Need Help on How to refine gold, palladium, and silver.

[wlr88]

Hi I'm very beginner in refining precious metal and hoping that the masters here can help me with my issue. I used to refine gold using inquartation process and usually I use copper rod or plate for cementing the silver. Now I have a metal that consist of mostly gold, silver, and palladium (I have xrf analyzer). I never have any experience in refining palladium, so can you give me Any suggestion or tutorial on how to do it? FYI I am not used to aqua regia because of the lack quality of chemical needed during the process in my country and using inquartation has benefit me the most. Thank you

 

[4metals]

Hi I'm very beginner in refining precious metal and hoping that the masters here can help me with my issue. I used to refine gold using inquartation process and usually I use copper rod or plate for cementing the silver. Now I have a metal that consist of mostly gold, silver, and palladium (I have xrf analyzer). I never have any experience in refining palladium, so can you give me Any suggestion or tutorial on how to do it? FYI I am not used to aqua regia because of the lack quality of chemical needed during the process in my country and using inquartation has benefit me the most. Thank you

Welcome to the forum.

Based on what you said you have experience with inquarted gold. What you need to do now is not that much different to separate the 3 target metals.
First Inquart the material with Silver
Part the alloy with nitric acid leaving the insoluble gold behind.
Drop the Silver from the liquid by adding salt rather than cementing with copper.
The resulting Silver Chloride can be reduced to fine Silver using caustic and corn syrup.
Finally the Palladium remains in acid. It can be separated using Dimethylglyoxime or it can be cemented on copper to reduce the Palladium to a metal.
when you accumulate enough Palladium it can be purified to a sale able form.
All of the methods for the process as I have outlined it above are here on the forum.

 

[wlr88]

Welcome to the forum.

Based on what you said you have experience with inquarted gold. What you need to do now is not that much different to separate the 3 target metals.
First Inquart the material with Silver
Part the alloy with nitric acid leaving the insoluble gold behind.
Drop the Silver from the liquid by adding salt rather than cementing with copper.
The resulting Silver Chloride can be reduced to fine Silver using caustic and corn syrup.
Finally the Palladium remains in acid. It can be separated using Dimethylglyoxime or it can be cemented on copper to reduce the Palladium to a metal.
when you accumulate enough Palladium it can be purified to a sale able form.
All of the methods for the process as I have outlined it above are here on the forum.

thank you for your quick response. I have several questions:
1. May I know like how much salt and caustic or corn syrup should I added to the solution? should it be heated?
2. How much Dimethylglyoxime should I add for it to precipitate
3. Is there any video tutorial in this forum that can help me for this matter??
Thank you very much 4metals

 

[4metals]

Wir88, I see you are a new member here. While we are willing to assist you in this process we do expect you to do your share of the work. It just isn't practical to give everyone who asks specific details because they are unwilling to use the search feature and read threads that can help them.

Once you read up on the different processes we will willingly answer follow up questions but we expect you to do some homework as well.

 

[wlr88]

Wir88, I see you are a new member here. While we are willing to assist you in this process we do expect you to do your share of the work. It just isn't practical to give everyone who asks specific details because they are unwilling to use the search feature and read threads that can help them.

Once you read up on the different processes we will willingly answer follow up questions but we expect you to do some homework as well.

I understand what you mean, I will try to do some research here throughout the forum thank you very much.

 

[wlr88]

Wir88, I see you are a new member here. While we are willing to assist you in this process we do expect you to do your share of the work. It just isn't practical to give everyone who asks specific details because they are unwilling to use the search feature and read threads that can help them.

Once you read up on the different processes we will willingly answer follow up questions but we expect you to do some homework as well.

Sir I have done some research, I wonder if there is any way to examine the percentage of nitric acid that I bought from my supplier? The packaging said it's 68% nitric acid. However, I've heard it from my friend that sometimes they give lower percentage of nitric acid, is it possible?

 

[4metals]

Typically nitric acid is sold at 68%, at this strength it is an azeotrope of water and nitric acid. The reason it is 68% is that at that strength it's concentration cannot be changed by simple distillation. It is impossible to say by just looking at it if the supplier has diluted the acid to make a greater profit. You can, if you have an pipette (class A preferred) and a decent balance, weigh a known quantity of what you are getting from your supplier. 68% Nitric Acid weighs 1.504 grams/cc

 

[willirolex]

Typically nitric acid is sold at 68%, at this strength it is an azeotrope of water and nitric acid. The reason it is 68% is that at that strength it's concentration cannot be changed by simple distillation. It is impossible to say by just looking at it if the supplier has diluted the acid to make a greater profit. You can, if you have an pipette (class A preferred) and a decent balance, weigh a known quantity of what you are getting from your supplier. 68% Nitric Acid weighs 1.504 grams/cc

Thank you sir for your insight! I've done some research on precipitating silver using salt and caustic. my question is why it is preferrable compared to using copper rod?

 

[nickvc]

If you use copper to cement the silver the palladium will also cement out on the copper so you then have to separate them , if you convert the silver to chloride you can fitter the chloride out to convert it to silver metal so separating it from the palladium , very easy to do.

 

[Abdoulapapatte]

hello wlr , did you read cm hook book , very interesting and 85% of total informations inside , the rest of 15% will be you're personal work and other information than you can find on GRF
good luck for palladium ,
i will do like this :
1 ) quartation
2) attack on acide and if it's reel 68% cut the bigining with water , or becarful to Bubble, and other problems
3) add salt Nacl easy , not expensive , here i don't know how much quantity of metal you have but normaly to down silver it's better to add a little hot water (f° of you're concentration pgm's, and if you want more liquide )
4) i will transform agcl in Ag like 4 metal ( more easy and economic way for me )
5) yes you can cement with cu , or Iron Fe or Al (more fast if you have only Pd in solution , if you have other base metal they will come and drop in same time of pd ...


good luck my friends