Home built centrifuge - gold concenrates from IC's

[Marcel]

Wow nice, finally some hard data!
Looks as if the Pt is worth beeing hunted down.
I would try to reduce the mass by:
1. Magnetic seperation (iron,nickel)
2. Washing (will dissolve all watersoluable material)
3. Dilute nitric
4. Then AR or else to dissolve the Pt.
Just my thoughts.
Except for mercury and arsenic nothing to worry about to much. Francium is radioactive, but I dont know how strong and how much there is of it.
My 6.5 Kg grey powder from the refinery should have similiar composition.

 

[rusty]

Wow nice, finally some hard data!
Looks as if the Pt is worth beeing hunted down.
I would try to reduce the mass by:
1. Magnetic seperation (iron,nickel)
2. Washing (will dissolve all watersoluable material)
3. Dilute nitric
4. Then AR or else to dissolve the Pt.
Just my thoughts.
Except for mercury and arsenic nothing to worry about to much. Francium is radioactive, but I dont know how strong and how much there is of it.
My 6.5 Kg grey powder from the refinery should have similiar composition.

Marcel the powder was the dregs after the final AR leach, I'm surprised mercury reared its ugly head as these cons had been subjected to a lengthly incineration, a 50/50 nitric leach then AR.

I had never heard of Francium then after looking it up found that it is radio active, makes me wonder what use it would have in electronics.

 

[Sucho]

Francium is definitely XRF misinterpretation of spectra. There is almost no possibility to have Fr in your sample because of very short half life of all isotopes ( in a range of minutes). theres no stable isotope of francium.also extrapolated density does not fit for centrifugal concentration

 

[rusty]

My large lot of cons has been on heat for a week and its still reacting.

Patience is not one of my better attributes, I've decanted several liters of leach. De-noxxed 2000 ml of pregnant leach then precipitated the gold using SMB let the gold settle out overnight.

The gold appears fairly clean on this first run, when I decanted the gold barren leach the gold powder clumps together really good, finally doing something right.

Final gold wash using Harold's procedure, thank you Harold.

Then I tested the green colored solution with fresh stannous checking on how clean the drop was, looks to be complete. Stannous showing PT dark brown swab orange in lighter concentrations.

I can hardly wait for the reactor to arrive, it has work waiting evaporating the pregnant platinum leach.

It's going to be a busy week.

 

[glondor]

I still see snow....All of ours was gone last Thursday ! It snowed again last night....grrrr

 

[rusty]

I still see snow....All of ours was gone last Thursday ! It snowed again last night....grrrr

We had some of your snow last night, woke up to ground cover.

 

[rusty]

The green filtrates above and those below came from the same batch of cons.

From the green colored liquor I was only getting a few grams of gold per 2000ml, this stuff below looks like the mother load.

The spent liquor from the green leach is currently cementing out PGM's with copper, the liquid is now very black.

 

[rusty]

The flask with the canary yellow solution was filtered hot as is from the leach pail, 2nd honey colored had HCL added.

The yellow filtrate was still hot entering the filter on cooling the gold chloride crystallized, the spigot on the filter is plugged solid with more crystals in the filter.

I've added fresh HCL full strength to bring the crystals back into solution, as you can see I still have ice bergs in the flask.

Made a few wooden patterns which will be used to make an open plaster mold to pour my gold, once the plaster has cured remove the wood patterns.

The vacuum pump will be used to evacuate any bubbles in the plaster giving the mold cavity a nice smooth finish.

Thinking of putting this project on hold and give this job to the reactor when it arrives, leaching cons in a plastic pail sucks big time.

 

[rusty]

The gold barren green colored leach, copper cementing out PGM's.

Coppers from microwave magnetron's.

Specific gravity has changed the gold chloride crystals have taken up a new position in the flask changing from sinkers to floaters.

In case your wondering why so many pictures, I do not allow my wife admittance to my shop but keep her abreast of what I'm doing via photo's from which are then easy to share with forum members.

 

[srlaulis]

Are you afraid she will hurt herself, Rusty?

 

[rusty]

With the addition from the flask on the left the crystals are now completely consumed.

 

[rusty]

The centrifuge did its job very well, I'm very satisfied with it.

After the gold had surrendered, my leaches are coming off greenish in color.

