How to avoid exposure to PGMs when refining

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NobleMetalsRecovery

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I have recently read on the forum some posts cautioning about the toxicity of the salts of the PGM's.

I will be refining mostly ceramic CPU's, maybe some fiber CPU's, fingers, and some types of pins. I think there may be palladium in the solder or other parts of CPU's. The pins on the CPU's are soldered onto the chip.

I could of course use stannous to test for the PGM's, but that would not show if a PGM was present but had already precipitated on it's own.
 
There Is Pd in electronic scrap, I gather some CPUs contain some so the chances are you will encounter it at some point. The safety advice is to use gloves that are chemically resistant, work under a fume hood with good extraction with preferably a scrubbing system or work in closed vessels, do not breathe any fumes and avoid all skin contact with the solutions.
It depends which processes you will use but if you start with nitric it will dissolve the Pd or if you are going to use AR the same applies, with the nitric solution simply cement the Pd, with the AR you need to precipitate your gold and then cement the Pd, once the Pd is out of solution the toxicity is gone, nasty acids still and the black powders are metallic so are not toxic.
Basically use your common sense and if unsure read and research before proceeding.
 
Like the OP, I'm just not going to mess with the PGMs right now, so all of this stuff:
nickvc said:
It depends which processes you will use but if you start with nitric it will dissolve the Pd or if you are going to use AR the same applies, with the nitric solution simply cement the Pd, with the AR you need to precipitate your gold and then cement the Pd, once the Pd is out of solution the toxicity is gone, nasty acids still and the black powders are metallic so are not toxic.
...happens in my stockpot. It's cemented with copper, and it ain't going anywhere.
 
...happens in my stockpot. It .'s cemented with copper, and it ain't going anywhere

That's the best way for a small operator to handle it. Usually it is not payable to the customer so it is yours. Save it up until you have enough to process. It takes as much work to process 5 grams of PGM's as it does an ounce so save it up.
 
4metals said:
...happens in my stockpot. It .'s cemented with copper, and it ain't going anywhere

That's the best way for a small operator to handle it. Usually it is not payable to the customer so it is yours. Save it up until you have enough to process. It takes as much work to process 5 grams of PGM's as it does an ounce so save it up.
I don't have much Pd. Having initially discarded anything not golden, I have now started to collect small amounts in my Stock Pot jar, which I will process only once I have a worthwhile quantity, as you say.
But I like to think that my education here has been sufficient to be able to suggest the following palladium processing procedure, in detail.

Processing Pd that has been collected in a stock pot:
  • Remove gold
  • Send it to Lou
 
Jason I have to say that your procedure is the one I would suggest to the vast majority of members :)
 
jason_recliner said:
But I like to think that my education here has been sufficient to be able to suggest the following palladium processing procedure, in detail.

Processing Pd that has been collected in a stock pot:
  • Remove gold
  • Send it to Lou
LOL, that's exactly my plan. I have some rhodium powders recovered from old plating solutions, and I'm always considering that I should just toss it in the stockpot and be done with it. But I'll get them HCl-rinsed and in their own jar eventually.
 
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