Home built centrifuge - gold concenrates from IC's

[rusty]

I thought I did describe it, and drew a picture of it in the description; you just have to read what I wrote above, and close your eyes to see it.

If your imagination does not work like mine maybe this will help.

https://www.google.com/#hl=en&biw=1024&bih=570&sclient=psy-ab&q=home+made+chemical+magnetic+stir+motor&oq=home+made+chemical+magnetic+stir+motor&gs_l=hp.12...1382.30513.0.46460.43.39.2.1.1.2.1481.14610.0j15j13j1j1j3j3j3.39.0...0.0...1c.1.7.psy-ab.n3w5Qw4amlk&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.44158598,d.cGE&fp=459c9234ee5565df

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FMTWMvDs5e4

http://www.instructables.com/id/Self-Stirring-Mug-using-Lego/




Here is one more idea, you can use your imagination on.
Seeing the spinning liquid made me think of, a the spinning liquid can act like the centrifuge, heavier material will accumulate in the center at the bottom of the vessel, what if we could fix the magnet on a suspended shaft, and have a catch basin in the bottom center of our vessel to catch these heavier values like fine gold, maybe even a funnel with a dump valve.
What I am thinking, of is something similar how the centrifuge or blue bowel, works,
Something like the old mining trick of the five gallon bucket where you drill a 2”hole in the bottom center for a plastic plumbing cap to sit in, add the screened fines with water in the bucket, stir the heck out of it with a stick a couple of times, (a paint stirrer on a drill also works for the stir stick), and spinning action of the water separates the powders by density, and the centrifugal action deposits the fine gold in solution in the plumbing cap in the center bottom of the bucket, gold being heavier fills the plumbing plug cap first then lighter sand settles on top, and after gold other sand in the bucket settle you reach down under the sand remove the plastic plumbing cap, letting the water and sand drain from this bucket into another bucket, then panning the fine gold powder that collected in the pluming cap.

All are good ideas, trouble here is using Acid Bleach leach where you want to keep the chlorine gas in your leach as long as possible.

It's a nice day out so I'm stirring more often, then in between time tearing down some POS terminals I picked up yesterday.

Maybe have some goods to sell on ebay from the laser scanners, I sell the power supply and laser tubes.

 

[modtheworld44]

I thought I did describe it, and drew a picture of it in the description; you just have to read what I wrote above, and close your eyes to see it.

If your imagination does not work like mine maybe this will help.

https://www.google.com/#hl=en&biw=1024&bih=570&sclient=psy-ab&q=home+made+chemical+magnetic+stir+motor&oq=home+made+chemical+magnetic+stir+motor&gs_l=hp.12...1382.30513.0.46460.43.39.2.1.1.2.1481.14610.0j15j13j1j1j3j3j3.39.0...0.0...1c.1.7.psy-ab.n3w5Qw4amlk&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.44158598,d.cGE&fp=459c9234ee5565df

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FMTWMvDs5e4

http://www.instructables.com/id/Self-Stirring-Mug-using-Lego/




Here is one more idea, you can use your imagination on.
Seeing the spinning liquid made me think of, a the spinning liquid can act like the centrifuge, heavier material will accumulate in the center at the bottom of the vessel, what if we could fix the magnet on a suspended shaft, and have a catch basin in the bottom center of our vessel to catch these heavier values like fine gold, maybe even a funnel with a dump valve.
What I am thinking, of is something similar how the centrifuge or blue bowel, works,
Something like the old mining trick of the five gallon bucket where you drill a 2”hole in the bottom center for a plastic plumbing cap to sit in, add the screened fines with water in the bucket, stir the heck out of it with a stick a couple of times, (a paint stirrer on a drill also works for the stir stick), and spinning action of the water separates the powders by density, and the centrifugal action deposits the fine gold in solution in the plumbing cap in the center bottom of the bucket, gold being heavier fills the plumbing plug cap first then lighter sand settles on top, and after gold other sand in the bucket settle you reach down under the sand remove the plastic plumbing cap, letting the water and sand drain from this bucket into another bucket, then panning the fine gold powder that collected in the pluming cap.

butcher

I actually just use a 1liter mountain dew bottle.I cut the bottom of the bottle off leaving the lid screwed on,then just flip it on its lid and fill it 1/2-3/4 full of incinerated IC powder and the rest water with big squirt of dishwashing liquid.I give it two good stirs let it settle then take and slow stir it just enough to allow me to push stir rod down into the neck a good five or six times.Then I decant slowly till theres about 5-10ml of fluid left (this depends on how much powder you decide to put in),now just slowly unscrew the lid and let just the complete nose of material drain to lid.I do this part over my gold pan and have a catch pan right net to it ,so that as soon as the nose has drained I can quickly transfer the rest to catch pan.Then I check whats in my gold pan and then dump it in a holding bowl,so when I get done with all my powders I can rerun my cons and just keep getting rid of more and more ash.When I'm done my cons and what little bit of ash is left will go straight to AR since I will have to refine my gold again.Hope this simple process helps someone out?

