Aqua regia and chalcopyrite

[Inxed]

Hello all, forgive the newbie. Anyone with experience handling aqua regia with chalcopyrite ...? I would surely use your help. Thanks

 

[Elemental]

I don't have any experience with it, general consensus around here is that you shouldn't mix acids and ores. To much risk of creating a poisonous gas (cyanide, arsenic, etc). We primarily focus on recovering precious metals from like jewelry, e-scrap, etc. Someone else with more experience might chime in though.

Elemental

 

[Elemental]

May be worth noting that here are the common impurities found within Chalcopyrite: Ag ,Au, In, Tl, Se, Te. I've read that processing gold with tellurium in it, is a pain as it can form a complex. Here is a paper that might be useful.

Title: Comprehensive Recovery Technology for Te, Au, and Ag from a Telluride-Type Refractory Gold Mine

https://www.mdpi.com/2075-163X/9/10/597/htm
Elemental

 

[galenrog]

Do you know EXACTLY what your ore consists of? It does not matter what the ore type it is. There are many ore constituents that will cause DEADLY gasses when mixed with acids. Do not make any assumptions. Have a complete assay done on your ore.

Have fun.

Time for more coffee.

 

[Tahmoures]

Dear Inxed
If you are serious about using this type of Ore you should first analyze your Ore with ICP method or others to findout what other metals are inside and how much. this can help you to know better about problems caused by other metals.

best regards
Tahmoures

 

[nickvc]

I reply to these posts on a regular basis because of the potential hazards which can and have caused severe injuries and even death.
Mixing any unknown ores to acids and or even roasting can release highly toxic fumes and create just as toxic wastes.
Get an assay done , a proper assay ie full elements , it’s expensive but it may well save your health and long term money.

 

[Tahmoures]

I reply to these posts on a regular basis because of the potential hazards which can and have caused severe injuries and even death.
Mixing any unknown ores to acids and or even roasting can release highly toxic fumes and create just as toxic wastes.
Get an assay done , a proper assay ie full elements , it’s expensive but it may well save your health and long term money.

absolutely; before anything we should know what material we are using

 

[Inxed]

Well thanks every body for those helpful replies. Well in like any beginner I dove in head first. But know am doing alot ofreading. My ore cones from an old copper mine on my rwenzori. Kilembr copper mine. I cannot do an assay of the ore but have seen some one recover gold from the crushed ore using mercury. I thought I cld apply acids to recover the gold. Clearly this won't work. Leaves me pondering as to whether gold can be recovered from this ore without using mercury

 

[Inxed]

Here are some pics of the chalcopyrite

 

[slsmp40]

Hello all, forgive the newbie. Anyone with experience handling aqua regia with chalcopyrite ...? I would surely use your help. Thanks

If you mix an acid with a metal sulfide you will get H2S as a off gas. This is the famous Hydrogen Sulfide, or Sour gas of few live to tell about it fame. H2S is approx twice as deadly as Hydrogen cyanide and is incredibly fast acting. It will not forgive you of any mistake and you are good as gone if you don’t protect yourself properly while doing anything involving H2S. Please do some educational stuff before you proceed.

 

[AlaskaLes]

That looks nice some some nice Ore.

You should look at smelting as a safer means of extracting the the PM's from the Chalcopyrite ore.
If you watch the MBMM videos on using the Soda Iron method, it will provide a good safe method of extraction. Follow with Cupellation and you should have recovery of 95% or better. With this process you will not need to roast the sulphides and Mercury is not used.

We've been crushing, smelting and cupelling ore with Iron Pyrite, Arsenopyrite and Chalcopyrite and having a pretty easy time of it. I haven't XRF'd the buttons yet, but they show a nice crystalline pipe, so they must be fairly pure.

With this method, you can operate outdoors and just use a fan to drive the fumes downwind of you, although a respirator wouldn't be a bad idea. Using Lead collector metal is far more toxic than using Bismuth as the collector metal, so we've shifted our system to using Bismuth.

Good Luck and Be Safe

 

[shadybear]

How about just crushing some up and pan it to see whats what

 

[dennhg123]

Yeah how about just crushing some up and pan it???

 

[jphayesjr]

Here are some pics of the chalcopyrite

The problem with ores containing telluride and sulfide is that in certain environments, they form patches of Coloradoite, a sulfide of tellurium and mercury. Refining by smelting or chemically would require careful planning, a specially designed process, and appropriate safety equipment. Crushing, pulverizing, and panning may be a better bet, but then you need to safely recycle the mercury. Once it gets in the water table, bad things happen. EG Minimata, JApan.

 

[Maniacop]

Here are some pics of the chalcopyrite

Beautiful samples!