Need some advice

[kmann1969]

I actually got into the refining business just to remove diamonds from the large amount of scrap i used to get. I take whatever karat im dealing with and lightly incinerate it and put it in agua regia directly. It would always dissolve the gold fine and leave the diamonds perfectly cleaned and ready to go. My question is that i know inquarting is the best way to refine karat scrap, but i didnt do that to preserve the diamonds. How much gold do you think would not go into solution during the process? I would always end up with a grey powder in the bottom of my beaker which i probably have a couple of pounds of it that i kept. I Know there's gold in it but i also know it could be made very explosive if i dont know what to do. How should i process it? Im going to post this on the forum also. Thanks

 

[snoman701]

hope you've kept it wet

either way, look up silver chloride conversion via frying pan / sulfuric acid method. alternatively, you can tumble it. if it's been dry, i absolutely recommend tumbling it if you can, as the grinding between iron punchings will help with conversion.

after washing, melt with soda ash and borax. then dissolve the alloy in nitric. your gold will be left on the bottom of the beaker. filter, wash, melt. then precipitate silver in nitric through copper cementation.

all can be found on the forum.

 

[kurtak]

Don't have time to much today - however that said just a couple "quick" comments

You posted

i know inquarting is the best way to refine karat scrap

(1) inquarting is "not" necessarily "the best" way of dealing with karat scrap - inquarting is only "needed" when dealing with 18K "green gold" which is an alloy of 75% gold 25% silver

(2) at lest "some of you "gray powder" is goin to be ash/carbon as a result if incineration

(3) explosive compound are only something you need to be concerned with if somewhere in the process ammonia or alcohol was involved

Kurt