Extracting palladium from gold ore residue?

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FARID

New member
Joined
Aug 8, 2014
Messages
3
Hi there,
So here is my problem. I have been extracting gold from ore for some time now. I buy ore (dirt) containing gold from a person, then I crush it to very small pieces and then put it in cyanide bath. I then drain the bath and add activated carbon which absorbs the gold, I burn the carbon and get the gold. I buy the ore at a high price and I'm barely profitable. Recently, someone comes to buy my residue ore which I get from draining my cyanide bath. He buys it for dirt cheap money. I was curious as why would he do such a thing. I discovered that my residue ore contains platinum, silver and considerable amount of palladium. Most probably he has a method to extract these noble metals form my residue dirt. I was wondering if anyone could guide me on how to go about extracting these metals myself. I have been doing this for about a year now and I barely can keep my head above water. I would appreciate your help so much.
p.s.: I have been googling for sometime now and I have not come across some straight forward solution.
 
Platinum group metals only dissolve to a large extent in heated cyanide solution, preferably around 120C.
This will require the use of a pressure vessel to stop the leach solution rapidly boiling away.
If you follow this method you will need a temperature probe and pressure relief valve to keep things safe.
Cyanide rates above 2 g/l sodium , potassium or calcium cyanide are used, pH around 11 is OK.
Usually a form of pumped recirculation is used for agitation.
Deano
 
Did you bubble air during extraction? At least silver and palladium should follow gold this way
Thank you for your response. I didn't get your point. Didi you mean that I injected air into the solution? What do you mean by "bubble air"?
Let's assume silver and palladium followed gold; How should I go about separating them?
 
Platinum group metals only dissolve to a large extent in heated cyanide solution, preferably around 120C.
This will require the use of a pressure vessel to stop the leach solution rapidly boiling away.
If you follow this method you will need a temperature probe and pressure relief valve to keep things safe.
Cyanide rates above 2 g/l sodium , potassium or calcium cyanide are used, pH around 11 is OK.
Usually a form of pumped recirculation is used for agitation.
Deano
I really appreciate your response. If this works for me and palladium of the residue dirt is collected in cyanide, whould I be able to collect it using activated carbon or there is another way or better way?
 
Simplest and cheapest collection of precious metal cyanides in solution is using activated carbon, recovery from the carbon by stripping or ashing.

Deano
 
Hi there,
So here is my problem. I have been extracting gold from ore for some time now. I buy ore (dirt) containing gold from a person, then I crush it to very small pieces and then put it in cyanide bath. I then drain the bath and add activated carbon which absorbs the gold, I burn the carbon and get the gold. I buy the ore at a high price and I'm barely profitable. Recently, someone comes to buy my residue ore which I get from draining my cyanide bath. He buys it for dirt cheap money. I was curious as why would he do such a thing. I discovered that my residue ore contains platinum, silver and considerable amount of palladium. Most probably he has a method to extract these noble metals form my residue dirt. I was wondering if anyone could guide me on how to go about extracting these metals myself. I have been doing this for about a year now and I barely can keep my head above water. I would appreciate your help so much.
p.s.: I have been googling for sometime now and I have not come across some straight forward solution.
Question: are the Pt, Pd, Ag, values worth chasing? I have done this work since 1976 and met many a miner that that broke their pick chasing something to get the last squeal. However, it's only Black Sands that I work on today in the lab. Values can be hidden in BS's that fine grinding, then leaching with KCN or NaCN leach will still never get it because it didn't see it. It's all in the Pre-treatment in order to get the values. We're talking about chemical roasting(acidic and alkaline), that's something only a few here have knowledge about and even less are willing to talk about it. Farid, look at like peeling an onion. Slowly you remove the interfering elements to get to the gold. Those elements include Si, Cr, Sn, Fe, S, C to mention a few. Any of those elements can mask the au, ag, pd, pt etc from identifying itself with instrumentation virtually impossible. This is because the values are in a complex condition not allowing the extraction possible.
 
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