Non-Chemical aqua regia/sub zero users

[Anonymous]

hi, i was just wondering if anyone out there can please give me some feedback on this aqua regia/sub zero stuff. as i am typing this my partner and i are trying it for the first time and i know i should have asked this before we tried it but it just sort of fell into our laps and so we decided to give it a test run. when we are done i will for sure give you all my feedback on the results.

 

[aflacglobal]

Welcome to the forum.

:?:

DEAD MILKMEN :arrow: Dean's Dream

:wink:

 

[Joe]

Hi Ad, I got into this hobby about 6 months ago. I have had more problems than success. Sub Zero definately dissolves the gold quickly, but I have had difficulty with precipitation. When I add the Urea, I often get a white stranded substance in the mix. It may be because I have thrown all my different dirty components into the same pot. The white stuff locks everything up and makes a mess. If you want to save some money, sodium nitrate pellets are a good Sub Zero substitute. It is used as fertilizer. It is hard to get locally. Bonide manufactures it under the name Soda of Nitrate. Google will give you several hits. Sodiummetabisulphite is a good precipitant. It is a common food grade material, but the only place I have found it in quanity is on E-bay. I bought, a 50 pound bag of urea from a farm fertilizer outlet for $60. I will toss the urea that I don't use on the lawn and garden.

 

[lazersteve]

Welcome to the forum Joe!

Thanks for the post here is the standard 1 cent tour of the site:

Guided Tour

Lots of folks complain about the Shor process. Heating may help reduce the unwanted solids from forming.

Steve

 

[EVO-AU]

Ad: Try T/6 from GOLDMINEWORLD.COM. Stinks awful and not cheap, but it works for me. And then there is Iodine, which is very selective for Au. Bt it is turtle-paced. EVO-AU

 

[goldsilverpro]

EVO-AU,

I read everything on the goldmineworld.net site about T6. Among many other things, one of his claims is that you can get "hidden precious metals values" (enough to live on, he says) out of common grocery store salt (he intimates) using his mystical (his word) T6 as a precipitating agent. Of course, you have to pay $20 to get the pdf that will give you the whole poop and, nothing but T6 will work.
http://www.goldmineworld.net/goldsalt1.html

This T6 (CAS# 128578-22-3) chemical is also sold by some water environmental companies under different names:
http://www.waterspecialists.biz/html/tr_detox___stabilization_techn.html Called THIO-RED
http://www.gowatersolve.com/ Called Solve 7550
http://www.hubbardhall.com/files/2601048.pdf Called Aquapure T 500

Here's the patent for the chemical
http://www.google.com/patents?id=Yc0cAAAAEBAJ&dq=4943377

Here's some MSDS's
http://www.goldmineworld.net/msds_info/bigred_msd.html
http://www.ecologixsystems.com/pdfs/msds%20-%20PSB-9.pdf
http://www.gowatersolve.com/msds/pdf/Solve%207550%20Precipitating%20Agent.pdf

What have you tried T6 on? Can you tell me what your yields were? You're right about it being expensive - $90/gallon. Maybe he puts a little gold, etc. in it just to keep people on the string. At that price, he could afford it. Have you tested T6, as is, for gold or other values? Just a wild thought. Might be interesting, though.

The chemical may be much cheaper from one of these other companies, since it's mainly used for water treatment.

I'm very skeptical when people talk about "hidden metal values" - values that can't be determined by standard fire assay procedures. This is often explained, when the con is presented, as the metals being in an unassayable "embryo" form. Only the secret chemicals or fluxes will "mature" them and make the PMs accessible for recovery. It's alchemy wearing a different hat. This is the basis for several ages-old cons and it is mentioned several times, in different vague ways, on goldmineworld.net. I once knew a man that lost his life savings in a "gold-in-well-water" con like this. Another one involved several wealthy investors and many millions of dollars. Some people ended up in prison. The German language even has a specific word for this type of con, although I can't remember what it is.

