Dropping Copper from waste - Problems

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bemate

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 23, 2016
Messages
72
Just a quick question:

I have started a small scale waste treatment to familiarize myself with the process before I start slogging large volumes and realize I made a mistake somewhere... I did a small batch of pins with solder in AP. After filtering off and refining the gold, I put my contaminated AP in a container with Copper to cement out any valuables. Then I decanted off the clear solution to another container and adjusted pH and added Iron/steel and got crystals of Copper, so far so good.

The problems is now that my solution is barren of Copper, my cemented Copper (and mixed in Lead/Tin/Nickel) is also full of small pieces of iron and rust... I was hoping to be able to add the cemented Copper straight back to my stock pot, but is that really advisable when I have visible Iron contamination in my Copper powder?

What can I do to clean it if adding the Iron back into my waste stream in the stock pot? Or can I just disregard the Iron-contamination as it will do the same job as the Copper?
 
Did you already filter out the cemented copper with the iron pieces in it? If it's still at the bottom of the solution, couldn't you just add a little more HCl to finish dissolving the rest of the iron?

Edit - added.
 
Grelko said:
Did you already filter out the cemented copper with the iron pieces in it? If it's still at the bottom of the solution, couldn't you just add a little more HCl to finish dissolving the rest of the iron?

Edit - added.


That might do the trick, true. I also thought I might just leave the copper in my cementing container and continue the cycle with more spent AP, and then just harvest the copper before adding more iron to ensure complete dropping of the copper. Either way, this is just sxperimenting, I still have lots of fresh copper from wires and other sources to use in my stock pot as well, that way I will keep it free of other metals that cement out with the copper. In the interest of playing around with it, I might even set up a small electrolytic cell to purify the copper and remove the other metals before adding it to my stock pot, but we'll see, it doesn't really matter that much, it was more a question to satisfy my curiosity.
 
You can use the copper with the iron mixed in. Some people use copper in their stock pot and some people use iron. You can also use more ap to eat up the iron or hcl with no oxidizer to help clean it up.
 
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