Floor sweeps first attempt

[Nauticamark]

Greetings everyone!
So, I have decided to go into my sweeps barrel (I own a jewelry store, for those of you who get what I mean about this barrel), and make my first attempt at refining PM's out of it. What goes into this barrel is the usual day to day shop floor sweepings, what comes out of the store vacuum cleaner, random paper towels, etc. Nothing from the jewelers pans, and nothing from any of the polishing dust collectors or polishing related wheels, etc.

That said, I have basically removed and shook off the majority of bigger trash pieces of any attached dust, any obvious pieces of ferrous metals, along with other useless included pieces tossed in there. I took a couple of heaping handful's of the material from the bottom, and incinerated in a covered large stainless steel pot until all contents were reduced to ash. I have attached a pic below of the ash/powder after screening and running magnets all through it to remove any ferrous metals left. I must say that I was rather shocked at the weight of the powder to this point in refining.

Proceeding further, does anyone have a experienced list of steps on how to process this material from this point further to remove out the gold? I did read Hoke's book. The part discussing floor sweeps was rather vague, and I was hoping for some more precise instructions from some of the experienced members out there. Any help would be very appreciated!

Thank you for taking the time to read my posting.

Nauticamark

 

[UncleBenBen]

A quick search of Harold's posts on sweeps and you can't go wrong! Enter Harold_V in the search for author box in the advanced search screen.

My stupid phone did an auto update recently and I lost most of my links or I would post them here.

 

[FrugalRefiner]

As Ben has mentioned, Harold_V processed a lot of this type of material. You can search for terms like sweeps, floor sweeps, etc. and use Harold_V as the author to find some of his posts. I believe kadriver has also posted some videos on sweeps.

One comment I can make is that your method of incineration may not accomplish the purpose. You mention "a covered large stainless steel pot". When incinerating, you want plenty of oxygen to contact the heated material, which will totally consume all carbon. A shallow stainless steel fry pan will serve better than a covered pot.

Dave

 

[Grelko]

A quick search of Harold's posts on sweeps and you can't go wrong! Enter Harold_V in the search for author box in the advanced search screen.

My stupid phone did an auto update recently and I lost most of my links or I would post them here.

I happened to download that PDF a while back. Sorry, I don't have the link to the thread either.

View attachment Harold V jeweler sweeps.pdf

 

[nickvc]

I ran hundreds of sweeps so perhaps I can help a little.
Dave was right you need to allow oxygen to get to your sweeps after it has all reduced so perhaps put the powder back into your container reheat and stir gently to get oxygen to all the powder. The material you removed with the magnet should be put in the stock pot, many Pt alloys are magnetic and it will catch any missed values.
Unless you work mainly with silver it's probably not worth trying to recover it so place your powder into your beaker and add hydrochloric acid to cover do this slowly and stir when covered slowly heat stirring to avoid hot spots, this helps remove lots of base metals, once all reaction has stopped filter and rinse.
Powder back into your beaker again add HCl to cover and heat again stirring then add small amounts of nitric, you want this particular solution to boil slowly, one of the few times that is ever advised, the reason is it moves the powder around, use a watch glass and also keep stirring.
Once all reaction has stopped allow to cool, stir for the first few minutes, then filter, a good vacuum pump is a must, and rinse the powders until you see no more colour, the rest is the same as any other precipitation.
As a byword if you recover say 30 grams of gold if you did the first extraction right you will have approximately 3 grams left in the powder, so I always did my sweeps twice and occasionally three times depending on the results, it's almost impossible to get all the values but if you do it correctly you should recover 95%+.
Hope that helps and good luck.

 

[upcyclist]

Unless you work mainly with silver it's probably not worth trying to recover it so place your powder into your beaker and add hydrochloric acid to cover do this slowly and stir when covered slowly heat stirring to avoid hot spots, this helps remove lots of base metals, once all reaction has stopped filter and rinse.
Powder back into your beaker again add HCl to cover and heat again stirring then add small amounts of nitric, you want this particular solution to boil slowly, one of the few times that is ever advised, the reason is it moves the powder around, use a watch glass and also keep stirring.
Once all reaction has stopped allow to cool, stir for the first few minutes, then filter, a good vacuum pump is a must, and rinse the powders until you see no more colour, the rest is the same as any other precipitation.

Since I'm playing along at home--the rinsing is just to get your values away from the silver (and possibly lead?) chloride powders in the filter, correct?

 

[Barren Realms 007]

Unless you work mainly with silver it's probably not worth trying to recover it so place your powder into your beaker and add hydrochloric acid to cover do this slowly and stir when covered slowly heat stirring to avoid hot spots, this helps remove lots of base metals, once all reaction has stopped filter and rinse.
Powder back into your beaker again add HCl to cover and heat again stirring then add small amounts of nitric, you want this particular solution to boil slowly, one of the few times that is ever advised, the reason is it moves the powder around, use a watch glass and also keep stirring.
Once all reaction has stopped allow to cool, stir for the first few minutes, then filter, a good vacuum pump is a must, and rinse the powders until you see no more colour, the rest is the same as any other precipitation.

Since I'm playing along at home--the rinsing is just to get your values away from the silver (and possibly lead?) chloride powders in the filter, correct?

Generally yes. And any other contaminants that might be in it.

 

[Nauticamark]

Hey everyone!
Many thanks for the quick responses and forwarded information. I was blown away by the wealth of experienced knowledge that was given so kindly! I am going to follow the instructions in the link Grelko kindly submitted in reply (Grelko, many thanks!) that Harold posted a time ago. I will keep the interested posted, I am anxious to give this an educated try!

Again, thank you to all on the forum, for your kind and generous knowledge.

Nauticamark

 

[Grelko]

Hey everyone!
Many thanks for the quick responses and forwarded information. I was blown away by the wealth of experienced knowledge that was given so kindly! I am going to follow the instructions in the link Grelko kindly submitted in reply (Grelko, many thanks!) that Harold posted a time ago. I will keep the interested posted, I am anxious to give this an educated try!

Again, thank you to all on the forum, for your kind and generous knowledge.

Nauticamark

You're welcome 8) . Harold is the person that should be thanked for the PDF file though, since he's the one that took the time to write it. I just read the threads and download different files, just incase my internet bugs out, so I can still read them offline.