Hi I am stumped on how to leach gold from an ore deposit in Utah. I have read several things about this process and yet I am still stumbling on getting the gold out using chlorine. I got a recipe to make leach from pool stuff(calcium Hypoclorate). Yet I noticed most of the guys are using a 4 HCL to 1 clorox. I have no HCL called for in mine. However I am supposed to keep the PH up at 8.0-8.5 to leach well. Not sure with the HCL mix if ph matters at all. I use HCL before I leach to knock out the Iron and sulfates first. Wondering if my mix will not leach right. Doesn't seem to be working. I need a good recipe to work with my production efforts. Here is the one I am using know. 1 gallon of water, 1/4 cup pool stuff, caustic soda to bring in the solution. The PH falls in around 8.5. I put this on my concentrated material. Two gallons of cleaned ore and 2 gallons of solution. I mix and let stand for 24 hours. Then I filter it clean. Then precipitate the solution using caustic soda. Why? this drops everything PH any salts and silica. My solution ends up totally dead after. And then I end up with glass when I try to melt it. I got some stump out to try and precipitate with. But I am not sure it will work with my mix. I ordered some ferrous to precipitate with. I just hope it works. Could use some solid advise on my problem leaching. There are several different ways to utilize chlorine leaching. Just want one to work.
chlorine leach recipe problems
- Thread starter captain1
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gorfman6154
Well-known member
Captain1, welcome.
If you can post some photos of your ore, Richard36, our resident "Rock Guy" 8) , or other members might be able to identify the type of deposit and the best way to proceed.
Also if you can give more info on how you are preparing your ore. Such as, how fine are you grinding, to get to free gold, are you roasting your ore, assay :?: , sampling procedure. The more info you give, the more helpful they can be.
Good luck, Gorfman
If you can post some photos of your ore, Richard36, our resident "Rock Guy" 8) , or other members might be able to identify the type of deposit and the best way to proceed.
Also if you can give more info on how you are preparing your ore. Such as, how fine are you grinding, to get to free gold, are you roasting your ore, assay :?: , sampling procedure. The more info you give, the more helpful they can be.
Good luck, Gorfman
Thanks for the reply on my post. Still waiting on my assay to get back. From history of the area and from what I have been sampling. I have lots of Hematite. Magnetite,Mica, Pyrite, Copper, Silver, lead, small amounts of Palladium, Platinum, gold and lots of fine quartz. I started out working with a spiral wheel and blue bowl. Found everything was extremely fine. I used mercury a bit and found I was loosing lots of ultra fine gold. I have screen my material down to several different sizes the smallest was below 100 mess. I have ground some of the material also. I found it seems I have good amounts of gold in each size I screened below 30 mesh. Not much to pick out. I was able to pull around 4 ounces of gold every 5 gallons of concentrate. I stopped sluicing it. And doubled my take within 10- 12 gallons of just screened down to 30 mesh material. That proved I was blowing lots of ultra fine gold out the back of my sluice. Mercury is hard to work with. It gets every where. I am treating my ore with Muratic acid for 24 hours. This is all mixed well in my cement mixer. I found it works well to knock out allot of the junk in the ore. I have roasted some to. Seemed no different from the Acid treatment. So I set out to leach my material. Trying to get out of the old miner style thinking. And get more gold and recover other precious metals to. In my research on how to leach. I found this forum and was blown away at the stuff most of the guys are leaching. Just doesn't seem like leaching my ore should be that difficult to work. Yet I keep stumbling through each process. I think most of the problems have been miss information. I know my precipitant is wrong. The lye precipitant drops everything out. And destroys the leaching solution. That's why I burn silica and salt every time. I used the stannious test on my solution. Shows Canary yellow most of the time. Yet when I drop it with lye. The bottom dirt looking stuff shows black. Maybe I have lots of palladium, that it masks my results. I am excited to get the ferrous to drop with. I hope that will just drop the gold. And not all the other stuff. Then I will look at testing and dropping Palladium and maybe Platinum also. Just figured, if I am going to do the work why not get all I can out of it as fast, and as easy as possible. And leaching seemed the logical choice. Since I am out of work now. Why not do this for a living. That's what people did to survive during the last depression. If I can get a good recipe for success with this venture. I think I will do very well at this once I get through all the processes correctly. So any Ideas will be very help full to me. Thanks Kirt
A
Anonymous
Guest
What part of the universe are you in? Lots of palladium, and platinum? most places thats not likely. Now about your leaching/ore.
Google "textbook on the metallurgy of gold" and "textbook on the metallurgy of common metals" these are old, but, they have lots of information for ores from mining.
If you have a leach of mixed stuff, put a piece of scrap copper in it - to replace out all metals that are more nobel than copper, ie silver, gold etc.
Or if copper is short, put, a piece of scrap iron in. This will drop copper, silver, etc. Once you have these metals you can melt and assay to sell.
Jim
Google "textbook on the metallurgy of gold" and "textbook on the metallurgy of common metals" these are old, but, they have lots of information for ores from mining.
If you have a leach of mixed stuff, put a piece of scrap copper in it - to replace out all metals that are more nobel than copper, ie silver, gold etc.
Or if copper is short, put, a piece of scrap iron in. This will drop copper, silver, etc. Once you have these metals you can melt and assay to sell.
Jim
manorman
Well-known member
The black mud you see could very well be your Gold, very fine gold can appears as a fine black powder.
Mike
Mike
A
Anonymous
Guest
Sodium Hydroxide precipates metals as oxides so the mud could be anything. If you use lye, it should only be to lower ph so you would not need excess chemicals to drop the precious metals.
