Precipitating precious metals with glow discharge

[HDTVinc]

Hello all,

I have recently stumbled across an article which uses glow discharge of an inert gas in order to make catalytically active Au/PVP films that float on the surface of a waste solution. It works on the basis that glow discharge will selectively reduce metals in solution which have a high reduction potential. This means that gold, silver, and platinum fall out of solution as fine nanoparticles whenever the glow discharge comes in close contact with the surface of a solution with gold, silver, or platinum ions in solution.

The process of making these metals fall out of solution would also make a few other metals such as lead fall out of solution, but each respective metal would fall out of solution one at a time, so you could easily look for a change in the particles being formed to know when a new metal begins to fall out of solution.

I am still doing a lot of research on this topic, but this would allow for the precipitation of precious metals with relative ease.

Has anyone used this sort of technique before?

Thank you for your time.

 

[anachronism]

I've got to ask and please excuse me for doing so but have you learned to do this in the usual ways prior to asking about this technique?

 

[HDTVinc]

I have only done research up till this point, so I really don't have much practical knowledge yet. I am however building up my stock of items that I can refine, and it is mostly e-scrap. I am very sorry if my questions are a bit silly, as I am very new to the process. Please accept my apologies. I know of many techniques, but the scope of the scrap that I have collected can't be processed with just one method that I have found, so I am attempting to find a "one size fits all" kind of process.