Gold and silver trapped in lead.

[lazylightning]

Hi Everyone,

I have several dosen kilos of lead ore(from 30 to 50% lead) with seven grams of gold and fourteen grams of silver per kilo. I managed to dissolve it with my own proprietory process (something the owner of the ore couldnt do because of some binding material or so they say). So how to refine this stuff? Lots of lead and silver "cheese"floating around and can't really be seperated by filtration. Seperated it from gange by sedimentation

I'm considering just evaporating it all down to a salt and then melting it into anodes for dissolution in a nitric acid electrolyte within a special sock to catch the indissolvable particles of gold. and refine further from there. The silver is not of interest to the owner of this stuff, so purity of silver crystaliZing at the cathode is of little importance.

The other route as of yet is to use the Parkes process to get the gold and silver out out of the lead. Zinc is added to molten lead (in furnace)which bonds to the gold and silver while floating it to the top. Is that process feasible for retreaving small mounts of gold and silver from lead? The gold and silver without the Zinc could then be melted into anodes to give a fairly pure silver electro-refining process with gold powder dropping from the dissolving anode into the anode sock.

There's a lot more of this stuff and I can have access to it if I can find a way to get the gold out. I'll get a job if I can get anything close to the 7 grams of gold out of the leach from that kilo of ore that I dissolved.

any ideas, opinions?

Best Regards,
Paul

 

[Lou]

I dabbled with the Parkes process once upon a time. It does work, but really, it seems like something best employed for really large amounts. Easiest thing to do would be dissolve away the zinc with HCl, then rinse really, really well and boil in nitric (check for gold contamination) to remove the silver. After that, go after the gold with whatever method you prefer.


Really, why don't you just melt the lead up into anodes and electrolytically refine that?

 

[lazylightning]

Thanks Lou! I'll try the electrode thing. Will the lead be hot enough at lead's melting temperature for the gold to be reduced or can the gold be trapped in the lead in a form which might be reintroduced into solutionby the nitric acid? What temperture do I have to bring the lead to if I want to make electrodes with it?

 

[goldsilverpro]

Lou,

What do you propose he should use as an electrolyte to refine the lead?

 

[lazylightning]

Lou,

What do you propose he should use as an electrolyte to refine the lead?

We may just leave a tiny bit of gold behind in that lead so that someone might be willing to take it off of our hands for free =) a hundred tons of it. It seems like it will be nasty work though, lead is so toxic(((

Stannous tests are strnge though. Getting a more blackish spot at first, that has an undertint of purple to it. Later as the spot expands, the whole area goes purple. The black always disppears too. Later bright yellow/orangish appears.

 

[Lou]

I've read of lead being done small scale from Pb(NO3)2 solutions with nitric acid added to increase conductivity. Obviously a no-go if he's trying to pull the silver out.

Also, I know that lead (II) acetate (with sodium acetate and a 10-30 mL/L conc. H2SO4 for conductivity) works for giving a spongey lead. That is where I would start. I have an exact bath recipe somewhere, I suppose I can look for it.


Industrially, lead is plated out from flurosilicic acid and lead fluoroborate (made from reaction of HF with boric oxide, then with lead metal).

 

[goldsilverpro]

I've used fluoboric acid + lead fluoborate + boric acid. It's expensive to make up but produces an excellent solid deposit. I think I added traces of gelatin or some type of glue as a grain refiner.

 

[lazylightning]

So I think I get your drift. Good idea. I should find a lead electro-refiner. They get free lead and we get the ore concentrted into slime/sludge. I'll have to sit in house though and babysit the operation. It is Russia you know)))\

So I was cementing out my leach today and one jar worked fine. The other jarful is spitting out tons of H2S when I add HCl or sinc to it.(sorry, broken keyboard) Was it the tiny bit of sodium thiosulfate I added to be sure the chlorine was totally gone? The other jar got it too, and there was no such problem with it.

 

[Irons]

Here's some Patent information that might be useful:

1. A process for producing electrolytic lead and elemental sulfur from galena,
United States Patent 5039337

http://tinyurl.com/myy896



Process for separation and recovery of metal values from sulfide ore concentrates
United States Patent 4011146

http://tinyurl.com/mkuhz4

 

[Gold]

Hey, glad to see you back Irons. How you been ? We sure miss you.

Ralph

 

[Irons]

Hey, glad to see you back Irons. How you been ? We sure miss you.

Ralph

Hi Ralph,

Doing a lot better, thanks. Been staying away from the 'Witches' Brew' and sticking with safer sources. Had a good Summer. We had a spell of great weather, so I was able to get out and do some sniping.

Hope To spend more time here this Winter.

I trust you folks have done well this Year.

 

[lazersteve]

Great to see you are doing well Irons, I for one have missed your insightful postings.

Welcome back!

Steve

 

[Irons]

Great to see you are doing well Irons, I for one have missed your insightful postings.

Welcome back!

Steve

Hi Steve,

Thank you.

Been lurking for a week or so, trying to get my groove back.

8)