P.S I can make one of my boring videos for this if you want me to.



modtheworld44

 

[skippy]

One thing I did when reprocessing some sludges from cat converters was this: I put the sludge in the bottom of a bucket, added ssn, took a plastic garbage bag and taped the opening around the bucket. I then poked a cpvc pipe through the bag and taped the pipe to the bag and used that pipe to stir the contents. Tis keeps the fumes down and slows down fluid evaporation. Meanwhile I was heating the bucket in a water bath in a cut open keg. You can go beyond the temperature rating of the polyethylene bucket because the water bath supports the bucket from deforming and failing. I imagine hot ssn would work pretty well on gold. I couldn't justify buying a fancy apparatus like the one you showed unless I was going to be using it regularly to make money, ssn works better hot, and I suspect the HCl would work better at a a higher temperature than it's getting in early in Manitoba spring :lol:

 

[rusty]

One thing I did when reprocessing some sludges from cat converters was this: I put the sludge in the bottom of a bucket, added ssn, took a plastic garbage bag and taped the opening around the bucket. I then poked a cpvc pipe through the bag and taped the pipe to the bag and used that pipe to stir the contents. Tis keeps the fumes down and slows down fluid evaporation. Meanwhile I was heating the bucket in a water bath in a cut open keg. You can go beyond the temperature rating of the polyethylene bucket because the water bath supports the bucket from deforming and failing. I imagine hot ssn would work pretty well on gold. I couldn't justify buying a fancy apparatus like the one you showed unless I was going to be using it regularly to make money, ssn works better hot, and I suspect the HCl would work better at a a higher temperature than it's getting in early in Manitoba spring :lol:

Right now I'm wishing that I had choose to use SSN and had set up my vessels as a heap leach letting the SSN seep through from top vessel to bottom then recirculating the leach. This would have solved the heavy layer problem.

And I think it was dumb to use acid / bleach for such a large amount of cons especially with the insoluble material present. But hey were all learning from it.

Another thought I had earlier today was to cut rounds from this Polyethylene felt carpet then lay about three layers to the bottom of the pail making space for the acid to work from below. I thought that the gas escaping would kinda recirculate the liquid eventually replacing it with fresh leach.

As for the reactor, once I get an idea into my head I find it hard to shake off. Luckily I do have a few priority's that could exhaust my funds before such a purchase could be made.

 

[skippy]

I think you just need some heat and use aqua regia. How about a small sample, magnetically stirred, heated in AR? Figure out what works on a small scale before jumping in with both feet into something full sized. I've dealt with the same tendencies in myself before, it pays off to start small and work out what you are doing. Especially if you can run multiple experiments. Run your concentrates with HCl-Cl2 cold and warm, try weak AR, strong AR, warm AR, hot AR. etc or whatever you think. You wont lose anything unless you throw it out.

 

[rusty]

I think you just need some heat and use aqua regia. How about a small sample, magnetically stirred, heated in AR? Figure out what works on a small scale before jumping in with both feet into something full sized. I've dealt with the same tendencies in myself before, it pays off to start small and work out what you are doing. Especially if you can run multiple experiments. Run your concentrates with HCl-Cl2 cold and warm, try weak AR, strong AR, warm AR, hot AR. etc or whatever you think. You wont lose anything unless you throw it out.

Took a sample of the offending fraction from the 10.25 lb cons lot for a test tube run in hot AR, which takes the sample into solution giving that wonderful gold chloride color.

Second to last test tube extreme right.

Edit to add picture, the test tube top picture after settling out, I suspect the majority of the insolubles is tantalum - assay coming up to confirm.

