Problem with Cu/Ag/Pd/Ni nitrate DMG

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nickvc said:
If this solution is from just dissolving the parts in nitric and you get no silver chloride form with the addition of HCl there is no silver in the solution.
Did you fully digest the starting material because if you didn't much of your values could have cemented back out of solution, palladium is not keen on been cemented quickly or without agitation so that might explain why you have some palladium.
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Thank you for reply Nickvc!


I added starting materials slowly to Nitric acid until it reaction was over and some pins were still in solution. I poured off used nitric solution before added additional nitric to pins so I think all Nitric is used. Is it so that if there is free nitric acid in solution HCl do not give out silver chloride? And can you tell me do I need to adjust solution ph before I add copper plate to cement palladium?


Thanks in advance
 
Just to be totally clear all your starting material was dissolved in the nitric?
If that is correct any silver would now be in solution along with the palladium and other base metals.
If that is the case then when you add HCl the silver will form silver chloride, if that didn't happen you have no silver in solution, there was no silver there to start or the addition of lye precipitated it out in the sludge you mentioned on your first post.
If this material has palladium points not plating it might well pay to clip off as much base metal as you can to start, if there is silver then my suggestion would be to dissolve a small amount of clipped off pins 25 grams say in nitric, filter add either salt or HCl to form silver chloride if there is any silver there, filter to remove the solution and cement the solution with copper to collect the palladium, as I said before PGMs can be difficult to cement so put an air bubbler in the container to keep things moving.
Be aware PGM salts can be very toxic so I prefer to cement collect the powders and melt and sell on.

It might help others to help you if you post pictures of exactly what you are working on, dissolving, I'm fairly sure someone on here has worked with similar materials before.
 
nickvc said:
Just to be totally clear all your starting material was dissolved in the nitric?
If that is correct any silver would now be in solution along with the palladium and other base metals.
If that is the case then when you add HCl the silver will form silver chloride, if that didn't happen you have no silver in solution, there was no silver there to start or the addition of lye precipitated it out in the sludge you mentioned on your first post.
If this material has palladium points not plating it might well pay to clip off as much base metal as you can to start, if there is silver then my suggestion would be to dissolve a small amount of clipped off pins 25 grams say in nitric, filter add either salt or HCl to form silver chloride if there is any silver there, filter to remove the solution and cement the solution with copper to collect the palladium, as I said before PGMs can be difficult to cement so put an air bubbler in the container to keep things moving.
Be aware PGM salts can be very toxic so I prefer to cement collect the powders and melt and sell on.

It might help others to help you if you post pictures of exactly what you are working on, dissolving, I'm fairly sure someone on here has worked with similar materials before.
Click to expand...

Thank you Nickvc

Yes starting material was totally dissolved by Nitric acid. I thought there must be silver as well so a tried to add HCl to solution as well salt and nothing happened. I thought ph is wrong so silver do not come down or I have excess of nitric acid. So if I have tried all options to remove silver and there is no reaction it equals no silver in my solutions?

I read from forum topic that it is easier to use copper and bubbler so I certainly use this option as DMG salts are not good option for me.

Yes I add lye after DMG as I read that solution ph needed to be 4 before adding DGM. Even I add small amount lye nothing happened but after large amoun some white layer formed top of solution. I think it is undissolved lye.

But yes as I see there is no silver so I use better way to cement palladium. Only problem is Ni ... is it cementing with palladium if I add copper plate to solution?


I will make some additional pictures.

Regards
Ain
 
Hi.

I made some pictures of phone servers. They are taken apart. Other pictures are circuit boards from servers. All pins have very little gold layer on them.
 

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If they are old eastern block telephone equipment they are normally very high yielding for gold and PGMs from what I have seen, the PGMs will be either small dots or dashes on some of the relays, if there are switches check them also, in fact test all places where the use of precious metals could be an advantage even if only a small one.
The newer Nokia material I'm sure others can help with identifying where the best material is to be found, be aware of collectors values on older equipment sometimes it pays better to sell items rather than refine them.

The ph of your nitric solution will make no difference to forming silver chloride and while the Pd will go into solution any Pt alloys will remain as solid pieces, Pt and Rh are not keen to dissolve even in hot Aqua Regia so perhaps once you have dissolved the base metals and Pd filter the solution and recover the Pt from the filter paper.
If you wish to refine your PGMs make sure you know what your doing as I have said before they produce some very toxic salts, also to get high quality you need clean saturated solutions to precipitate the salts from so you Amy have to process them several times.
 
I've done a lot of those little fella's. There should be no silver.

Addressing your present situation--use fresh metallic material (feedstock) to cement out or reduce the mess you have, check to be sure the Pd is removed, filter all that lot of material. You can basically use these metallics over and over to concentrate the Pd before melting and granulating to re-dissolve.

