Ex refinery worker uk looking to compare productions

[guldfingarz1]

Hi I am new to this site. I used to work for a chemical process process refinery about 15 years ago and was looking at reentering the field. I mainly refined au by dissolution and reduction processes over 24-48 hours averaging 150 kg per visit and was wondering how the industry had evolved or changed and whether new and quicker processes where now being used. I have tried to maintain a level of understanding in the field but moving to a completely different environment as left me a bit out of practise. I also refined within the same chemical process Pt pd Rh with chemical reduction. Anyone who still works in the industry would be ideal to give me an understanding of the current climate and changes. Thanks

 

[goldsilverpro]

Wouldn't it be better for you to search, read and study the forum for your answers to these questions? I would assure you that, then, you will have very few questions. You'll find that about 90% of all the meaningful information available, new or old, has been at least mentioned on this forum. After all, we don't know what you know and what you don't know.

 

[djui5]

While you're searching the forums, any chance you could detail how you used to do things? What chemicals used, equipment used, etc?

 

[freechemist]

Hello guldfingarz1,

You're considering reentering the field of PM-refining after about 15 years of activities in different domains. Therefor you ask for informations about probably new technologies and climate changes in the (chemical) refining-industry. As you know from your own experience, PM-refining-industry is a very conservative and secluded branch, somehow like the old alchemists in their enduring search for gold. After my experience nothing much has changed in the past 15 years, except the pricing for fine gold (and other PMs) of course. Gold and other PMs still have their own fascination for nearly everybody and today are of higher value than 15 years ago. In chemical processing there have not been big breakthroughs since 15 years. The PMs and their recovering and refining are still practically the same, like it is also the case in base-chemicals production (sulfuric acid, caustic, ammonia and others). Probably only the pricing for refining lots has changed a little, because this has always been more dependent on the value of the material to be treated than on the pricing of chemicals and installations used in the refining processes.

Regards, freechemist

 

[4metals]

We have worked very hard on this forum to try to break down the secrecy that the precious metals refining industry has dealt with over the years. However we do get new members here who ask how to do everything while exerting a minimal effort on their part to learn for themselves. For this reason we often ask new members to do some research on the site themselves rather than just let us reiterate what we have written many times before.

A shortcut to get some meaningful conversation going would be for you to post a detailed description of your refining experience, not all the metals at once, you can start with gold. This will quickly attract comments from the people on this board who can answer your questions with the hope that another member with refining experience can only help the overall group learn new processes and techniques.

I welcome you to the forum and hope your presence here can benefit both you and our members.

 

[nickvc]

Welcome to the forum it's nice to see another UK member.
Who did you work for? as far as I can remember there were very few large wet refineries around back then.
One has to say that large scale refining these days has definitely changed and even the top secret Miller process has been outed on here. Do your research on here and I think you will become aware that new processes are taking over for large scale refining and the members have worked out some very clever recovery techniques to allow the home refiner to recover gold economically and refine to a high purity.