I made a mistake - refining Au with AR

[Geo]

Ooo harold's gunna be mad you said the word boil :shock:

:lol: its ok if you meant to boil. Harold gets angry when people use the word "boil" when they actually mean "evaporate". it really is one of his pet peeves. the term used in the wrong context leads to loss of values and other headaches.

 

[WillGreen]

Hi Butcher,

Thank you for your post.
I completely agree with what you are saying: the mistake I made was jumping in with both feet before I was ready.
I’m pretty good at my job and I just thought ‘I can do this’ and I can, but you need to take it serious, it is not easy.
You listed the things I missed pretty well; I would add using way too much SMB.
Next time I won’t make these mistakes anymore. And you people really helped, thank you a lot.
I got tired of it today and I decided to melt what I got. It bothered me a lot because every time I tested a filtrate I got a positive result, but I couldn‘t get any gold out of it. I wonder about how much gold stannous chloride needs to react - I assume it is very little. Anyway, I got 66.4 grams of gold. It looks really beautiful. I didn’t throw out any of the filtrate yet. I am missing a couple of grams. This is unacceptable, I know that, but given the mess I got myself in I am more or less happy with the result. Next time better. And yes, I will study Hoke, absolutely.
Thank you again and all the best,

Will

 

[maynman1751]

Are you keeping all of your 'positive' filtrate? If so, keep it all together and when you have enough (that's relative) cement with copper to see if you can recover any of your losses. That's what I would do. If you have a large volume, you may want to evaporate it down to a more manageable, more concentrated amount.
The stannous test is very sensitive to small amounts of values. Do you have a gold standard with which to test your stannous? If you do, and you should, make different dilutions of your standard and see the reaction of your stannous to different levels of gold in solution. This can be done with 3 or 4 plastic spoons. Put a drop of your standard in each spoon and then add water to dilute to different strengths (first spoon 2 drops of water, second spoon 3 or 4 drops etc). It will help you to evaluate the results of your regular testing.

 

[WillGreen]

Thank you Maynman, I will do this, but it will be for next time.
I won't throw out the filtrate. I will evaporate some of it, so that it is more manageable.

Best regards,

Will