Alternatively, you can adjust the pH of all of your liquors to 8 with lye, getting all metals, inclusive of Pd out of solution (unless, heavens forbid you have ammonium or ammonia in the solution, in which case your only option is cementing). Then, when you trim up the pieces and do the nitric dissolve you can use these metallic hydroxides to consume excess nitric and get a higher Pd concentration. Filter the solid Pt/Au metallics out and melt them. To the solution containing the Pd in nitrate medium you have a few options, most all of which involve ion exchange. You'd probably be best served in the end by taking all of the close cut pieces with the values on it and melting them into a bar and selling them to a refinery.



If you find this useful, please consider making a donation to the gold refining forum.
 
nickvc said:
If they are old eastern block telephone equipment they are normally very high yielding for gold and PGMs from what I have seen, the PGMs will be either small dots or dashes on some of the relays, if there are switches check them also, in fact test all places where the use of precious metals could be an advantage even if only a small one.
The newer Nokia material I'm sure others can help with identifying where the best material is to be found, be aware of collectors values on older equipment sometimes it pays better to sell items rather than refine them.

The ph of your nitric solution will make no difference to forming silver chloride and while the Pd will go into solution any Pt alloys will remain as solid pieces, Pt and Rh are not keen to dissolve even in hot Aqua Regia so perhaps once you have dissolved the base metals and Pd filter the solution and recover the Pt from the filter paper.
If you wish to refine your PGMs make sure you know what your doing as I have said before they produce some very toxic salts, also to get high quality you need clean saturated solutions to precipitate the salts from so you Amy have to process them several times.
Click to expand...


Thanks Nickvc

These servers came from Finland. I do not now how old is land line but Nokia is made in 1995 ( checked from relays codes ). Land line should be from 70 as there where some documents.

Gold content is very low as pins are made with palladium. Gold seems to be used " just in case". Relays have some gold dots but if I recovered them, Only thing I got was flakes of gold so I leaved them for another time. I certainly run small test of all parts from this server to find out if there is some values.

At the moment I try to recover larger peaces as circuit boards and plates. Plates have solder on them, is it best to wash them with HCl before adding nitric acid to dissolve palladium/copper/etc? If I cement with copper do tin cement as well?

Yes as I recover palladium from aqua regia with DMG it seems that lot of salts and work for small quantity of palladium.

I add copper and bubbler to my Pd solution and waiting for results. I add some heat and hoe it help to accelerate process.

Thank you for helping out!
 
Lou said:
I've done a lot of those little fella's. There should be no silver.

Addressing your present situation--use fresh metallic material (feedstock) to cement out or reduce the mess you have, check to be sure the Pd is removed, filter all that lot of material. You can basically use these metallics over and over to concentrate the Pd before melting and granulating to re-dissolve.

Alternatively, you can adjust the pH of all of your liquors to 8 with lye, getting all metals, inclusive of Pd out of solution (unless, heavens forbid you have ammonium or ammonia in the solution, in which case your only option is cementing). Then, when you trim up the pieces and do the nitric dissolve you can use these metallic hydroxides to consume excess nitric and get a higher Pd concentration. Filter the solid Pt/Au metallics out and melt them. To the solution containing the Pd in nitrate medium you have a few options, most all of which involve ion exchange. You'd probably be best served in the end by taking all of the close cut pieces with the values on it and melting them into a bar and selling them to a refinery.



If you find this useful, please consider making a donation to the gold refining forum.
Click to expand...

Hello Lou,

thank you for useful information!

I used only small quantity of material but I surely recover mess I did. Now I will use only copper to cement Pd out. I just need that recovered Pd is 30% clean so I can sell it.

About donation, How can I do it? I definitely want to give my part to Goldrefiningforum as it helped me a lot on this 3 year journey and it bring to me this opportunity to recover these servers.
Please let me know how I can make donation.

Regards
 
UncleBenBen said:
zwai said:
Only problem is Ni ... is it cementing with palladium if I add copper plate to solution?
Regards
Ain
Click to expand...

No. Copper will not cement Ni from solution since Ni is higher in the reactivity series than copper.
Click to expand...


Thank you UncleBenBen

I just suspected that copper will drag down all materials as Zinc. I will use copper then. How much heat is max for this recovery?

Thank you for info!
 
zwai said:
About donation, How can I do it? I definitely want to give my part to Goldrefiningforum as it helped me a lot on this 3 year journey and it bring to me this opportunity to recover these servers.
Please let me know how I can make donation.
Click to expand...
Take a look at the recent thread, Donations?.

Dave
 
FrugalRefiner said:
zwai said:
About donation, How can I do it? I definitely want to give my part to Goldrefiningforum as it helped me a lot on this 3 year journey and it bring to me this opportunity to recover these servers.
Please let me know how I can make donation.
Click to expand...
Take a look at the recent thread, Donations?.

Dave
Click to expand...


Thanks for information Dave!
 

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