Chemical Need help with HCL/Cl process-Please!

[EVO-AU]

Ignatz6: I too use strips after my Ph meter broke and was too expensive to replace. But after looking around I found a dandy little Ph meter for $35.00 at Elemental Scientific. They have a great catalogue. Phill

 

[Ignatz61]

Thanks Phill I'll check them out.
john

 

[Palladium]

Ignatz6: I too use strips after my Ph meter broke and was too expensive to replace. But after looking around I found a dandy little Ph meter for $35.00 at Elemental Scientific. They have a great catalogue. Phill

I bought a combo PH/ORP meter that also has in a built in temp probe, came with a stand for the probes and everything ( Thermo Fisher ). Total ebay price $ 25.00 :shock: :shock: :shock:

Took me about a month to find the deal. I must say i got lucky though. I couldn't be happier :wink:

 

[Traveller11]

I watched lazersteve's video on the Cl/HCL process being used to recover gold from computer foil. I am dealing with a gold placer deposit on our ocean beach here deposited by storm waves. It is all flaky and -100 mesh and has driven people here nuts trying to recover it by gravity methods. As the Cl/HCL process dissolves everything, will all the minerals in the placer ore get dissolved as well? There is a minimum amount of black sand as I am recovering from a layer of clay a few feet below the beach surface and the black sand tends to stay in lenses on the surface but I imagine there are other things such as sulfides and God only knows what else.
Will treating the placer material with nitric acid remove these compounds and leave only the gold to go into the Cl/HCL solution?

 

[bmgold]

I would try to concentrate the materials as good as you can before trying to use acid or anything to avoid the large quantity that would be needed as well as the large amount of other stuff it might also dissolve. I tried to find the plans for a beach box that was on a GPAA (Gold Prospectors Association of America) show that was used on the beaches of Nome, Alaska but didn't find them. It was built out of wood and covered with carpet and no riffles if I remember right and was fairly wide and the water flow was pretty slow. It was supposed to work pretty good for getting the fine, flour gold off the beach.

This link has a picture of something like what I was looking for: http://forums.outdoorsdirectory.com/showthread.php?p=244021

I think the beach box had 1/4" hardware cloth to separate the larger material out before running it over the sluice.

Another interesting site with some plans for various prospecting tools I found while searching is: http://nevada-outback-gems.com/design_plans/DIY_equipment.htm

one more: http://www.geocities.com/wyo_gold/build_sluice.html

This one is just a drain pipe cut in half and used as a sluice. I have used one of these and it works pretty good with classified materials or classified concentrates and is real cheap to build.

 

[Traveller11]

Hi bmgold
The problem with our beachgold is that no matter how much it is concentrated by gravity methods (and each process is guaranteed to lose some of the fine flaky gold) one is still left with a concentrate and nothing in it big enough to grasp with tweezers. This is why I am interested in leaching it; it seems to be ideally suited for it.

I just read a post on another thread here by a fellow named Brandt. He claims there is a leach that uses sodium thiosulfate and that it has the advantage of being selective and will not dissolve iron or other base metals.

Does anyone know the method for leaching with sodium thiosulfate and how to precipitate the gold afterwards?

 

[Platdigger]

The beach box uses a ribbed mat.
Randy

 

[bmgold]

I don't have my copy of Charles Buttler's Nitrate Leach manual right here but It used Thiourea as a leach. I haven't tried this yet since I read the MSDS on that chemical and it sounds pretty dangerous but it used as little as, I think, 1/2 an ounce per gallon of water and some hydrogen peroxide or something else (can't remember now) as an activator. The leach also had acid (sulfuric or HCl) to get the Ph right.

I'd have to dig my book back out to get the actual procedures and chemicals used. Be sure to check out the MSDS of whatever you decide to try and take whatever precautions are needed. Also, there could be other dangerous stuff in the materials you are trying to extract the gold from so BE CAREFUL.

 

[Platdigger]

Thiourea is one thing (I have those manuels also bmgold)

Thiosulphate is another.
Randy

 

[bmgold]

how about this link? http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=1220&highlight=thiosulphate

 

[qst42know]

If I am reading this correctly beach gold was deposited by froth floatation. Why not collect it by the same method?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Froth_flotation

http://www.goldminingclaims.net/YakatagaAlaskaGold.html

http://www.e-goldprospecting.com/html/gold_flotation.html

Having kept saltwater fish sea water foams quite well.

 

[butcher]

I would check and make sure what you think is floating gold is not just pyrite many people mistake it for gold. even small gold will be in the black sand, yes in flood or from sluice it may float or if oil stuck to it, but the pyrite always will be on surface the gold goes to bottom eventually.

 

[qst42know]

"The most common gold bearing sulphides are pyrite, arsenopyrite and to a lesser extent pyrrhotite."

You don't want to automatically dismiss pyrite.

There is a lot of general information within the third link above you have to browse around quite a bit though.

 

[butcher]

treating black sands or ore pyrite, to me is different than elemental gold, they come from different sources. mined and treated differently also, I was under the impression he was talking about gold,floating fine gold, not pyrite, magnetite etcetera.

 

[Traveller11]

Hi butcher
Yes, that's correct, this is all free gold; -100 mesh and smaller. Most of it is flaky as its origins can be traced back to the last Ice Age. There is platinum as well and it is roughly the same dimensions. It is very well concentrated on the layer of clay just below the surface of the beach. Panning even one spoonful will produce enough colours to form a streak.

I don't know if anyone has tried breaking down the black sands to see if there is gold tied up in them. It hardly seems worthwhile when there is so much free gold.

Hopefully, on the 22nd of this month, a friend and I will be going in by horseback to get a sample of this placer and get it assayed for value. This is something I should have done ages ago but, we all know how life has a tendency to get in the way of living so many times, don't we?

I will share with you all the results of this assay and, if it turns out to be high, I will do another assay on this material for PGM values.

 

[butcher]

I would concentate and get free gold, then concetrate the heaviest black sand, save and and test a portion of them to see if it would be economical to process them. it really depends on thier chemical makup and percent of values,you may find cost and trouble more than value, not that they may have value but is it worth it,I have been reading some interesting chemistry on these and platinum group metals, which have always been thought to be extremely rare, these scientists are stating they may not be as rare as thought but locked up in ore in such a chemical nature that make extraction extremely difficult. if not almost economically,(and chemically) impossible,and the chemistry of seperation the are using on a small scale is intense but very interesting.
most of ole time miners would not waste there life away trying to extract what cost more time or energy to get, as it is all hard work and a man needs to eat,getting what was easier and less trouble and moving on to better pickings or a better paying Job.