Just as a point of reference I recently set up a guy in Westchester NY who wanted to do the same thing, he is a jeweler with a store and he wanted to refine. I set him up with a PVC hood a good exhaust, a fume scrubber and all associated ducting which set him back $18,500, he was handy and did the installation with friends to save on install costs. His goal was to refine 50 ounces per lot and he purchased a sealed glass reactor with heat and condensers for about $2,000 and a vacuum system, filter jugs and buchner funnels set him back another $2,500. Now he has everything to refine, he had a gas melter and hood existing in the place.
It took me 3 days to design the scrubber and associated pumps and blowers and when he was set up I worked with him for 10 days to teach him everything soup to nuts. He caught on quickly. So with my fees, ($1000 a day) he spent $36,000. He didn't want to cheap out and he has nice equipment which will serve him well for a long time and is sized to process more than he is currently processing.
Oh, the city of New York got there fingers in there and between a PE and permit fees, add another $4.000.
He is totally EPA compliant, and holds and hauls his waste.
That was done in the fall of last year. He is currently processing 2 lots a day of scrap a day and his costs (less labor, that is his time) are $2.50 per ounce in, including waste removal. He recovers gold and his bars assay .9995+ and he is recovering his silver as well. He is buying at 70% of value and with the numbers he's doing he is up a cool $18,000 a day. Not a bad ROI.
The only project I've ever done west of the Mississippi was for a guy doing a lot of silver (big operation) so don't think this is a sales pitch, just some figures to work with.