Jim
Jim
gorfman6154
Well-known member
captain1 said:
captain1, is that recipe from goldmineworld, homemade halox leach :?: . If it is, they use Hcl with the Calcium Hypoclorate.
Gorfman
A
Anonymous
Guest
Heres a chlorine leach for you. CaCl2 + CaOClH + H2SO4, this is from the textbook on the metallurgy of gold and was used in lead lined vats to generate chlorine and to leach ores.
Also, just a note, most pool chlorine is not calcium hypochlorite anymore, make sure you check what you are using.
Jim
Also, just a note, most pool chlorine is not calcium hypochlorite anymore, make sure you check what you are using.
Jim
Thanks Guys. Yes I am using calcium hypochlorite. Not sure where the recipe came from. My dad has been working on this project with me. And I figured that the Lye precipitant was wrong. Working on trying to get stump out to try and precipitate with. I heard it is rather ph sensitive though. Will it even work with my leach? I have ordered some ferrous sulfate to use. Heard it will work. I think with the way I am pretreating my ore with acid I should not have much copper or silver left. Maybe I am wrong on this. Sounds like I need to do some more research on leaching and metallurgy. And yes where this ore is coming from is a very rare find.
hydrochloric wont affect silver or copper in metallic state,if you want those out you need nitric but that will take the palladium too,to quote Harold V read C.M.Hokes book its here on the forum for free as a download.
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It can't be stated too often that processing ores with acids is generally not a good idea. The reaction of the ore with acid tends to make consumption high, so it becomes cost prohibitive, to say nothing of the huge volume of contaminated fluid that must be handled.
The notion that ores can be processed in small volumes at a gain is one that needs to be examined closely. Unless the ore in question assays quite high, it is beyond reason to expect that any gold that might be present could be extracted at a profit. Further, unless the head assay indicates a serious concentration, so little would be recovered from a small lot that it may not even be visible after precipitation.
The one question that should always be asked in a case such as this is what does the assay indicate? How much gold would one expect from a given amount?
Harold
The notion that ores can be processed in small volumes at a gain is one that needs to be examined closely. Unless the ore in question assays quite high, it is beyond reason to expect that any gold that might be present could be extracted at a profit. Further, unless the head assay indicates a serious concentration, so little would be recovered from a small lot that it may not even be visible after precipitation.
The one question that should always be asked in a case such as this is what does the assay indicate? How much gold would one expect from a given amount?
Harold
Barren Realms 007
In Remembrance
nickvc said:
Check your post about the copper. Satement is incorrect.
copper is below Hydrogen in activity series.
Barren Realms 007
In Remembrance
Ok I feel we are off here some how. This thread started about ore and the removal or material from this ore.
I responded to a quote by nickvc in reference to copper in a metalic state. I am taking it that he is refering to copper in a refined form not in an ore form.
Rhodium puts out some good posts and I don't want to disagree with him because I am sure I am going to be made a fool of some how.
I don't know squat about copper ore. I have seen HCL eat: alluminum, copper, brass, steel, stainless steel, titanium. I was only commenting about it eating copper in a metallic form as was stated. Now if HCL will not eat copper in a metallic state how are we using it to remove copper?
I responded to a quote by nickvc in reference to copper in a metalic state. I am taking it that he is refering to copper in a refined form not in an ore form.
Rhodium puts out some good posts and I don't want to disagree with him because I am sure I am going to be made a fool of some how.
I don't know squat about copper ore. I have seen HCL eat: alluminum, copper, brass, steel, stainless steel, titanium. I was only commenting about it eating copper in a metallic form as was stated. Now if HCL will not eat copper in a metallic state how are we using it to remove copper?
Hcl is a non-oxidizing acid. You can't dissolve the metal in acid directly because it is noble, below hydrogen.
But Copper Oxide will dissolve in Hcl. When you add H2o2 it forms a layer of copper oxide on the copper which allows the Hcl to attack it.
But Copper Oxide will dissolve in Hcl. When you add H2o2 it forms a layer of copper oxide on the copper which allows the Hcl to attack it.
Barren Realms 007
In Remembrance
Rhodium said:
And what if you don't add the H2o2?
Ralph is right. A simplified explanation is that, dissolving any metal requires two things, oxidation and some component that will combine with the metal in solution. The Cl- will combine with the copper but, alone, the HCl won't oxidize the copper. Therefore, you need to add an oxidizer, such as hydrogen peroxide, chlorine (bleach), or copper chloride to dissolve the copper. You could also bubble air through it.
On the other side of the coin, gold won't dissolve in nitric acid. Although nitric is an oxidizing acid, it won't dissolve gold since gold doesn't form a nitrate, except under unusual conditions. When you add HCl to the nitric to form aqua regia, you provide Cl-, which combines with the gold to form a complex ion in solution. It's a little more complicated than that but, with aqua regia and gold, both sets of dissolving criteria are met.
On the other side of the coin, gold won't dissolve in nitric acid. Although nitric is an oxidizing acid, it won't dissolve gold since gold doesn't form a nitrate, except under unusual conditions. When you add HCl to the nitric to form aqua regia, you provide Cl-, which combines with the gold to form a complex ion in solution. It's a little more complicated than that but, with aqua regia and gold, both sets of dissolving criteria are met.
Barren Realms 007
In Remembrance
Ok I got that and like I said I would be made a fool of. 
But what starts the reaction with just HCL?
But what starts the reaction with just HCL?
I'm no chemist but I would guess that dissolved oxygen could start it. This would dissolve a little copper to produce a little copper chloride which would act as an oxidizing agent to dissolve a little more. All in all, though, I would think it would be a very slow process.
