Palladium Plating

[fishaholic5]

I rarely do metal recovery from electronic or electrical sources, this was a lucky find in an Australian military spec transformer. Pre 1960.


360kg of Palladium plated armature sheets. The sheets are 1/72" thick, plated both sides.

Cheers Wal

 

[Lou]

Wow. I presume you got this covered. Nice scrap for sure.

 

[fishaholic5]

Wow. I presume you got this covered. Nice scrap for sure.

It was an old 100v DC transformer I picked up years ago for the Copper. I only realised that the armatures were Palladium plated when I stripped it recently during moving house to reduce the weight.
Processing is relatively simple, I'm just dissolving the plates and Palladium using HCl and recovering the Palladium by cementation.
The refiners can deal with it from there, I'm not set up to melt it atm and after a 2.5yr journey beating stage 4 cancer the cash flow is something I need while I set up the rest of my processing again and get back to mining.

Cheers Wal

 

[Shark]

Great find, best of luck with it and your health.

 

[anarxi]

It’s unlikely to be palladium; it simply doesn’t belong there.
Transformer cores are made from permalloy - alloy with a very high nickel content (60-80%).
but here you can see the rusty ends.
Permalloy can be identified by the spark from the grinder, and even if it is heated red-hot, it will lose its magnetic properties; when it cools, they will return

 

[fishaholic5]

Great find, best of luck with it and your health.

Thanks, my health is good. I managed to find a new family of plants that hadn't been looked at by the pharmaceutical industry that are active against cancer.
The research on that is ongoing now, at this stage I have identified over 30 species in the family in Australia and there will be many more worldwide.

 

[fishaholic5]

It’s unlikely to be palladium; it simply doesn’t belong there.
Transformer cores are made from permalloy - alloy with a very high nickel content (60-80%).
but here you can see the rusty ends.
Permalloy can be identified by the spark from the grinder, and even if it is heated red-hot, it will lose its magnetic properties; when it cools, they will return

In this case you are wrong. The attached pic is the cementation of the Palladium using Copper in the yeild tests. I have done my research on Aust military plating.

Cheers Wal

 

[nickvc]

Wal just for clarity you stated that you are dissolving the palladium using HCl which is not possible unless in fine particle form as far as I can understand.

 

[fishaholic5]

Wal just for clarity you stated that you are dissolving the palladium using HCl which is not possible unless in fine particle form as far as I can understand.

We will see, if the plating is too thick to dissolve using HCL I will use the Iron plates in the Cementations from my metal recovery from ores and recover it in the refining process.
The amount of Nitric needed to process this is cost prohibitive atm.

Cheers Wal

 

[Yggdrasil]

We will see, if the plating is too thick to dissolve using HCL I will use the Iron plates in the Cementations from my metal recovery from ores and recover it in the refining process.
The amount of Nitric needed to process this is cost prohibitive atm.

Cheers Wal

HCl will not touch solid Pd as a plating is, neither will any metals cement on a Pd plating.
The HCl will on the other hand dissolve the Iron behind a plating in the process dislodge the plating.
And as the Iron is getting "undressed", other metals will start cementing on it.
Still, I fail to see the reasoning behind plating this kind of items.

 

[fishaholic5]

HCl will not touch solid Pd as a plating is, neither will any metals cement on a Pd plating.
The HCl will on the other hand dissolve the Iron behind a plating in the process dislodge the plating.
And as the Iron is getting "undressed", other metals will start cementing on it.
Still, I fail to see the reasoning behind plating this kind of items.

It's not the Pd that will be the cementation metal if I need to run it that way... The Iron will.
The Palladium will then end up in the metal concentrate of mixed cemented metals.
In some ways that will be more practical as it kills two birds with one stone rather than just using quantities of acid to dissolve both the Pd and Iron from the plates.
I do a lot of my initial recovery from Chlorine leaches from ores using cementation with Iron as I also recover various other metals. Nickel and Cobalt in particular are in the ores I process, along with Silver, Gold and PGM's.
As far as the need for this kind of plating, Ask the Military.
This is the second one of these I've seen. The first one I helped my father strip while I was in my teens and he was still with Special forces here.

