Melting Gold Powder

[jeancks]

I’ve read a lot of posts about gold recovery from electronic components. Most of the how to’s state to use a mapp torch or similar to melt the gold. They also give a small warning to try not to blow the powder all over the place.

Besides using a small amount of water to hold the powder to the container or slab that you have it on, I’m not certain the best or easiest way to do this.

Does anyone have any ideas or would you like to share how you do this? Please and thank you.

 

[4metals]

Use a curved melting dish which looks like a huge contact lens made of refractory material. Glaze the dish with a little borax (I said a little borax) it doesn't take much. Do not wet the powder, place it in the center of the dish and heat the metal by circling around the outer edges of the pile of metal. As the edges of the metal closest to the circling flame melt make tighter circles until you have a molten pool in the center.

The dishes I prefer look like this. This is a skill that you perfect with practice.

 

[goldshark]

Use a curved melting dish which looks like a huge contact lens made of refractory material. Glaze the dish with a little borax (I said a little borax) it doesn't take much. Do not wet the powder, place it in the center of the dish and heat the metal by circling around the outer edges of the pile of metal. As the edges of the metal closest to the circling flame melt make tighter circles until you have a molten pool in the center.

The dishes I prefer look like this. This is a skill that you perfect with practice.

While a melt dish does look like a scorifier, a melt dish usually has a pour lip. I didn't see any at Legend, at least on that page.
Using the dish, as 4metals states, will not blow material all over the place, such as trying to melt in a deeper crucible. A deeper crucible creates way too much convection, or air jetting. Ask me how I know. Nothing like trying to pick up Gold particles from a gravel driveway, after my first failed melt in a crucible.

 

[Martijn]

I’ve read a lot of posts about gold recovery from electronic components. Most of the how to’s state to use a mapp torch or similar to melt the gold. They also give a small warning to try not to blow the powder all over the place.

Besides using a small amount of water to hold the powder to the container or slab that you have it on, I’m not certain the best or easiest way to do this.

Does anyone have any ideas or would you like to share how you do this? Please and thank you.

The torch is for at very end when you have separated the scrap, recovered the precious metals from the different component with different processes and finally have refined the gold.

It's not as simple as melting e-waste to get gold.

 

[Ultrax]

A small graphite crucible with a cover and a 1200C muffle furnace is the best way to melt powdered gold without any loss. It takes quite a long time (2-3 hours) to appear crystallization centers in gold microparticles until they begin to merge into one liquid drop due to the destruction of surface tension. That is why overheating of about 150C above the melting point of gold is also required. If gold contains impurities of platinum metals, then you need overheating of about 400C and a more expensive muffle furnace (up to 1500C max temperature). A gas torch is a commonly used but not very good solution because there will always be some gold losses.

P. S. Of course, the total melting time depends on the amount of gold in the crucible

 

[4metals]

While a melt dish does look like a scorifier, a melt dish usually has a pour lip. I didn't see any at Legend, at least on that page.

The dishes from Legend are scorifiers and yes, they lack a pour spout. I have always used scorifiers without issue. Just as a glob of mercury clings together from surface tension, so does molten Gold and Silver. Pouring larger melts from a scorifier ( like 10 oz ) never was a problem because the mold was big enough so I didn’t miss. Maybe a 1 oz mold would be different. Small melts I let solidify in the dish and simply popped them out when the are cool.

 

[Heathenmojo]

I’ve read a lot of posts about gold recovery from electronic components. Most of the how to’s state to use a mapp torch or similar to melt the gold. They also give a small warning to try not to blow the powder all over the place.

Besides using a small amount of water to hold the powder to the container or slab that you have it on, I’m not certain the best or easiest way to do this.

Does anyone have any ideas or would you like to share how you do this? Please and thank you.

Water seems to make thing go popcorn style. You can dig a hole in a potato for your refining process, there are countless videos on YouTube showing how to do such, watch a few and choose the best of them or combine technique from all for your process..

 

[Heathenmojo]

I’ve read a lot of posts about gold recovery from electronic components. Most of the how to’s state to use a mapp torch or similar to melt the gold. They also give a small warning to try not to blow the powder all over the place.

Besides using a small amount of water to hold the powder to the container or slab that you have it on, I’m not certain the best or easiest way to do this.

Does anyone have any ideas or would you like to share how you do this? Please and thank you.