Inquartation with copper

[croakersoaker]

Hi, I have been reading these forums alot and am getting ready to try and refine some karat gold soon and was wondering if any body here uses copper for the inquartation. I was thinking of getting comfortable with one process before moving to the next.the thinking is I could concentrate on the gold and not worry so much at first about the silver.I have used the search feature and have not really found anything using copper.I have seen references to it but not specifics such as how much nitric to use and such.thanks in advance for your replies.

 

[butcher]

I have heard of people suggesting copper, but I would not use it, copper takes much more nitric to dissolve, than silver, also silver can act to collect the small amounts of Platinum group you may have in the melt, silver can be cemented from nitric acid (when parting) using copper buss bar and melted and reused (untill it gets loaded with PGM).

so as far as I see it silver would be a no brainer.

you can read much more about this in the forum from posts of some of our better refiners.

 

[philddreamer]

You haven't found much information on using copper because is counter productive. I've been there & done that... :roll:
When I first started refining, I used copper for a couple of batches, but decided that I was wasting nitric & my time; you're better off by using silver for inquarting.

Here is a note from information that I've filed from my searches:
"NOTE: Do your math first.
It takes about 38 ml of nitric acid to dissolve 1 troy oz. of silver.
It takes 48ml of nitric to dissolve 1 troy oz. of Sterling Silver.
It takes about 79.3 ml of nitric acid to dissolve 1 troy ounce of
copper."
If you use copper for inquarting, you'll end up using twice as much nitric, & then some.
The reason why I used copper was because I had trouble digesting the silver.
The reason I had trouble was, because I didn't incinerate after inquarting & making shells in tap water. :roll: I learned what I was doing wrong, so now I incinerate before starting to digest & no more problems.

I recommend you search & learn to do it the right & efficient way from the beginning. I garantee you'll be much happier @ the end with doing so.
By using sterling for inquarting, for example, you'll refine the silver to .99 & the gold to .99 in one step, thus saving on nitric. Then you can run your gold thru AR & get it .999. (You can always save your silver nitrate for later refining.) Then add copper to your silver nitrate, like Butcher recommends, cement your silver; rinse, melt into anodes for refining in your silver cell & refine into .999 crystals.
You'll end up saving time & nitric. :mrgreen:

Take care!

Phil

 

[nickvc]

Excellent post and advice Phil.

 

[croakersoaker]

Thanks that was very helpful. Can you tell me about incineration specifically with regards to karat gold?

 

[philddreamer]

Thank you gentlemen. I just shared some of what I've learned from the experts in this great forum! I'm glad to be of some help to others.

Croaker, again I would recommend searching since there is much more detailed information than I can share; but in short, to incinerate means to heat the material until its dull red, but NOT until it melts!
When you incinerate, you get rid of traces of acids & "dirt" that's on the surface of the metal to be digested, & also this procedure starts to "breakdown" the metals that compose the inquart, thus making it easier for the acids to attack & start digesting the base metals.
Again, do a search under incineration & you'll find great information on the subject. 8)

Phil

 

[goldsilverpro]

It takes about 1.22 ml of nitric to dissolve 1 gram of pure silver and it takes 3.4 times as much nitric to dissolve a gram of copper. I'm presently in the wilds of Maine and have no calculator or even a pen to figure out what it would take per ounce.

 

[philddreamer]

37.94ml for an oz of ag; 3.4 times that of ag = 128.99ml for an oz. of cu.