I will give an update on the HCL in the next couple of days, I have just cut 10kg of plates into small pieces to play with.

Cheers Wal

 

[Yggdrasil]

It's not the Pd that will be the cementation metal if I need to run it that way... The Iron will.
The Palladium will then end up in the metal concentrate of mixed cemented metals.
In some ways that will be more practical as it kills two birds with one stone rather than just using quantities of acid to dissolve both the Pd and Iron from the plates.
I do a lot of my initial recovery from Chlorine leaches from ores using cementation with Iron as I also recover various other metals. Nickel and Cobalt in particular are in the ores I process, along with Silver, Gold and PGM's.
As far as the need for this kind of plating, Ask the Military.
This is the second one of these I've seen. The first one I helped my father strip while I was in my teens and he was still with Special forces here.

I will give an update on the HCL in the next couple of days, I have just cut 10kg of plates into small pieces to play with.

Cheers Wal

Yes but if it is indeed Pd plating, you need to get past it before anything starts cementing.

 

[fishaholic5]

Yes but if it is indeed Pd plating, you need to get past it before anything starts cementing.

The plating is on both sides of the plates...not on the cut surfaces. The acid can attack the Iron.
As far as " if it is" remember I am not quite a Newby to refining or processing Palladium. It is one of the metals that is recovered in reasonable quantities from my operations here.

Cheers Wal

 

[ólom]

Thanks, my health is good. I managed to find a new family of plants that hadn't been looked at by the pharmaceutical industry that are active against cancer.
The research on that is ongoing now, at this stage I have identified over 30 species in the family in Australia and there will be many more worldwide.

Hello! I wish you good health! I would like to ask what kind of plant you found? Thank you!

 

[nickvc]

Wal if you add a little hydrogen peroxide to create a copper etch and then add an air bubbler it may leave the Pd as solids especially if it’s cut into small pieces, if you could just reduce the copper content you may be able to refine the Pd using much less nitric.

 

[Golddigger76]

It was an old 100v DC transformer I picked up years ago for the Copper. I only realised that the armatures were Palladium plated when I stripped it recently during moving house to reduce the weight.
Processing is relatively simple, I'm just dissolving the plates and Palladium using HCl and recovering the Palladium by cementation.
The refiners can deal with it from there, I'm not set up to melt it atm and after a 2.5yr journey beating stage 4 cancer the cash flow is something I need while I set up the rest of my processing again and get back to mining.

Cheers Wal

Good luck with the cancer, I have a friend who had stage 4 esophagus cancer, he took fenbendazole to treat it himself and his last scan they couldn't find any cancer at all so that may be something for you to read about to see if it could help you.
About the palladium plated armature, great find, do you happen to have a picture before you disassembled them ?

 

[Golddigger76]

Have you considered a sulfuric stripping cell to recover the Palladium ?

 

[anarxi]

In this case you are wrong. The attached pic is the cementation of the Palladium using Copper in the yeild tests. I have done my research on Aust military plating.

Cheers Wal

I don’t know what you have cemented there, maybe molybdenum or chromium or manganese or cobalt, but definitely not palladium.
a priori it cannot be on the iron from the magnetic core of the transformer...

 

[fishaholic5]

I don’t know what you have cemented there, maybe molybdenum or chromium or manganese or cobalt, but definitely not palladium.
a priori it cannot be on the iron from the magnetic core of the transformer...

Wow, has the reactivity series been rewritten lately?
Thankyou for your input, I'll continue processing what you believe to be impossible.

Cheers Wal

 

[fishaholic5]

Y

Wal if you add a little hydrogen peroxide to create a copper etch and then add an air bubbler it may leave the Pd as solids especially if it’s cut into small pieces, if you could just reduce the copper content you may be able to refine the Pd using much less nitric.

There is no Copper in the plated sheets, just Iron that I need to dissolve.
The Copper is in the windings, 1/4" wide by 1/8" flat copper straps.
My only use for Copper here is to cement out Palladium once it is in solution.

Cheers Wal