Silver Cementing

Just a pretty pic of some silver from a few runs of inquarted Au being cemented out. Purty....

Awesome, hero! That's a pretty cool picture!!

Who else could manage to hang copper into solution sideways like that!?!

Meanwhile.....

Watching silver cement is one of the most fascinating waste of times. I tend to forget there are other things going on when working with silver. Nice job.

Be sure to run that through a cell to part any PGMs that may have hitched a ride with the silver.

Dave

FrugalRefiner said:

Be sure to run that through a cell to part any PGMs that may have hitched a ride with the silver.

Dave

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This advice spawned a question, deep from the bowels of my brain.

Say you use the same 200 grams of silver to inquart, and inquart, and inquart. Has not been run through a cell, (yet), just cement, add to gold, melt, and nuke it in nitric again, and again.

How, or what, is the best way to tell when you have too many pgm's in your cement/inquart silver?.

Will it give a much darker cement throughout the entire displacement (instead of just cementing pgm's at the end), or will it become a difficult task to melt it? Will it begin to not go into solution with the silver during the nitric leach and stay with the gold? (so it kind of balances it's alloy percentage on its own)?

I am only curious, as I rarely inquart, but would like to know the tell tale signs of the 'too high pgm "contamination" ' for when it HAS to go to the cell.

I'm curious to know about this too. Been scouring the forum for good while now. I have about 50toz of quite dark cement silver stored up and will be building a cell using sreetips tutorials. My refiner wont pay me for the pgms in my cement because there wouldn't be enough in the whole lot. I have a hard time believing that and I'm definitely not going to sell my cement silver and just let hundreds of dollars worth of pgms go for free from the last few years of doing inquartation. Every inquartation had some white gold in it and a few were almost entirely white gold that I did separately from my yellow gold batches. Do I use my cement to make the electrolyte or does is go in the basket as the electrode/anode? Gonna study up some more, but I'm excited to try something new. Just need some clarification on some things. Thanks!
EDIT: Just found what I was looking for and verified what i already thought. I'll melt my cement into the anode.

Dylan just one piece of advice don’t make shot pour bars for your cell, I watched the same video and what a performance to remove the undissolved silver, with bars pick out rinse off and either put back for remelt in or add back into the cell.

Thanks nick! Pour bars from my silver cement, got it! Is there a weight to the bar that I'm aiming for? From what I've read it seems 2-3toz seems to be the norm for the anode. And do you more experienced guys have a particular way you like to deal with the slimes? Storage, handling, etc? I am expecting pgms and they make me a bit nervous, hence why I've put off doing this for the last few years while allowing my silver cement to accumulate. I want to maximize my gains, but this is virgin territory for me now.

This will be my feedstock. The powder is quite dark compared to what I first started with. Not a great comparison because of how reflective silver is, but the small bar is from this cement. Poured it a while back to test a new mini kiln I built so the powder wouldn't blow all over my shop during the melting process.

Looks like I never responded to a good question from Topher back in 2017 that has come back up again.

Topher_osAUrus said:

This advice spawned a question, deep from the bowels of my brain.

Say you use the same 200 grams of silver to inquart, and inquart, and inquart. Has not been run through a cell, (yet), just cement, add to gold, melt, and nuke it in nitric again, and again.

How, or what, is the best way to tell when you have too many pgm's in your cement/inquart silver?.
...

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I don't know that you can tell by the color of the cement, but you can tell by dissolving a small sample of it. Silver dissolved in nitric will be nearly colorless. Platinum will give it a yellow tint, and palladium will tint it brown. If you dissolve a small sample and see either of these colors, it would be good to run the cement through a cell. There is a limit to how much platinum will follow the silver when leached with nitric. I don't know what the limit is - that's a future project. Since it costs almost nothing to run it through a cell, it's a good insurance policy. Palladium will of course dissolve in the nitric leach even without the help of silver.

DylanDownright84 said:

Do I use my cement to make the electrolyte or does is go in the basket as the electrode/anode?

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I know some people have differing opinions, but I see no problem using the cement to make your electrolyte. I make mine with sterling since it adds copper to the electrolyte which is beneficial to the cell.

DylanDownright84 said:

Is there a weight to the bar that I'm aiming for? From what I've read it seems 2-3toz seems to be the norm for the anode. And do you more experienced guys have a particular way you like to deal with the slimes? Storage, handling, etc?

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The weight of your anode bars depends on the size of your cell and how much silver you can melt at a time.

Save the slimes until you have enough to process. PGMs are hazardous, so you want to minimize the number of times you put them into solution. Also, there are usually small losses each time, so processing multiple small batches will result in greater losses than processing one large batch. Of course you can recover them in the stock pot.

I hope that ten ounce bar is just there for size comparison. No need to refine a 999 fine bar.

Dave

Thank you, Dave! And yes, it was just for the size comparison. :lol:
And now I want to smack myself for not thinking about doing the simple "acquaintance" tests in the first place to identify what's in my silver cement. Was thinking too far ahead and missed what was right in front of me.

