Processing waste solution from failed experiments

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ZiegenSauger

Well-known member
Joined
May 18, 2020
Messages
73
Salute!

During this year I have practice what I studied to move to higher levels of refining.

I learned a lot, and also committed a lot of mistakes. Thnx to the help of many here I could "face the truth", understand the steps or methods I was taking wrong and achieve apprentice level of success.

I am successful with silver already, for the rest I am improving.

I had 13 standard buckets (those you fine on Walmart, Home Depot, etc) full of these expenditures, plus a handful of gallons. I am finishing processing all of this. Thus far I have recovered 16.5g of Ag, 2g of Au, 1/2g of Pd and 5 g of Pt. I am adding this to the first successful batches for the next refining. Crossing my fingers all those vials of Pd and Pt do not have much contamination. These recoveries are over 90% purity for sure. The first collection of vials is unknown for me.

I bottled all leftover solution in one Gallon bottles after treatment with Cu, then treatment with Fe and finally neutralizing. I have some 20 Gallons my wife and I will take to the next day of chemical waste collection of the city this weekend.

I am happy 'cause now I can resume new experiments and re-refining in parallel.

Also, I have a brand new "stock pot", going well so far. Instead of filling a full bucket of excess waste a day, now it is just really the few mL of solution that has been thoroughly treated.

I created an intermediary process: I have a staging intermediary process where I add 500mL of the very last solution after all refining steps have left over. So each labeled bar goes to the shelf (imagine a Moonshine shelf :D ) with evaporated, reduced syrup solutions with an Oz of Cu in average and I live it sitting for a period.
Working good so far, I have few grams of something in each (consecutively whether it was a Ag refining process, Pd refining process and so forth).

Attention, patience and discipline helped me a lot. The important of all was you guys getting my feet on the ground.

I am not successful with my electric furnaces so far, any recommendation for a 1Kg electric surface tops like the old Kerr melting? For now I am using a table top propane for my quantities.

Cheers.
 
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