Ok, got my gold in the filter, now how do I get it out?

Gold Refining Forum

Help Support Gold Refining Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Joined
Feb 16, 2013
Messages
6
http://s1295.beta.photobucket.com/user/Bloomglassworks/media/image_zps7104f041.jpg.html?sort=3&o=2

There's a pic

Ok, I have a fair bit of gold powder now, precipitated from AR, and filtered to catch the gold. I now have all the fine gold powder caked on the filter, and I was wondering how you guys take the next step to get the gold back off. I'm considering just burning off the filter. I have a couple unused clay graphite crucibles and a kiln, as well as many torches, just wondering how you all would do it. I'm considering just plopping the whole thing in a crucible And putting it in the kiln all together. Is my idea a sound method? Any advice is really appreciated!
 
I would say rub half the filter against
the other half over a sheet of paper.
Keep what was left for future handling
 
Did you dry it and weigh it so you know roughly how much gold is there?

I don't think melting the gold with the filter paper would be wise as it would add contaminates to the final product.
If it were mine I would probably go for a 2nd refining. Disolve the powder and wash the filter paper in HCL/bleach to get all the gold back into solution.
Rinse the filter paper well to minimize losses. Once all the gold is happily back into solution I would filter to remove trash. Then follow the normal steps of precipitating with SMB. You weighed your gold before so you know how much SMB to use. Once the gold has dropped, don't filter, let gravity do the separation for you. Then you could do your HCl/water washes to clean your powder before melting.
Some might add to incinerate as your first step as there may still be nitric in there if you used AR.
 
I am certainly no authority compared to so many here, but why did you filter it?

I would have let it settle, poured off excess, then hot plate on low until you have dry powder. No need to filter.
Unless you incinerate, very lightly as it looks like you have very fine particles, and basically start over, smarter
than before, you will lose values into the filter.

Just my .02

Paul.
 
It looks like there may be some copper on your filter paper by the looks of the green/blue tint on the outer edge. Be sure to wash your powder thoroughly to remove those traces.
 
If it were me, I would take the filter and turn it over, and use a spray bottle of distilled water to remove the gold, then I would start over. Save the filter to your stock pile.

I only refined a little bit of gold so far, and from what I see from the picture you posted a link to, the gold seem to have contaminants mixed in.

Kevin
 
With a spray bottle, spray the side of a large beaker so that it's wet

With the same spray bottle again, put the back of the filter against the wet side of the beaker, and spray against the glass, in case any fine particles of gold go through they will be washed down the side of the beaker to the bottom. Spray all the material in your filter down to the bottom of your beaker until your filter is clean. Store the filter in a safe place until you have enough of them to incinerate, there might be small particles of Au still stuck in the filter paper.

When you precipitate Au, it should fall to the bottom of your beaker, and you should not need to filter it, instead you should be decanting it, meaning you can pour off the solution without pouring out the Au. There are many different ways you can wash and decant Au, and each of us I think has their own way of doing it. But I think most of us would agree that decanting when doing our washes is the best way, and that filtering isn't really the proper way of doing it.

Also, your material looks really light, creamy even, this leads me to believe you don't only have Au, that there might be other metals in your filter paper, like tin for example. So after you wash your material off your filter, you should re-digest in AR. If there was tin oxide in your solution AR will not digest it because it's insoluble in AR, so at this point you should filter while your Au is in solution, removing any material that didn't dissolve, and washing the material in your filter with water to ensure you are getting all your Au solution (AuCl).

After filtering you should be left with a nice gold colored solution, test with Stannous Chloride just to make sure then upon a positive result, precipitate your Au as you would normally. If your Au is of high purity it will tend to want to clump making it easier to wash and decant.

I am not giving you a step by step instruction in this post on everything you need to do to accomplish what I am suggesting, for example I made no mention to expand your solution with water and ice before precipitating, etc. I am assuming you know these steps and will incorporate them in what I am suggesting you do. I'm fairly certain however, just by looking at your pictures that there is something else with your Au, the color looks wrong to me. So a second digestion in AR should resolve this issue.

One last thing, if the whitish material is not tin oxide and happens to be lead, you should remove this when you re-digest in AR by adding a few drops of Sulfuric Acid, it only takes a few drops. If it is some other type of metal, then it might require a different method to remove and you should post here if you are not sure, and I'm sure someone here will attempt to help you further. I am just taking wild guesses based on my own experience but I might not be right about what I am suggesting the white material is.

Scott
 
NobleMetalWorks, that's a nice and noble trick with the filter against the beaker. It makes sense too. I'll definitely remember that one.

thanks for the tip.

Kevin
 

Latest posts

Back
Top