 

[rusty]

Quote from butcher in another post, thanks butcher the ammonia trick indicates excess chlorine.

somethings I might try.
Let it sit over night to settle (if you have not already), decant solution (do not disturb powder), filter the clear solution to a clean vessel, which you can heat, heat the solution, if there is chlorine this will drive it off, you can see if you smell Chlorine or SO2 gas, a test you can try for chlorine pour a little ammonia in a cap from the bottle we do not need much and do not want to spill the ammonia, hold this capful of ammonia in the stream of fumes and vapors from your gold chloride solution, the ammonia will also be releasing gas hence the smell of ammonia from the capful, when these two gases come together if you see a white cloud form it is ammonium chloride gas, ammonia gas and chlorine gas mixing to form a white cloud of ammonium chloride gas, no white cloud, then no chlorine in the gas coming from your solution.

 

[skippy]

Rusty, I would be inclined to melt this with an alkaline oxidizing flux. It would dissolve lead, tin, tantalum and hopefully leave you with a button of some weird gold, silver, nickel and palladium alloy that you could part with nitric acid and then dissolve the gold from. Any seconders from more experienced members? Recommendations for a flux?

 

[Marcel]

Melting tantalum requires vaccum or melting under a noblegas. I think apart from the incredible melting point around 3000°C that is impossible to do for a small refiner. In addition Ta is not so expensive as some may guess, only pure Ta is quite expensive. That may be because it is so hard to produce.

 

[skippy]

Marcel,I didn't say melt the tantalum. Tantalum isn't noble, and some sort of flux would dissolve it. Sodium hydroxide would dissolve it, but it's dangerous and I would want to get the values to melting point so they would coalesce, and sodium hydroxide is volatile at gold meting temperatures. As far as any tantalum, I'm saying flux it off, don't melt it or save it. It's just in the way and possibly locking up gold.

 

[rusty]

What I'm demonstrating here is that Tantalum is scavenged from the waste from the milled IC's introduced to the centrifuge bowel. along with gold and platinum.

A shaker table or some other piece of equipment like a blue bowel or gold spiral wheel would eliminate the tantalum from the gold concentrates. Ta falls into the SG range of what my cons contain, it's the only metal not affected by hot AR.

Because of tantalums is rather heavy it settles out quickly after stirring, rendering your acid bleach leach nearly useless as the leach requires direct contact with the gold in order to digest it.

IMHO: Acid / Bleach is good for processing gold but has difficulty's when platinum is present or in my case a heavy layer of tantalum covering the gold.

After pre - treating the milled material ( IC's ) with various acids cleaned then up of base metals, in addition silver and palladium before being turned into concentrates, I estimate there's only 3 maybe 4 metals tops in my concentrates all of which have value.

A pound of tantalum scrap would buy me a years supply of nitric acid so I'm not about to toss the baby with the bath water.

By the time I'm ready to process another large batch, I will have made that shaker table, to polish up my concentrates getting a better shot at that gold were all after.

Thanks for all the suggestions.

 

[skippy]

Have you recovered any silver yet from your washes? It would be interesting if that reported well.

My suggestions are just the guesses of an long time gold refining forum reader, my experience is still quite limited, but I retain a lot of things I read,
so I make suggestions in hopes of further feedback and in the spirit of stimulation of more discussion - it's kind of brainstorming rather than something I would stake anything on or prod others into following.
Anyways, I think I'm about out of suggestions, so I will just step back a bit and give you some room.

 

[rusty]

One thing I did when reprocessing some sludges from cat converters was this: I put the sludge in the bottom of a bucket, added ssn, took a plastic garbage bag and taped the opening around the bucket. I then poked a cpvc pipe through the bag and taped the pipe to the bag and used that pipe to stir the contents. Tis keeps the fumes down and slows down fluid evaporation. Meanwhile I was heating the bucket in a water bath in a cut open keg. You can go beyond the temperature rating of the polyethylene bucket because the water bath supports the bucket from deforming and failing. I imagine hot ssn would work pretty well on gold. I couldn't justify buying a fancy apparatus like the one you showed unless I was going to be using it regularly to make money, ssn works better hot, and I suspect the HCl would work better at a a higher temperature than it's getting in early in Manitoba spring :lol:

skippy what did you think of the SSN leach, did you add any additional oxidizer.

Its warmed up a lot over the last couple of days, my acid bleach leach is full of brown powder and still ticking along at a leisurely pace.

My leach now has a SG of 85, now that the leach is becoming more concentrated with metal ions the chlorine gas now stays much longer in the leach. Instead of very vigorous bubbling with new bleach additions I now have very small gas bubbles rising to the top where they form larger bubble caps on reaching the surface.