Looks like some pgms for me! Had some purple solids left at the bottom. I've seen colloidal gold that color, but it looks like agcl, just purple.

I would advise against using your cement to make your electrolyte as it will put PGMs into your solution which is what you are trying to recover, sterling as Dave advised is the way I would go.
Dealing with slimes is a pain, they get everywhere, bear in mind that the vast majority will be silver with gold and PGMs been in the mix, when I did them I simply went straight to AR which will leave the silver as chloride which you can filter out, precipitate the gold filter the solution and then cement the PGMs out with copper, that’s where I stopped but you can if you want refine the cemented PGMs but unless you have serious quantities the risk to me far outweighed the value, when I sold the PGMs I simply melted them with copper assayed the bar and sold it, an xrf reading would do so you can at least know what you have.

nickvc,

Did you incinerate or dry the PGM slimes first?

Next go to AR. Filter the silver chloride. Cement PGMs with copper.

Next melt with copper to a bar. (Did you use any flux?) How much copper did you add?

What was your melt temperature? Or did you use a torch and a melting dish?

Do most refiners take copper dore?

Thanks in advance.

Rick?

rickzeien said:

nickvc,

Did you incinerate or dry the PGM slimes first?

They were just filtered on a vacuum also rinsed so fairly dry.

Next go to AR. Filter the silver chloride. Cement PGMs with copper.

Yes.

Next melt with copper to a bar. (Did you use any flux?) How much copper did you add?

I believe I used exactly the same amount of copper as powder and yes I fluxed it.

What was your melt temperature? Or did you use a torch and a melting dish?

The melt temperature I couldn’t tell you but it was done in a furnace and allowed to soak well at melting temperature with several good stirs.

Do most refiners take copper dore?

Not too sure on this but with the price of Pd I think most will buy if the PM content is reasonable.

Thanks in advance.

Rick?

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No problem I hope that helped.

DylanDownright84 said:

Every inquartation had some white gold in it and a few were almost entirely white gold that I did separately from my yellow gold batches.

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Sorry for my delay in replying

Question - have you been "re-using" your silver cement each time you inquart - or - do you use "new" silver for each inquart

I ask because if you are re-using your silver cement it could well be "loaded" with PGMs - in which case you should not have a problem being paid out on the PGMs

Also - for what it is worth - IMO - a silver cell is not necessarily the best option if you are actually wanting to "part" the PGMs from the silver

Why? --- because in the cell - some of the Pd will end up in your electrolyte while some will end up in the slimes (so you don't get "a true" parting) Pt content will depend on where it ends up

The slimes will be "mostly" silver - so you still need to "part" the PGMs from the silver

Because Pd (& maybe Pt) "will" be in your "spent" electrolyte - when you cement the electrolyte there will still be 'some' PGMs in that cement

In other words - (to some degree) you are chasing your tail

There are - IMO - better options

out of time for today

Kurt

kurtak said:

DylanDownright84 said:

Every inquartation had some white gold in it and a few were almost entirely white gold that I did separately from my yellow gold batches.

Click to expand...

Sorry for my delay in replying

Question - have you been "re-using" your silver cement each time you inquart - or - do you use "new" silver for each inquart

I ask because if you are re-using your silver cement it could well be "loaded" with PGMs - in which case you should not have a problem being paid out on the PGMs

Also - for what it is worth - IMO - a silver cell is not necessarily the best option if you are actually wanting to "part" the PGMs from the silver

Why? --- because in the cell - some of the Pd will end up in your electrolyte while some will end up in the slimes (so you don't get "a true" parting) Pt content will depend on where it ends up

The slimes will be "mostly" silver - so you still need to "part" the PGMs from the silver

Because Pd (& maybe Pt) "will" be in your "spent" electrolyte - when you cement the electrolyte there will still be 'some' PGMs in that cement

In other words - (to some degree) you are chasing your tail

There are - IMO - better options

out of time for today

Kurt

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When I first started doing the inquartation processes about four years ago I re-used the cement silver the first half dozen or so inquartation processes I did. Once I started accumulating scrap sterling on a regular basis I used "fresh sterling" every time I inquarted. It all went into my cement bucket loaded with copper and just got added to bit by bit. I would only use my cement silver for the anodes, but I have no idea what quantities of Pd or Pt to expect. I know theres enough to merit wanting to get paid for them, but not sure theres enough to merit going through the trouble, not to mention the extra hazards of trying to claims the pgms. Also, there would be trace amounts of Au as well, probably immeasurable, but all the same, dont want to just give it away. I'll keep thinking on it. Maybe another solution will present itself. I'm in no hurry, just refuse to give them away to a big refiner. Sorry for the late response, been bouncing between the jewelry store I part time at and sorting a bunch of gold filled scrap.

