Non-Chemical flash plate, pins, and other stuff?

[ZurRyno]

Hey Guys And Gals, I've been loving this site for a while, and love the hobby. I set up a fume hood in what shoulda been a walk in closet off my bedroom. I have a 5 gallon bucket 80% to the top with AP,(from here on out referred to as "random bucket") . And a smaller one of AP just for high grade ore, or the fingers. So for the past year I've been processing small batches of fingers here and there and had some good luck and some cruddy luck, but at the end of the day it was more enjoyment than disappointment. So for the past year I was always collecting and, separating, thin pins and tons of flash plate from cell phones and other plated material that i was curious to see it eat. I kept adding these depopulated (always cut or scraped these boards to keep the gunk in check) to my big "random bucket", . I hadn't poured off this bucket until recently. And now I'm kinda stuck. The sediment is so fine from the flash plate it's difficult to decant, and speckled through out from the thicker plate on the pins. When I finally filtered/decanted the Random, I found about an inch of sediment on the bottom, I poured off as much liquid as possible and with a heating pad underneath I tried to dry the sediment in the bottom. This resulted in a layer of emerald green copper crystals on top, and black and tan silt with gold fleck. So...as a long time reader and a first time search engine fail victim, I'm asking all ya forum forefathers what the heck should i do next? I know water to rid it of the copper crystals and boiling water to get rid of the lead oxide, what else is what I'm asking. I realize now this was a silly thing to do, but....Oops! Where do I go from here? I'll post pics of the big Random tomorrow.

 

[Pantherlikher]

Hey ZurRyno.

Ok. So you have material from an AP bucket. Wash and process. what's the problem?
You don't have to dry it untill the end of processing. You want to wash out as much "crap" as you can before dissolving and dropping gold.

Don't overthink about what is in the bucket. It's simply concentrated material.

B.S.

 

[niteliteone]

Here's the basics. You will have to read up on the process to get the complete process.
Start rinsing the mud with warm HCl as many times as it takes until the acid stays clear to be sure all base metals that will dissolve in HCl are out, then process using the HCl / Clorox method, then follow the drop with Harold's rinsing procedures.
Then refine it a second time to be sure it is as clean as you can get it.

 

[butcher]

First I must say working with this in your house is dangerous and corrosive, even the copper II chloride leach, you should never process any of this material or use these chemicals in a house, find a suitable safe place.

Because of the trash you may have and metals like tin and lead along with the other base metal salts, I would want to deal with that.

I would do the process in a corningware dish on a solid burner hot plate, completing the process in the dish as much as possible without moving the powders out of this dish,(leaving these powders in the dish and decanting liquids,in as many steps as possible).

I think I would use minimum water and heat to dissolve what would easily would easily dissolve, wetting the lump and crushing them in the ceramic dish, a ceramic pestal or other non reactive tool to crush with, crush the lumps back to fine powders, letting this settle well, and decant this water, then add another wash of water that had sodium hydroxide mixed in it, with mild heat, wash the powders, let this sit and decant clear colored liquid salt water, (check pH), and rinse several more times in boiling water washes, letting it settle well before decanting washes.


Basically what the goal here is to get the fine powders to a neutral pH and to wash out chlorides as salt water, to form oxides and hydroxides of the base metals.

Gold mixed with chlorides can be volatile at high heat (800 deg C), since we come very close to this temperature or higher when we incinerate, it is a good idea not to have chlorides or salts of chlorides in your powders when you incinerate them.

Dry the chloride free powders on low heat, raising the heat after the powders dry, after heating a while you may see these dry powders turn to a syrup with heat as they fuse, you may have to lower heat to prevent bubbling and splashing, if this happens powders will dry again but will need crushing again, it is easier to do this after they dry again but contain enough moisture to make crushing easier, continue heating of the finely crushed dry powders then raise the heat to high, when you no longer see smoke use the torch to incinerate the powders, stirring the glowing red hot powders to get good exposure to the oxygen in the air.

Let the powders cool, add just a little water from your spray bottle washing the powders off the side of the dish, cover the powders with HCl and bring it to just barely a mild boil we do not want big bubbles popping, heat this well then lower heat to low or warm, let powders settle decant this solution, if liquid is highly colored repeat to pick up more base metals, after these washes become more clear give it several boiling hot water washes, decanting as hot as possible after powders settle.


Now, depending on the state of these powders this step may or may not be necessary, if there is still base metals in the powders we need to dissolve, we can do this in a fresh batch of the copper II chloride leach, using fresh HCl and 3% H2O2.

After base metal are dissolved and removed, and all you are left with is gold, foils or powders, base metal free, we can wash and begin to refine them for the first refining, the gold could remain in the corning dish throughout that process too.

 

[moose7802]

As niteliteone said, I would proceed by giving the mud a quick boil in hcl, rinse with water, then wash again with hcl till the hcl no longer has color. This would remove as much base metal as possible so you have a nice clean solution to deal with once you dissolve the mud. Then hcl/cl and drop wash once with water and once with hcl then hcl/cl, drop and do harolds washes.

Tyler

 

[ZurRyno]

Sorry it took so long to get back to my own first post. I have some Pics that I would love scrutinized.

 

[ZurRyno]

 

[ZurRyno]

The top one is some of the heavier stuff on the bottom of the bucket. The rest are before i did some water rinses and decanted.

 

[Platdigger]

I hope you tested those rinses before you tossed them.

 

[ZurRyno]

Yes, I sure have. I save just about all my solutions, just as long as the the Forum Fore Fathers deemed them safe to mix into the waste barrel. I know there are enough PM's in there from a couple screw-ups to be worth the effort to cement out and reclaim. When I discovered these processes to reclaim PM's from E-wastes I fell in love with all the chemistry and alchemy that had always been fascinated with since a kid. I'm disabled, I lost the lower part of my right leg at 16, so I don't work too much and was really needing a past time. It took a minute to find this forum, once I did I was studying posts like I had a Final in the morning. This hobby is perfect for me, I get to break stuff, and that's so therapeutic. I have issues with cell phones so I get great satisfaction smashing those lil'buggers. I lost my first 7 grams of smb dropped gold, that was frustrating to point that I sort of quit for a while. When I got my inspiration back and returned to my alchemy closet I found my solutions had fouled. I left the warming pad on and my solutions evaporated away, right down to some really beautiful (copper chloride?) kryptonite looking crystals. I've slowly been working my way back to the fun I was having, I'm just a checking with the forum here to be certain I'm not playing with a bunch of rust dust LOL. I really do appreciate your time guys this is a fantastic forum!!

 

[ZurRyno]

Well, I guess I had hoped for some kind of response by this time. What's up? Can I get a few jokes cracked at my mistakes at least? Come on, I have a pretty well rounded sense of humor, I can take it. Even of I've been been playing with rust dust, it's been a good way to past the time.

 

[butcher]

ZurRyno,

Even if you are playing with rust dust it can be educational, Iron is a very facinating metal, it can really fool us in recovery or refining, looking like several other metals in solutions (copper or even like gold in solutions), getting an education on iron and its chemistry can really be helpful.

I am glad you back at it, even if you are just playing with rust dust, I know it will be rewarding and lead to some gold in your melting dish.