MarcoP said:
Kurt, that sounds like a plan. It will somewhat screw up yields data but costs and wastes are reduced to its minimum.
I thought copper cells would only run with copper sulfate, but I see I was wrong.
Marco
When processing my own stuff I stopped worrying about "yield data" a long time ago --- I have been at this long enough now that I have a good
ball park idea of what should come out based on what went in --- its now about volume & efficient speed - I don't throw anything out till the batch/process is done - if it is plus or minus "a bit" of the expected but still in the ball park then its done - if its not in the expected ball park I know how & were to go back & look for what got missed & then how to deal with it - if its for a customer - that's another story - things are then done so I can account to the customer at the end if need be
As far as the copper cell goes any copper saturated (acidic) solution will work - it could be copper saturated AR - but then you would most likely part gold from the anode to the cathode as well
If your goal is to purify copper then yes copper sulfate is what you want for electrolyte - also if you want all your PMs in the slime then copper sulfate & you want your anode to be up around 95 - 98% copper (you want the high copper content anode to prevent electrolyte corruption & co-depositing in this case - which is purifying copper)
That's not my case -
I am not trying to purify copper - my goal is to part base metal from gold & reduce the amount of wet chem waste in the process
So I don't care if metal other then copper goes to the cathode - in fact I want it to --- also I don't care if my electrolyte gets corrupted due to low copper content in the anode because I am using a waste/by product (copper nitrate from cementing silver) as my electrolyte
And I don't care if PMs other then gold end up in the electrolyte &/or at the cathode (Like Pd & Ag) because anything in the electrolyte can be cemented out & the "dirty" cathode copper can be used for cementing this & values from other solutions which recovers any values in the cathode copper as well
So - it becomes a "circuit" process - wherein you are using the by product from one process to preform a task in another process & thereby reducing your wet chem waste by a significant amount
A 70% copper anode run this way will reduce to about 11 - 15% of slimes (which will still contain some base metals) so you have reduced the amount of metals that need "
fresh" chem treatment by 85 - 89% --- & you have lost no values --- you have just changed the way you go about recovering them
If you want to reduce the waste created by wet chem processing you have to start with incineration/milling & smelting & then figure out the "by product" - "task preforming" process to make it a processing "circuit"
It is of course more detailed then explained here - but it works --- a bigger furnace/incinerator & ball mill (cement mixer) are two of the best investment I made
Kurt