• Please join our new sister site dedicated to discussion of gold, silver, platinum, copper and palladium bar, coin, jewelry collecting/investing/storing/selling/buying. It would be greatly appreciated if you joined and help add a few new topics for new people to engage in.

    Bullion.Forum

Gold not precipitating after showing with stannous chloride

Gold Refining Forum

Help Support Gold Refining Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Dear Martijn
Thanks for your reply, yes I have done with complete safety precautions, I have checked waste liquid with stannous chloride it is not showing any thing.
you are right that our ore contain gold, platinum, palladium and Rhodium too, But nothing recovered yet except gold, I have to know how to recover and precipitate it.
is AR dissolve PT, Pd, Rh, Ag all ?
best regards
 
AR will recover Gold, Platinum and Palladium. To some extent Rh if finely dispersed but minimal Silver due to pacification by AgCl.

The challenge for PGMs is to get them out of solution, cementation will take care of that, but has to be done correctly.
 
I guess you mean DMG.
And yes if it is done correctly.

But with low amounts, I would just drop everything with copper after SMB.
There are always losses, micrograms from grams are not too bad, worse from milligrams.
The losses will most likely be around same anyway.

Put the remaining liquids in the stock pot and save the powders from the first cementation for later refining when there are enough to warrant a new run.
When you transfer your stock pot to waste, collect the slimes and add them to the powders from cementation.
 
Hi, pool acid has an ingredient that keeps the Chlorine in solution so Aqua Regia made with Muriatic acid just redesolves the gold so it will not precipitate properly. Use Sodium thiosulfate to neutralise the excess Chlorine Gas still in solution . use very little as to much will redesolve the gold again .
Couldn't you just boil it for lke 20-30 minutes and that would do the trick?
 
Near a river you say. You (may) have sand containing placer gold.
Are you paying for bags of tailings or concentrates or just sand dug up and you're concentrating it? Not quite clear to me.

That assay report is from sept. 2019, describing crushed ore... now is it sand or crushed ore? Ore comes from hard rock mining, placer gold sand is classified, washed and concentrated.
Did you pay for this assay, and why wait three years before processing this ore?

Are you sure he's your friend? Friends are not always the best buisiness partners.

Sounds to me he once got a good assay and now uses that to sell river sand with magnetic black sands.

Anyway, i believe your possible gold containing sand was concentrated in the ground by river gravity separation in stead of hard rock, so It can be washed back out again.

No need for chemistry imo.

Classify better to comparable particle size and you can separate it all better.
Separate iron from gold with a magnet under water, preferably where the gold line on the shaker table starts and repeat several times on both concentrate and magnetic tailings to get a better separation each time. You will drag some gold out with the iron. So redo that a couple of times to purify the gold. Put the magnet in a bag to get the iron off easily.

Once you have clean gold concentrate, just melt into a ingot and sell it with a bit of impurities. The buyer will scan the purity and pay you accordingly.

Do you have a picture of the concentrates you processed with AR?

Why do you want to refine it further?

Assuming you've at least watched the safety lesson and have improved your safety standard:

To test for pm's with AR, dissolve a bit of the concentrate from the bottom in a test tube.
Add a bit of concentrate to a test tube, cover it in HCl and add one drop of nitric.

To speed the reaction up safely, you could au-bain-marie the test tube in hot water.
Add HNO3 one drop at a time until no more reaction is happening, so there are no more tiny bubbles forming upon addition of one drop of HNO3.
If you had to add relatively much HNO3, the reaction could be stopping because of low HCl level, adding two drops of HCL will show that.
When the reaction is done, all metals exept for silver will have dissolved, you can pick up one drop of the hopefully pregnant solution with a glass stirring rod and let it fall off in a spotplate or on a filter paper. Or dip a filter tip in the solution with a pincet, wetting only milimeters is enough.

Add one or two drops of stannous and watch if there is any purple discoloring. If its too dark to see, add a drop of water until its dilute enough to see. Only purple is gold! Brown is not.
Oh, and iron dissolved in HCl looks just like gold chloride! Nice and deep yellow color.

To make things clear: the only thing i've ever panned was gold bonding wires from 50 grams of IC chips...and made a fortune..., not! LOL
8 years GRF membership and my curiosity got me this far.
So my help regarding placer gold is purely theoretical.
But I will get corrected by other members if talk nonsense.