All in all, this is a very interesting real precipitating chemical that may have good non-magical applications for us refiners.

I may be wrong about this whole thing. It may be a rush to judgment. It's the "hidden metal values" theme that runs throughout goldmineworld.net that really upsets me. Total BS. Also, the language on the site is very vague and is written in that netherworld alchemical way. If I'm wrong, I apologize. If the claims are true????, if it will precipitate .5 to 1 grams of precious metals out of a pound of table salt, it may be a real bargain.

 

[Irons]

This chemical precipitates heavy metals as Sulphides. The magic is that it forms large particles that precipitate out easily.
Sodium Sulphide will do the same thing a lot cheaper but it will just take longer to settle out.

There is no magic.

If there are no metals in solution, nothing will precipitate out. period.

 

[Harold_V]

I read everything on the goldmineworld.net site about T6. Among many other things, one of his claims is that you can get "hidden precious metals values" (enough to live on, he says) out of common grocery store salt (he intimates) using his mystical (his word) T6 as a precipitating agent. Of course, you have to pay $20 to get the pdf that will give you the whole poop and, nothing but T6 will work.

Funny-----as slick as that is, you'd think he'd be busy recovering all that gold instead of trying to screw people out of $20.

You want my opinion? The only thing hidden is that dude's intelligence. If there's enough gold in salt to recover, it would show in an assay.


Here's a simple rule that will keep you out of trouble:

If a sample won't fire assay, regardless of the grandiose claims of a promoter, it's highly unlikely it contains any values.

Harold

edit: corrected typo

 

[goldsilverpro]

Good point, Harold. I would be buying salt by the truckload!

 

[pgmgal]

You want my opinion? The only thing hidden is that dude's intelligence. If there's enough gold in salt to recover, it would show in an assay.

Here's a simple rule that will keep you out of trouble:

If a sample won't fire assay, regardless of the grandiose claims of a promoter, it's highly unlikely it contains any values.

Harold

edit: corrected extra blank lines

Hi All! My first post.. great forum!

We are currently using several reports from goldmineworld.net to recover gold and PGM from a water high in salt. (Namely, the Gold from Salt, Gold from Alfalfa, T6 Leach Manual reports.) We are just in testing phase now.

My only complaint of the reports is that they are not detailed enough in the step-by-step instructions. (I used to be a PR writer and really want to re-write these!) We have had to compare several reports and get a bit of instruction from each report, so that has been confusing and I doubt a novice could do it. (But maybe that is the idea... "If you can't read between the lines, you shouldn't be messing with it!"?)

The way I understand it, there is much of the world of the tiny that an assay cannot see and the T6 brings the smaller atoms together, making them bigger.

Our first melt of this material resulted in only a small bead of gold. We had an expert assayer look at it and were told that our gold went into the cupel because of high PGM values we didn't expect.

We are having a time of figuring out how much T6 to use as there is not much guidance on that in the reports at all.

Searching around, it looks like http://www.ecologixsystems.com/ch_precips.php is the maker of "T6". Comparing the MSDS's, I figured out it should be the PTB-6.

We also know of someone removing gold from water (from known gold bearing areas) using methods similar to goldmineworld, but simpler (and he's never seen the goldmineworld site!)

 

[lazersteve]

It's a well known fact that sea water contains a minute amount of gold, around 1 mg per ton is an accepted estimate.

This translates to 1 mg per 907.17 kg of sea water.

At 3.5 % average salinity worldwide for sea water this works out as:

907.17 kg (sea water) x 0.035 (3.5% salinity) = 31.75 kg of salt = 1 mg of gold.

Hence, If you wanted to produce a single troy ounce of gold (31,103.5 mg) you would need

31,103.5 mg x 31.75 kg/mg = 987,536.125 kg of sea salt.

I'm not up on the T6 requirements for treatment of the gold bearing salt, but I'd bet that after you factor in the cost of the required T6 to process this 987,536.125 kg or 2,177,144.48 pounds (1,088.6 tons :shock: ) of sea salt, you may not end up with a profit even if you produced the troy ounce with no overhead costs (shipping, storage, processing, melting, labor, etc.) at todays spot price of $742.20.

