Copper from Copper Nitrate or Copper Chloride

[Juan Manuel Arcos Frank]

Jim:

You are right,but we need very very pure copper,other way the copper/gold slides used in inquartation process will break..that is why I can not use the brown mud of copper recoverd from metalic replacement.

Thanks for answering.

Manuel

 

[Oz]

Manuel,

I am surprised that you choose copper for inquartation instead of silver since it requires so much more nitric. Is nitric that inexpensive and available in Mexico or is there some other reason?

 

[Anonymous]

I do not see why recycling the copper for inquarting would be different from using new copper because any impurites in it would just be removed along with the copper again.

If you replace the copper with iron and wash the precipate copper well with water and HCL I think the powder would end up pretty good, but that's just me. But I would not use copper to inquart because of the excess acid mentioned before.

Jim

 

[goldsilverpro]

Inquarting with copper requires 3.4 times as much nitric as does inquarting with silver. Also, the silver can be used over and over. The copper is normally lost.

I agree with Jim. The inquarted gold recovered by acid is never pure enough anyway. It will always have to be further refined.

 

[Harold_V]

How about to desgin a cell to refine it?... I am sure that you,both guys,know how to do it.The environment will appreciate it.

The technology isn't an issue, Juan. I had such a cell. The problem comes from the low quality you feed the cell and the expense of recycling on a small scale. It just isn't worth it.

I have melted the recovered copper, so I understand some of the problems related to the process.

Assuming the copper is given a good wash in sulfuric acid and rinsed well, the quality would be drastically improved, so it could than be fed (after melting and being cast as an anode) to a copper parting cell with reasonable results. Copper smelters eliminate the contaminants in the furnace, which would be beyond the ability of the home refiner. So then, the problem comes from economics---especially now that copper is back to low market value. By the time you have processed the recovered copper mud and melted it, you have already invested far more than its worth, both in labor and in materials.

I recovered all of my copper, ending up with two 55 gallon drums full of sponge. There was no market, and previous experience in melting it (I cast several large ingots that were used for recovering silver from inquartation) proved it was cheaper to discard than to melt and acquire solid bits of copper.

Harold

 

[Juan Manuel Arcos Frank]

Harold_V,GSP,thanks...Oz,the reason why here in Mexico we use cooper is because it is very cheap because is stolen from the Government Electricity Company by its own employees...1 stolen cooper wire kg costs $ 3 USD.,nitric acid costs $0.43 USD/lt.I want to finish with this illegal trade so that is why I am tryng to recover the cooper,without much success,by the way.

Regards

Manuel

 

[Oz]

If your goal is to leave the illegal copper trade then you have the ability to use silver instead. I am building a silver cell to recover values from silver I use in inquartation. These are values that you are loosing if you are not parting your copper in a cell. I use cemented silver from previous inquartations several times without re-purifying with no harm. Depending on the material you are running you decide when to recover the gold and platinum group metals in it. You will have a 70% savings in your nitric use as well as having a high grade silver to sell if your operation accumulates it.

 

[command2001]

Copper nitrate can be decomposed at 170C in a glassware setup to reclaim nitric acid by bubbling the NO2 vapor into cold distilled water leaving CuO which in turn can added to your acidic (HCl) copper chloride. Adding the CuO to HCl forms CuCl2 and water. This can now be added to your copper chloride solution.

The acid copper II chloride solution can be used to process more e-scrap (AP method) and periodically rejuvenated or scrap iron can be added to cement out the metallic copper dore leaving an iron chloride (Fe + CuCl2 --> FeCl2 + Cu) solution which can be neutralized with any of the standard bases to form rusty salt water.

Alternately you can extract the copper from the compounds (nitrate and chlorides) using electricity producing copper metal at the negative terminal.

Steve

Steve: what materials should you use for the + and - poles?

 

[command2001]

Recovering the copper isn't an issue. Marketing the copper is. Here in the US, there are no sources interested in purchasing the copper sludge. It ends up being discarded instead. The ultimate is to recover it electrolytically, so it can be sold as a solid at recycling facilities.

Harold

Harold: What would I use for my electrolyist + and - poles? Any Idear?

 

[Yggdrasil]

Harold: What would I use for my electrolyist + and - poles? Any Idear?

Harold rarely frequent here anymore so he might not reply at all.