Evaporating water off of gold powder?

[SweetGold]

What would be an efficient way to evaporate water off of gold and silver powder? Its submerged in it. Since the container is plastic I cant just put it on a stove. And Im sure the microwave is out of the question too. :mrgreen: I realize I could put it in a different, heat resistant container. But the point is that I want to present the powder inside the lockable plastic container. How do the gold washers do it anyway? When they sniff up the gold particles from the pans it always comes with some water...doesnt it? Do they sell it this way? Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[Harold_V]

You're simply going to have to change the way you think. Solving the problem by sticking to what you want to do (or believe) may not be in your best interest.

When I dried my re-refined gold, because of the huge volume involved, I'd send the particles to a Buchner funnel, where the solution was drawn off by vacuum. That permitted tamping the powder so it was well compressed and clumped. After tamping, additional water was introduced to wash the material well. Once fully dried, the contents of the Buchner was emptied to a large Coors evaporating dish, which was then placed on a burner to be force dried.

The same process that was described, above, was used for cement silver, or silver crystals recovered from the silver cell. Crystals did not get tamped down, otherwise the operation was identical.

You can not dry these powders successfully without added heat. Residual acids, in spite of prolonged drying by atmosphere, remain. You are deceived by their weight, albeit only by a small margin.

Gold that has been once refined can be successfully washed and (force) dried by keeping it in the same vessel that was used for precipitation. It is for that reason that I NEVER recommend plastic be used. It creates more problems than it solves as far as I'm concerned. I used beakers for these operations---although old coffer carafes can serve well, too.

Harold