If you only have a fairly small amount of cement to work on then perhaps as Kurt alluded to there are other ways to achieve your goals.
My thoughts would be as follows, maybe wait to see if Kurt has a better method before deciding though.
First dissolve the cement in nitric which will leave the gold to be recovered from your filter paper.
Next add Hcl which will precipitate the silver as chloride and again filter it from the solution which should now hold your PGMs.
Cement the remaining solution using copper to recover the PGMs but do add a bubbler to ensure the solution is kept moving.
That is where I would stop as messing with PGM salts etc is not my idea of fun.
I have run a silver cell and messing with the slimes is somewhat taxing to be honest, it’s worthwhile if you are running a cell full time and process a lot of material.

nickvc said:

If you only have a fairly small amount of cement to work on then perhaps as Kurt alluded to there are other ways to achieve your goal

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Nick - in an earlier post he said he has about 50 ozt. silver cement from his inquarts so that is about one and a half kilos of cemented silver - which though not a lot is still a fair amount of silver - with "some" PGMs

That said - yes - going with the chloride method as you said is the way I would go to "part" the PGMs from the silver to keep from "giving away" the PGMs to (another) refiner

That said - based on Dylan's last post I don't think - at this time - it is worth chasing after the PGMs

Being he is using inquarting on a fairly regular bases there are a couple things he can do to upgrade the PGM content of his silver for a future parting of the PGMs to make it more worth while chasing the PGMs

In other words - a few changes to his inquarting process to "better bank" the collecting of the PGMs as he moves forward with future inquarting

I will lay that out in another post - as to what I would do - if it were me - based on what he has posted so far

Kurt

DylanDownright84 said:

When I first started doing the inquartation processes about four years ago I re-used the cement silver the first half dozen or so inquartation processes I did. Once I started accumulating scrap sterling on a regular basis I used "fresh sterling" every time I inquarted.

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Hi Dylan

Sorry for the delay

When you started out with re-using your silver cement you where on the right path --- Why ? - because each time you re-used the cemented silver - & if there was "some" PGMs in at least some of the batches - then by re-using the cement you where "loading" the silver with more PGMs anytime they where in the (next) batch

Lets back up a bit --- refineries - like any business have to work at a profit - so the recovery needs to justify the cost of the process - which is why they have "minimums" on what &/or how much they will pay out on what you send into them

With out going into details - that is the case with PGMs - if the PGMs in the batch you send in are not worth chasing for a pay out - on your batch - then it goes to (the idea) of the "stock pot" where they are "collected" from other batches - until they have collected enough to make it worth their while processing

Think of it like collecting beer cans - it does not pay to turn in your beer cans every time you have a six pack of beer cans - instead you "collect" them until you have six garbage bags full of cans to take in

That is what you want to do with your inquarting process --- you want to use the silver to "collect" the PGMs to the point the silver is "loaded" with enough PGMs to meet the minimum worthy of being paid out on

Once you started using "new" silver for each inquart - instead of loading the silver with PGMs - you actually started "watering down" the collection of the PGM --- that is especially true if some of those inquarts were yellow gold "jewelry only" batches

At this point you have two options - you can go with the silver chloride method as Nick suggested - if you are after "parting" the PGMs from the silver at this time --- in other words wanting to send in your silver for a pay out on the silver - with out losing the PGMs

OR - if you are not concerned about selling your silver at this time - then you can start using "this" silver in a way to "load" the silver with PGMS --- in other words "bank" the silver so that it collects interest as it collects/loads with PGMs - over time of re-using the silver

This is how I would move forward --- I would separate my karat "jewelry" scrap into two types - yellow gold & white gold --- the yellow scrap will have little or "no" PGMs in it so use "new" silver for those inquarts & keep the silver cement from those inquarts separate from your current cement

Then - use your current silver cement to inquart only batches of white gold - &/or - if you get any dental gold - process that along with your white gold

This will allow you to over time load that silver cement with enough PGMs to ether (1) make it more worth while to part the PGMs from the silver in the future your self - or (2) have the silver loaded with enough PGMs to be paid out on when you do send it in

Example; - thanks to the advise of members like Harold, 4metals, GSP etc. - when I first started refining I held out a couple kilos of silver cement as my collector for PGMs from batches that I was sure had "small" amounts of PGMs in each batch

After 10 years of re-using that same silver - when I shut my refining down to make my move from Wisconsin to Oregon I melted "that" silver down into bars & sent it in for refining - That silver over time had become loaded with enough PGMs to justify pay out on the PGMs - that silver along with the PGMs paid for my entire move (plus some) from Wisconsin to Oregon

The cost of that trip included buying two trailers & three 3,200 mile round trips --- in other words to make the move - I first drove to OR to find just where I was going to move to - drove back to WI & bought a trailer to haul what I could in the first moving trip to OR - drove back to WI - bought another trailer for the second trip to OR - drove back to WI - then back to OR where I did not need a trailer because the last of my stuff all fit in my truck

So that couple kilos of silver - thanks to the PGMs it collected over time of re-using it - paid for the gas, motels, meals, bought two trailers to make that move with a little money left over

The point being - if you don't need the money now - then consider it money in the bank - & just like money in the bank - over time it will grow in value just like interest paid on money in the bank ---- & if you do it right - the interest can turn out to be far greater then any bank pays out --- that is of course if you intend to continue with refining on into the future - it will be "well worth" banking your PGMs

Kurt