I'm really curious what your replies and results are.

Good luck!
It looks similar right? I've never had an iron chloride solution go from deep red, to orange, to bright yellow (with more solution) It usually just stay a murkey dull maroon/dull yellowish color.
 
PGM's as salts are not for the hobbyist imo. Way to toxic. Cement out the values and melt with lead and silver then cupel. Or sell as wet cement. (if anyone even buys that)
The cemented residues are metal and as such not toxic.
They will contain some Copper.
Can be powder or melted.
Depends on the further use.
 
The cemented residues are metal and as such not toxic.
They will contain some Copper.
Can be powder or melted.
Depends on the further use.
i was adding to your statement 'if done correctly'
I guess you mean DMG.
And yes if it is done correctly.
Which is easier said that done. i heard PGM salts get everywhere and you need ultra high lab hygiene to stay healthy.

I agree after SMB, just go to the stockpot and leave those nasties in there until you can sell it or smelt with lead and cupel. Adding the silver is be to be able to cupel all the lead out by lowering melting point with silver, or the button will solidify before all lead is out.
 
Boiling will do little with Nitric.
Either evaporate completely or use Sulfamic acid if you have excess.
No but I mean boiling after nuetralizing the nitric with sulfamic to get rid of any free chlorine. I hear muriatic has additives that hold in the chlorine and won't release it unless violently boiling it.
 
No but I mean boiling after nuetralizing the nitric with sulfamic to get rid of any free chlorine. I hear muriatic has additives that hold in the chlorine and won't release it unless violently boiling it.
Do not listen to all you hear.
Read Hokes book in stead.
The Chlorine in HCl are bound up and pose no issue.
The free Chlorine from Bleach or pool Chlorine can but will easily be released by time or heat.
 
Do not listen to all you hear.
Read Hokes book in stead.
The Chlorine in HCl are bound up and pose no issue.
The free Chlorine from Bleach or pool Chlorine can but will easily be released by time or heat.
ive read it, im trying to not evaporate 3 times though, seems like very old info. I mean Im super confused on why we still refer people to a book from the 50's. Chat gpt can literally read the book for you and give you the info. Why waste people's time u know? 98 percent of people on here have gone through enough torture and have thoroughly earned the info.
 
ive read it, im trying to not evaporate 3 times though, seems like very old info. I mean Im super confused on why we still refer people to a book from the 50's. Chat gpt can literally read the book for you and give you the info. Why waste people's time u know? 98 percent of people on here have gone through enough torture and have thoroughly earned the info.
Why do many longtime members of this forum recommend Hoke? Really? Well, here is the answer: Refining Precious Metal Wastes, despite having been in publication for about 80 years, is still the best primer on the subject. Frugalrefiner has gone to great lengths to provide versions that are screen readable or printer friendly, and has provided some updates regarding various issues surrounding the original.

My advice to anyone wanting to learn to refining of precious metals is to read Hoke. Read it again. The third time through, write down notes and questions with real pen on real paper. The process of writing in this manner helps most to better ask questions they may have.

This is also the advice I give anyone, including myself, when something new is to be learned.

ChatGPT can read it to you, but can answer little should you have questions, and in many cases is just plain wrong. Of course, any AI is only as good as its software.

Yes, I am rude. Thank you for noticing.

Time for more coffee.
 
ive read it, im trying to not evaporate 3 times though, seems like very old info. I mean Im super confused on why we still refer people to a book from the 50's. Chat gpt can literally read the book for you and give you the info. Why waste people's time u know? 98 percent of people on here have gone through enough torture and have thoroughly earned the info.
Due to its age some techniques and procedures have changed.
Some due to increased understanding of dangers and others due to improved processes.
The chemistry have not, since it is universal.
I guess the reason we endorse it, is that it is written in a basic language which is understandable for most anyone that can read English.
Next the techniques are easy laid out and described.

And yes if you have read it you deserve the information therein as you have given it some effort.
As anyone else coming here and asking advice, we do however prefer not to spoon feed our members.
I feel sorry for you if you feel reading a book is considered torture, maybe you should change hobby to something less painful?

And the different AI's I consider more like parrots at least for the time being.
They are powerful vacuum cleaners soaking up what ever is on the net,
They are however not capable of reasoning and differentiating between good and bad advice.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top