Fluxing gold sweeps

[Ayham Hafez]

Hard to say what you have there now, too bad it isn't configured like it was from the first pictures. Parts seem to be missing and parts that are not furnace related seem to be there as well.

One thing for sure I would snap up that ball mill if possible. Look around for the crushing door and the dump grate. I actually think the 4th photo above is the dump housing for the ball mill.

Yes you alright, some parts are missed.
Regard 4th photo I think its flue gas chamber related to the tilting furnace,if you focus you can see that it built with refractory materials from inside, it has special design, like a small door from inside to clean it,and two rooms to reduce the gas temperature while sucking using the ID fan, here are two pictures for it

The ball mill door is available,I will buy it for sure, and there is wet pan mill (yellow one in pictures)I'm thinking to use it instead of shredder or crusher to make PCB's in small pieces.

Regard the rotary furnace, I have two options,first is to complete modifying it by making a small hole in the middle of it as normal rotary furnace and make rotation controlled from both sides, its very easy to make this modification,but after seeing some videos of tilting rotary furnace I said to myself why not using it as tilting rotary furnace,in the video we can notice how we molten metal poured first,then we can pour the slag, please see the video and tell me if its good idea or not

 

[Ayham Hafez]

I'm not being negative, but I question this furnace for smelting. It appears to be more useful for calcining, roasting, incineration, and any other purpose requiring agitation while in a high heat environment, but I don't see any capacity to keep a continuous feed of material, while amassing a good size pool of molten metal. It appears from the photo, that the bottom is a cylinder on its side, no lip to contain metals on door end. Perhaps tilting it, so the end with the fixed hole is down slope may work. Will wait for the pictures.

From my thought, the most valuable advantage of using rotary furnace with big feeding door that help to feed materials easily is we can use a very small amount of collecting metal to collect precious metals for larg sweeps quantity, for example in my case I have about 1,500 kg of sweeps, they need about 300 kg of lead as a collector metal Incase I will use crucible,but with rotary furnace I can use less than 50 kg to collect all precious metals from whole quantity, so cupollation will be much easier and faster.

 

[goldshark]

From my thought, the most valuable advantage of using rotary furnace with big feeding door that help to feed materials easily is we can use a very small amount of collecting metal to collect precious metals for larg sweeps quantity, for example in my case I have about 1,500 kg of sweeps, they need about 300 kg of lead as a collector metal Incase I will use crucible,but with rotary furnace I can use less than 50 kg to collect all precious metals from whole quantity, so cupollation will be much easier and faster.

Are you going to cupel 50 Kg. of Lead, or use the Parkes process?

 

[Ayham Hafez]

Are you going to cupel 50 Kg. of Lead, or use the Parkes process?

What I know about Parkes process is only that it used to recover silver from lead, does it also work with gold?

 

[goldshark]

Yes.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Yes.

Interesting indeed.

 

[Ayham Hafez]

Yes.

Very interesting, you make me learn something new, very appreciated.

Here what I found

https://www.911metallurgist.com/recover-gold-scrap-electronic/

After reading this, I imagine a new procedure that I could make with depopulated components from PCB like pins, IC chips and other components has gold and silver.

Since recovering gold from copper electrolysis cell take too long time and protecting the copper electrolyte is need a lot of following up, I said to my self why not use lead to collect gold and silver from the PCB components,then add Aluminum to skim of gold-Al, after that add zinc to get the beared silver, after that use chemicals to recover gold and silver.

And regard copper plated PCB with gold, use gold stripping solution, then smelt PCB that will contain only copper and base metals and sell molted alloys as impure copper ingots.

But I don't know if Parkes process work also with palladium.

Looking for members opinions.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Very interesting, you make me learn something new, very appreciated.

Here what I found

https://www.911metallurgist.com/recover-gold-scrap-electronic/

After reading this, I imagine a new procedure that I could make with depopulated components from PCB like pins, IC chips and other components has gold and silver.

Since recovering gold from copper electrolysis cell take too long time and protecting the copper electrolyte is need a lot of following up, I said to my self why not use lead to collect gold and silver from the PCB components,then add Aluminum to skim of gold-Al, after that add zinc to get the beared silver, after that use chemicals to recover gold and silver.

And regard copper plated PCB with gold, use gold stripping solution, then smelt PCB that will contain only copper and base metals and sell molted alloys as impure copper ingots.

But I don't know if Parkes process work also with palladium.

Looking for members opinions.