Then you can observe that the gold powder is staying in suspension longer giving the leach that brown color.

I'm not sure how much metal a gallon of acid bleach can take up in solution, anyone know the answer.

 

[skippy]

I believe a chlorine leach won't bubble except to the extent that base metals are present and reacting with the hcl.
Aqua regia bubbles due to NO, and metals more active than copper release hydrogen when they are dissolved in acids. Copper and gold and palladium, platinum, silver, mercury are less active and when dissolving in a chlorine bearing solution don't release hydrogen. Corrections welcomed, I am not a chemist!

 

[skippy]

I thought the SSN was pretty good, and I managed to achieve decent rhodium extraction, with it. I know people doubt it, but the salt makes a big difference, I believe. I would have the cat material, the dissolved sodium nitrate and hcl in the bucket material, and when you stirred in the salt the solution visibly became accelerated in its gain of color from dissolved precious metals. It was more than just stirring too, I believe.
SSN will need heat as it doesn't do a lot at room temperature.

I made it with HCL and sodium nitrate and salt rather than nitric acid and salt. If you balance the amounts with the molecular weights, you should have functionally the same thing. No extra anything was added.

Straight AR is likely better when you have a lot of metals to dissolve, which is what I think you are looking for.

 

[rusty]

I see that chlorine dioxide is also an interesting and potentially dangerous gas.

Thought about bubbling pure oxygen through my leach to decompose the chlorine, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorine_dioxide

Don't think I would recommend doing this at home.

 

[Platdigger]

Honestly. I think your best bet is going to be to smelt these centrifuged cons.

 

[rusty]

Honestly. I think your best bet is going to be to smelt these centrifuged cons.

You have aroused my curiosity as to how you have concluded that the concentrates from the centrifuge should be smelted, smelting is a Metallurgical process used to remove base metals.

Base metals were previously removed using Hydrometallurgy techniques, followed up with mechanically assisted gravitational forces to get concentrates of the precious metals group.

Just so happens Tantalum an insoluble during the Hydrometallurgy part of my process reports in my mechanically assisted concentrates.

Now that I have learned to recognize tantalums presence will know how to pre-treat my concentrates to remove it before proceeding to going after my gold.

I believe the shaker table will split tantalum from the cons.

I do not follow your logic to smelt.

 

[rusty]

One thing I did when reprocessing some sludges from cat converters was this: I put the sludge in the bottom of a bucket, added ssn, took a plastic garbage bag and taped the opening around the bucket. I then poked a cpvc pipe through the bag and taped the pipe to the bag and used that pipe to stir the contents. Tis keeps the fumes down and slows down fluid evaporation. Meanwhile I was heating the bucket in a water bath in a cut open keg. You can go beyond the temperature rating of the polyethylene bucket because the water bath supports the bucket from deforming and failing. I imagine hot ssn would work pretty well on gold. I couldn't justify buying a fancy apparatus like the one you showed unless I was going to be using it regularly to make money, ssn works better hot, and I suspect the HCl would work better at a a higher temperature than it's getting in early in Manitoba spring :lol:

skippy what did you think of the SSN leach, did you add any additional oxidizer.

Its warmed up a lot over the last couple of days, my acid bleach leach is full of brown powder and still ticking along at a leisurely pace.

My leach now has a SG of 85, now that the leach is becoming more concentrated with metal ions the chlorine gas now stays much longer in the leach. Instead of very vigorous bubbling with new bleach additions I now have very small gas bubbles rising to the top where they form larger bubble caps on reaching the surface.

Then you can observe that the gold powder is staying in suspension longer giving the leach that brown color.

I'm not sure how much metal a gallon of acid bleach can take up in solution, anyone know the answer.

Now that my leach has become more saturated bringing up the specific gravity of the liquid you can see tantalum floating in the froth.

i would like to give thanks and my gratitude to those that have offered their assistance in identifying the brown powder, after doing some research I'm convinced it is tantalum. I'll not be looking to test further.

Those of you on the forum that purchase tantalum and have familiarity with Ta should be able to confirm this. It's color and physical characteristics are unique which sets it apart from many of the other elements we work with.

 

[Platdigger]

I am sure you have some ta in your cons. I really doubt that is all there is besides precious metals.
If so, if all you have at this point is ta and pms, then me hat is off to you sir. And well done.

Also, I made the comment before you began talking about tabling these cons.
That shaker table should clean them up real good.