# Au, ag, and pgm recovery method.



## kens08 (Jan 31, 2012)

I have cons that are inclusive of Ag, Au, and several PGM groups. For years I've been using nitric acid for my silver recovery and AR for the gold. Now I'm faced with an ore that has gold, silver, platinum and palladium group metals. What proceedure should be to used, and in what order of precipation would you recommend if using aqua regia. Thank you.......
Ken Sheppard
Old Woman Springs Mining Company
Joshua Tree, CA


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## butcher (Feb 1, 2012)

kens08,

If your using nitric and aqua regia on your ore concentrate , I am assuming your metals are in elemental state, is this a high quartz ore? 

What is the composition of the ore? how are you concentrating the values, what pretreatments like roasting are you using if any, are you pre-leaching base metals, or just separating with gravity?

Generally ore, or rock can be very complex, many are made from acids, like from sulfur in high temperature and pressures in volcano’s (sulfide ore), 

Which can be a gang mixture of metal sulfides and many other chemical compositions, sulfide's are very common, but ore can be made from many other types of substances, like carbonates, arsenates, arsenides, chlorides, fluorides, hydroxides, oxides, borates, chromates molybdates, silicates, and others, different ores can react with these acids we use differently, as the metals we are trying to leach or dissolve in our acid can actually be a metal salt that can change the chemistry within our acids. 

Hokes book will tell you how to deal with metals in solution, and if you need an understanding of this it is a very good book for any miner, although she does not deal in ore, 

C.W. Ammen’s Recovery and refining of precious metals is also a very good book, it is geared more toward mining (I got my Book at Action Mining), they also sell Hokes, although we have a free download for Hokes on forum, and there have been member who found Hoke’s book cheaper from other places.

With these two books you can learn a tremendous amount I highly recommend both.

I only mine as a hobby and cannot give much advice in this area, I have learned some things. But I also have found this can also be complicated, as not all ores are created equal, they can all be a different chemical complex and will act differently, and should be treated differently depending as to what it is. Although some things of how they can be treated is similar, not everyone will act the same.

Also be very careful of putting ore in acids, sometimes (some types of ore), the gases formed are extremely toxic, a few good whiffs could put you in a pine box 6 foot under.

We do have some very knowledgeable people on the forum that may be able to help you, look at the mining section, Chris Reno, Rock man, and others, May be able to give some pointers, the more details you can give about your ore the better they may be able to help.

You need more detail to your question; it is like asking how heavy is a rock.


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## kens08 (Feb 1, 2012)

Thanks for the reply.....the ore is coming to me in concentrated form so I don't have a history of its beginning or composition. I'll probably send a sample out to a metalluragist for him to take a peek at and give me some details on it's composition then decide to continue on with processing. I also have Ammen and Hoke's books which I refer to often, but they don't really give me a sequence of digestion. I'm trying to drop silver, gold and pgm's from AR all from the same batch and if that can be done, what are the steps and sequence of dropping them.
Thanks for the reply
Ken


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## butcher (Feb 4, 2012)

Working with ore is not usually like working with purer metals, sometimes our leaching may just be removing undesirables, before we leach the metals, sometimes we leach these metals into a solution only to cement them out still in an impure state, to be refined later.

Studying is about the only way to learn, there are many variables so it is not as simple as a one page answer, or even a two book answer, but these two books will begin to help you understand.


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