With the gold now mostly gone, platinum the most noble resists acids and it takes a lot of heat in addition the fresh leach is helping, constant agitation would also help.

 

[Captobvious]

Are you afraid she will hurt herself, Rusty?

I know I won't let mine in my workshop when I have reactions going, but then again she is pregnant with our 3rd child right now (just found out it's a little girl 8) ) and while I don't know it would be dangerous for her to be out there, it's just not something I want to risk.

 

[srlaulis]

Congratulations on your good news! I am happy for you. I understand about not "wanting" your wife to expose herself to the dangers; however, I'll be darn if I tell my wife she can't go somewhere on our property! :lol: I just may very well find myself stuffed in a bucket with an air bubbler shoved up my rear end! :lol: She doesn't care to involve herself in any dangerous situations anyway, but if she wanted to, she would be safe and use the proper protective equipment. :mrgreen:

 

[Captobvious]

Congratulations on your good news! I am happy for you. I understand about not "wanting" your wife to expose herself to the dangers; however, I'll be darn if I tell my wife she can't go somewhere on our property! :lol: I just may very well find myself stuffed in a bucket with an air bubbler shoved up my rear end! :lol: She doesn't care to involve herself in any dangerous situations anyway, but if she wanted to, she would be safe and use the proper protective equipment. :mrgreen:

Thanks! :mrgreen: and by no means is she forbidden or banned from the garage (my workshop) and were she to have desire to come out and help (once she has the baby) I'd be more than happy to welcome her out there and make sure she does things the safe right ways. That said I doubt she would as she's very "smell" sensitive and can usually pick up on the most insignificant of odors/vapors.

The good thing in that tho is I can actually have my man-cave.... ok more cave than anything at this point hehe but I at least have a place I can go to be with my own thoughts when I need to

 

[srlaulis]

I'm right there with you man! 8)

 

[kane333]

Copper with its unique color and SP makes a good indicator.

I already know that copper skates across the densely compacted precious metals leaving trace amounts on the compacted surface, it is only when the grooves begin to completely fill with copper that I know I have depleted the more dense metals and it is now time to quit processing. It would be foolish to purposely ad more copper to good cons.

If by chance I have sent traces of precious metals to tailings it's no big deal I can send the tailings to a refinery who will catch those traces, the idea here is to hasten the cash flow.

Correct me if I'm way off base but Copper has an SG of 8.89 and Silver of 10.5. You try to stop the process when you see copper in the bands correct? What if you were to add another element that had an SG between those that was worth more than copper but less than silver. Would this make it easier to avoid copper contamination?

Bismuth - SG 9.79

Not difficult to acquire. Twice as abundant as gold in the earths crust. Also used to make Pepto-Bismol.

Purified Bismuth is in the neighborhood of $25-Kg.

Just a thought.

 

[rusty]

I've had heat on my leach for the past week or more, obviously into platinum which resists surrendering to acids.

Three days ago decided to get serious and added salt to my bath water to raise the temperature. My actions resulted in several benefits, hotter water which does not boil over.

Now only a heavy layer of foam that caps the water preventing violent bubbling and virtually no steam which one would experience from super heated water.

I'm going to get that platinum into solution one way or another.

Salt Facts, SSN with out the nitric.

The boiling point of salt water will rise by about half a degree Celsius for every 30 grams of salt dissolved per kilogram (litre) of water

 

[rusty]

if you have been following the picture story, each leach pulled from the cons has changed color along the way. In the beginning the more reactive metals surrendered to the AR.

I'm really glad that i have choose to process this way as I have learned so much from each leach and its associated color with stannous. In addition you can really tell that some of the latter leaches have palladium just with a visual.

Todays filtrate center flask.

 

[rusty]

The sample sent out went to two different places Ta represented 3.591% of a few gram sample, now that the cons from which this sample came has been through several hot Ar leaches. Anything that would go into solution certainly has.

I would think now the TA content is much more concentrated, have a look at the filter below.

From the bottom of the pail used to leach the cons, I recovered a small bit of a pink material, the SG is greater than the top layer of mud and this sits on the very bottom in a small quantity. Actually what you see in the quartz dish is all there was.

When this is wet the color shows up more pink, I've heated this up, the black that is mixed in with it I can get it glowing red hot while the pink stuff does not, nor does it give off any oxides.

I really don't care what it is, just sharing an oddity.