How much does the salt cost per pound?

Table salt is about 5 cents per pound, which in our example equates to:

0.05 x 2,177,144.48 = $ 108,857.23 for the salt. 8)

How much T6 to process 1,088.6 tons of sea salt?

What's the cost of the required amount of T6?

Some estimates of the gold content of sea water are lower by a factor of 10 (ie.: 0.1 mg per ton of sea water)!

Even if the T6 were free and the gold content were 100 times higher you would go broke buying the salt!!!

Gold in Sea Water

Welcome to the forum PGMGal!

Steve

 

[aflacglobal]

Our good friend MR gold digger holds a patent on a process for this. Gold from salt water. Not with this product or process here. Something else.
He is suppose to have a pilot plant somewhere in the north for trying this. Who knows with him. lol :roll:

Welcome to the forum.

 

[aflacglobal]

The flocculant polymer solution is added to the continuous treatment process by injecting it into the flash mix tank on a continuous basis. The amount of flocculant polymer added is in proportion to the amount of dissolved and suspended solids in the waste being treated. The flocculant is preferably used in concentrations ranging from about 0.0001% to about 0.01%.

In comparison to batch treatment, continuous treatment is used for waste solutions and in those cases where the volume of the waste stream is in excess of 2000 gallons. In continuous treatment the waste solution is treated in different tanks, each tank being used generally for a different purpose. The wastes are moved from one tank to another allowing sufficient residence time for the solution to be processed in each tank and for the required chemical processes to take place. Solutions move at rates varying from about 5 gallons per minute [gpm] to about 5000 gpm depending on the level of dissolved solids being removed from the solution.

As above described, the complexing agent preferably comprises about 40% sodium dimethyldithiocarbamate, about 10% sodium hydroxide and about 50% water.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6254782.html

 

[goldsilverpro]

pgmgal - you are Megan, aren't you? Welcome to the forum.

If you are Megan, I hope you hang around for awhile. We might both learn something.

The way I understand it, there is much of the world of the tiny that an assay cannot see and the T6 brings the smaller atoms together, making them bigger.

Speaking of liquids, why can't they be fire assayed for all the PM in them? Most liquids are evaporated to dryness, in a lead boat, before fire assaying them. Wouldn't that bring the minute particles or ions together? You use the word "atoms". I'm confused. Are you talking about zero valence single atoms, ions, or several zero valence atoms agglomerated together? If they are in ionic form, couldn't they also be analyzed by atomic absorption? If they are in zero valence form, wouldn't they be considered particles? I would think that any of the above, after evaporation, would fire assay.

Our first melt of this material resulted in only a small bead of gold. We had an expert assayer look at it and were told that our gold went into the cupel because of high PGM values we didn't expect.

What was the starting material and it's weight? How much did the bead weigh? What else was in the melt? If the bead was very, very small, isn't it possible that the bead came from the fluxes or other contamination? Did you run a blank on the fluxes? How did the assayer determine that it went into the cupel? How did he know there was PMG in it? Did he grind and assay the cupel? Sounds to me like it's possible it wasn't gold plus PMG to start with. If it was a yellow color, couldn't it have been a copper alloy? That would have been absorbed by the cupel.

I know that all plants in gold country contain traces of gold. In a old long list put out by the B of M, I remember that horsetail ran the highest. But, it was still in the ppb range.

I spent 2 years in Portland working daily with a man that fancied himself as an alchemist. I lived inside his building in a camper. He spent every day fiddling with this stuff. He had about 100 porcelain single butter pat dishes, each with various chemicals, metals, ores, Willard Water, etc. in them. He called it his garden. Each was a separate experiment. He looked at all of them every morning with a 100 power scope and made adjustments to the dishes. Every once in awhile, gold would appear in one or two of them. This would raise great excitement. I always chalked it up to contamination from the building, which was filled with gold ores and about 1000 buckets that contained small amounts of real gold. There was gold everywhere. The point is that the gold in the dishes was never big enough to pick up with tweezers. I've always been leery of very small amounts of gold being meaningful. In my life , I have probably performed 10,000 fire assays. I know how easy it is to contaminate a sample.