Interesting read, but further searching did not reveal other than hints that the PGMs might follow the Silver.

 

[4metals]

So with the litharge, is this a fusion that needs to be heavily mixed, or is it an unmixed fusion??

Definitely a mixed fusion. When using litharge as the collector it is important to. assure the litharge actually contacts the metals you are trying to collect. This happens more efficiently when it is mixed. Some folks actually mix the sample and the litharge containing flux and also add a litharge cap to increase the rain down of the lead through the charge.

With any fusion reaction mixing before is critical. In a crucible, more so.

 

[snoman701]

How long past the point where it glasses well do you really have to melt it? What do you use for stirring? And just to confirm, by mixed, I meant actively mixing while it's molten glass, not mixing the charge ahead of time.

With the litharge, is it necessary to add a reducing agent?

 

[Ayham Hafez]

How long past the point where it glasses well do you really have to melt it? What do you use for stirring? And just to confirm, by mixed, I meant actively mixing while it's molten glass, not mixing the charge ahead of time.

With the litharge, is it necessary to add a reducing agent?

No need to use reducing agents with litharge when you smelt PCB, it will be reduced when higher activities metals react with it like tin, iron, nickel, etc.. as they will be oxidized also in PCB since you should pyrolize before smelt, so for sure there will be carbon that will also reduce litharge to metallic lead.

 

[4metals]

I only use litharge in assay fusions never in recovery because lead is plain nasty stuff.

As far as mixing in an assay fusion at some point in the fusion the crucibles should be removed from the furnace and swirled to mix them.

In a smelting process with gas sparging, the gas itself provides the mixing function.

 

[Ayham Hafez]

I only use litharge in assay fusions never in recovery because lead is plain nasty stuff.

As far as mixing in an assay fusion at some point in the fusion the crucibles should be removed from the furnace and swirled to mix them.

In a smelting process with gas sparging, the gas itself provides the mixing function.

Really looking for your comments about Parkes process and use lead to collect PM's from PCB depopulated components rather than use copper cell since copper cell need a lot of experience and tools to keep it run as well as it need much time.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Really looking for your comments about Parkes process and use lead to collect PM's from PCB depopulated components rather than use copper cell since copper cell need a lot of experience and tools to keep it run as well as it need much time.

If you go for Gold Aluminum will be the most interesting additive.
For Silver you need Zinc.
Ideally the lead should last "forever" but we all know it is not so in real life.
It would be interesting to see some production data on this though.
A vacuum filter with fiberglass will make it very fast and complete to get the dross out.

 

[Ayham Hafez]

If you go for Gold Aluminum will be the most interesting additive.
For Silver you need Zinc.
Ideally the lead should last "forever" but we all know it is not so in real life.
It would be interesting to see some production data on this though.
A vacuum filter with fiberglass will make it very fast and complete to get the dross out.

When I read 911 article,I didn't understand the idea of vacuum filter, could you send pics or article that talk about it. Thanks in advance

 

[snoman701]

I only use litharge in assay fusions never in recovery because lead is plain nasty stuff.

As far as mixing in an assay fusion at some point in the fusion the crucibles should be removed from the furnace and swirled to mix them.

In a smelting process with gas sparging, the gas itself provides the mixing function.

I thought you were saying that you could do the recovery in a crucible with litharge added as the collector. This thread sort of goes back and forth between rotary furnace and crucible smelting.

 

[Yggdrasil]

When I read 911 article,I didn't understand the idea of vacuum filter, could you send pics or article that talk about it. Thanks in advance

The description was in the 911 post

 

[Yggdrasil]

When I read 911 article,I didn't understand the idea of vacuum filter, could you send pics or article that talk about it. Thanks in advance

Two steel cylinders.
A stainless grating with a fiber glass on top of one. Then another which you Screen on top of the first.
Add a nipple to the lower and suck a vacuum into it.
It will draw the molten metal through and remove all the dross in one go.

 

[Ayham Hafez]

Two steel cylinders.
A stainless grating with a fiber glass on top of one. Then another which you Screen on top of the first.
Add a nipple to the lower and suck a vacuum into it.
It will draw the molten metal through and remove all the dross in one go.

Hmmm, its very hard to imagine how it could be look like, I looked for it but only find the glass fiber filter, didn't find any topic talking about sucking molten metal using vacuum.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Hmmm, its very hard to imagine how it could be look like, I looked for it but only find the glass fiber filter, didn't find any topic talking about sucking molten metal using vacuum.

Here it is: