale section or the Refiners, Buyers, Assayers, etc. section with the link. But to have it in every one of your posts makes it spam, especially with your first posts. If the moderators want to OK it after a while then that would be OK, but don't count on it.

Jim


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## jimdoc (Jan 16, 2013)

Thank you, and welcome to the forum. Carry on.

Jim


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## SAMMS Adsorbents (Jan 16, 2013)

Thanks for the heads up!


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## Nikademeus (Jan 16, 2013)

Samms,

Read the topic in this same forum by retlaw33 "who is no collecting micron gold from rivers/other waters". It will tell you all you need to know about the subject and the view of 99.99% of the members.


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## Traveller11 (Jan 16, 2013)

SAMMS Adsorbents said:


> I am not interested in the low levels found in ocean water, @ .05 - 5 ppb it's not economical as you just pointed out.




Not economical??!! Day-um, now he tells me....


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## SAMMS Adsorbents (Jan 17, 2013)

Nikademeus said:


> Samms,
> 
> Read the topic in this same forum by retlaw33 "who is no collecting micron gold from rivers/other waters". It will tell you all you need to know about the subject and the view of 99.99% of the members.




Thanks I've read that topic. I guess I am looking for experiences with carbon in leach or carbon in pulp techniques. Basically , I am recovering two types of particles. The first is a brown precipitate powder which can be melted into a nugget. The second is a fine black powder which is almost purple when dried, but this purple power will never get hot enough to melt. Is it just colloidal gold or something else?


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## NobleMetalWorks (Jan 17, 2013)

First, is the website that you originally had posted in your signature, your website?

If the company, and website are not yours, why did you create a screen name that has to do with that particular company? It's not yours to use if the company isn't yours.

If the company is yours, this seems like shameless self promotion!

How are any of us to know what exactly you are talking about if you do not explain the exact circumstances of your project? You are asking what your purple material is, but yet you have not stated how you recovered the purple material, what adsorbent you used, etc. If you want help you are going to have to give a lot more information. If your question is legitimate, and not self promotion, then you need to start from the beginning and explain everything from that point forward.

Scott


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## SAMMS Adsorbents (Jan 17, 2013)

Scott- sorry for the signature with our company page, it was removed. I registered on this forum not to spam, or sell anything, but to gain knowledge on how to recover PMs from my companies Adsorbents. If this rocks the boat, or is against any of forum rules or polices please let me know, and I will correct it as well. 

The short version is that I have two gold adsorbent materials, both remove gold from stock lab solutions (AuCl in Di water) both have a capacity for gold. One has a Thiol group ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiol ) and the other has an Amine complex ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amine ). When I take these loaded materials and add an Aqua Regia mix to strip the metals from the adsorbent , I get similar auric chloride solutions. To those solutions I add SMB & Di to drop the precipitate. From here I get two different precipitates, one being a brown powder, which can be melted down. The second being a fine black powder , which appears purple when dried. Even with extreme heat, this second precipitate can not be melted down. I was only hoping to gain possible info on recovering PMs from adsorbents. Maybe someone with more experience than me may shed light on PMs recovered from different adsorbents and the types of precipitate that can be recovered.

Thanks for the Help!


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## g_axelsson (Jan 17, 2013)

SAMMS Adsorbents said:


> ... both remove gold from stock lab solutions (AgCl in Di water) ...


I think you need to explain that stock solution again, if you get gold from a purely silver chloride solution then you are beyond good. :lol:

Whatever you collect in the end it must be a subset from the chemicals you start with. Do you know for shure that you got gold in your solutions after extracting it from the absorbent? Did you test it with stannous chloride or some other method?
I couldn't see anything about denoxing your AR, did you do that prior to adding SMB?

Göran


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## SAMMS Adsorbents (Jan 17, 2013)

g_axelsson said:


> SAMMS Adsorbents said:
> 
> 
> > ... both remove gold from stock lab solutions (AgCl in Di water) ...
> ...




:lol: AuCl ... Thanks

I checked the solutions both with SnCl and an ICP-MS, both recorded high values. Before the SMB, I let the solutions mix in air over night, both were bright yellow. However, I did not add any additional chemicals to promote de-nox.


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## g_axelsson (Jan 17, 2013)

If you have an ICP-MS at your hand you should be able to answer your questions better than any of our guesses. Just dissolve some of your precipitated powder in AR and test. That will tell you what it is.... or isn't.

Göran


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## NobleMetalWorks (Jan 17, 2013)

SAMMS Adsorbents said:


> Scott- sorry for the signature with our company page, it was removed. I registered on this forum not to spam, or sell anything, but to gain knowledge on how to recover PMs from my companies Adsorbents. If this rocks the boat, or is against any of forum rules or polices please let me know, and I will correct it as well.
> 
> The short version is that I have two gold adsorbent materials, both remove gold from stock lab solutions (AuCl in Di water) both have a capacity for gold. One has a Thiol group ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiol ) and the other has an Amine complex ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amine ). When I take these loaded materials and add an Aqua Regia mix to strip the metals from the adsorbent , I get similar auric chloride solutions. To those solutions I add SMB & Di to drop the precipitate. From here I get two different precipitates, one being a brown powder, which can be melted down. The second being a fine black powder , which appears purple when dried. Even with extreme heat, this second precipitate can not be melted down. I was only hoping to gain possible info on recovering PMs from adsorbents. Maybe someone with more experience than me may shed light on PMs recovered from different adsorbents and the types of precipitate that can be recovered.
> 
> Thanks for the Help!