 

[Harold_V]

The way I understand it, there is much of the world of the tiny that an assay cannot see and the T6 brings the smaller atoms together, making them bigger.

Nonsense!

Colloidal gold isn't uncommon-----and can easily be detected and recovered. How would you get gold any more finely separated than a few atoms, and what makes this any different from colloidal gold? Do you really think that cyanide would ignore gold because it was too small? Fact is, cyanide works very best on finely divided particles.

There's a sucker born every minute, many of whom will fall for the double talk of "immature" gold, or some other assumed trick dissemination, the concoction of someone seeking funds from others. This discussion smacks very much of one similar.

Remember------when salt crystallizes, it behaves no differently from other compounds. It tends to reject contaminants, so if gold is present (I'm not arguing that point-----I, too, read the papers), it would not be included in the salt crystals aside from dragdown, which would equate to far less gold than found in sea water (virtually none, in other words).

I'm of the opinion that some proof of substance should be presented, or this subject should be closed. There are people here trying to recover gold from realistic projects that don't need the unnecessary distraction of an unfounded promotion on some pie-in-the-sky scheme that works very best at separating people from their hard earned money.

Our first melt of this material resulted in only a small bead of gold. We had an expert assayer look at it and were told that our gold went into the cupel because of high PGM values we didn't expect.

You sure the dog didn't eat it?

We are having a time of figuring out how much T6 to use as there is not much guidance on that in the reports at all.

Go figure!

Harold

 

[aflacglobal]

You sure the dog didn't eat it?

:shock: :shock: :shock: :arrow:

 

[Irons]

In water tratment, flocculants are added to trap tiny particles of sediment and form large 'dust balls' that can be easily filtered.

T6 works in a similar way by trapping multiple metal ions that form a large molecule that precipitates easily. It is non-selective and pulls everything out. It won't pull out anything that isn't already in solution.

It's a great product to treat your effluent to remove the last traces of metals before you discharge it or recycle the water back into the process.

From a refining standpoint, it's useless except as a scavenging agent. The stock pot will work just as well and is a lot cheaper.

 

[pgmgal]

Thanks for the welcomes and the comments.

FYI I am not Megan!

I realize you guys will want some evidence and will provide when I get far enough. DH is working on real ore and T6 is my little project, so I have a lot to learn and need to bother him for chemical advice and will now have to bother him to make sure my posts here are accurate!

Thanks also for the story of the 'alchemist'. We have encountered several people chasing that path also and really, it just seems to me alchemy is chemistry and people who didn't understand chemistry made it all magical!

 

[Joe]

Speaking of sea water. There was somebody attempting to find the right bacteria to digest sea water but convert the gold... A gold defecation project.
Who would have ever thought there would cloned sheep. Because the alchemists haven't figured out how to turn brass to gold, doesn't mean it can't be done.
Among many genetic feats, corn has been been genetically modified with sea life genes to reduce it's frost point. Maybe genetic engineering is the way to go... the future of gold production.

 

[Harold_V]

Because the alchemists haven't figured out how to turn brass to gold, doesn't mean it can't be done.

Scientists well understand how to turn most any element into another. It's done routinely by stars, with hydrogen being the basic building block of all other elements.

You want to make your own gold? All it takes is something in the neighborhood of 600 million degrees F for a sustained period of time.

No problem. You should be able to handle that in your barbeque.

And then, tomorrow, we'll go to the zoo.

Among many genetic feats, corn has been been genetically modified with sea life genes to reduce it's frost point. Maybe genetic engineering is the way to go... the future of gold production.

Ohh yeah!! :wink:

Harold