Your Thio based adsorbent was designed, I assume, to collect colloidal gold. That being the case, if your solution was only AuCl then the purple gold being precipitated would be larger colloidal gold, if it were red or had red color it would be smaller colloidal gold. I am not sure how this is being done by just precipitating with SMB, it might be something in the makeup of the thiol that is allowing SMB to precipitate colloidal gold, maybe someone else can explain why that is happening.

To fix your problem you can re-digest in Aqua Regia and precipitate with SMB again. It might take a very long time for a complete precipitation, maybe 1-2 days. If you have an ORP meter you can check for your reduction potential to make sure you have fully precipitated the gold. 

You should not be able to melt colloidal gold I believe, so attempting to melt it is a useless exercise and could lead to loss of gold if you are using a torch, and blowing it off, etc.

If your solution is dirty, meaning you have other metals present, the purple color may also be tin. But it seems to me, reading your other statements, you are only dealing with AuCl, and lab grad at that?

Hope this helps, sorry about the confusing about your business, etc. Making posts to promote a business, specifically, is usually frowned upon on this forum. Now that I have a better idea and more information I understand your first post better. I apologize if I offended you.

If you are interested in Amine extraction, have you tried Butyl Diglyme? For extracting gold out of acidic solutions it works incredibly efficiently, and with proper treatment you can re-use it.

Scott


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## SAMMS Adsorbents (Jan 17, 2013)

Scott-
No worries, about the earlier posts.

It seems to me I am only having the problem with the amine function group, I suspected it might be colloidal or some other gold complex. The Thiol group seems to precipitate just fine with good recovery. I think for the next round of leaches I am going to try HCL + bleach and Oxalic Acid. Just to see if I produce the same results as with the AR + SMB.

Thanks


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## butcher (Jan 17, 2013)

I do not know the organic chemistry to say, But I would be very careful with that amine group and metals, especially when drying or trying to melt.


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## g_axelsson (Jan 17, 2013)

SBrown said:


> Your Thio based adsorbent was designed, I assume, to collect colloidal gold. That being the case, if your solution was only AuCl then the purple gold being precipitated would be larger colloidal gold, if it were red or had red color it would be smaller colloidal gold. I am not sure how this is being done by just precipitating with SMB, it might be something in the makeup of the thiol that is allowing SMB to precipitate colloidal gold, maybe someone else can explain why that is happening.


If it was designed to collect colloidal gold, why test it with AuCl, that isn't colloidal. Even if it was colloidal, extraction with AR turns it into AuCl again and it will be possible to precipitate it as long as the free nitric is gone.



SBrown said:


> You should not be able to melt colloidal gold I believe, so attempting to melt it is a useless exercise and could lead to loss of gold if you are using a torch, and blowing it off, etc.


Colloidal gold is just metallic gold and have the same melting point as any metallic gold. It is only colloidal if it is suspended in a media, for example water, but before reaching the melting point it will have dried out and then it isn't colloidal any longer. Yes, you could have problem with blowing away the fine powder but that is more a question about melting technique.

Göran


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## NobleMetalWorks (Jan 18, 2013)

g_axelsson said:


> SBrown said:
> 
> 
> > Your Thio based adsorbent was designed, I assume, to collect colloidal gold. That being the case, if your solution was only AuCl then the purple gold being precipitated would be larger colloidal gold, if it were red or had red color it would be smaller colloidal gold. I am not sure how this is being done by just precipitating with SMB, it might be something in the makeup of the thiol that is allowing SMB to precipitate colloidal gold, maybe someone else can explain why that is happening.
> ...



He said it precipitated as being purple in color, it's my understanding that if the solution is only AuCl, and you precipitate a purple color precipitant, that it's colloidal gold. If it's really small particles, it will be red in color. Regardless, re-digesting in AR will allow it to be precipitated again, and hopefully because the adsorbents are no longer present, it will precipitate as the brown color gold we are all so familiar with.

He also stated that he produced a precipitant that is black, or dark purple in color. And when he tried to melt it, 



> The second is a fine black powder which is almost purple when dried, but this purple power will never get hot enough to melt.


Scott


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## SAMMS Adsorbents (Jan 18, 2013)

Here are some images of the particles. I read that colloidal gold is .02- 1.5um depending on color, and particle size. These particles are reading closer to +/- 10um and tend to settle within a few minutes.


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## Palladium (Jan 18, 2013)

Maybe it's just the way the picture was taken but it looks more pink than purple to me. When i have very small gold particles they tend to be violet purple and their is no mistaking the color.


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## NobleMetalWorks (Jan 18, 2013)

Small colloidal gold will have a red tint, medium will have purple, it looks like both to me or some variance of.

Scott


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## Palladium (Jan 18, 2013)

http://www.scribd.com/doc/57058834/Properties-of-Gold-Colloids


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## SAMMS Adsorbents (Jan 28, 2013)

Here's the latest recovery with HCL+ H202 + Oxalic Acid. This method seemed to work nicely with the amine functional material. It produced a fine flake and looks extremely clean.


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