Fascinating group--I'm impressed and it raises many questions, but I'll start with the first.
These days I'm an Occupational Health RN & Safety Specialist. Back in the '80's I was a tiny manufacturing jeweler (craft fairs, some wholesale) that mostly made titanium jewelry but also some silver and gold jewelry. In the mid-80's I had a small line of gold plated items.
I have one liter of cyanide based rose gold plating solution that is probably less then 5% depleted. It had 5 Dwt (1/4 oz troy) gold content to start with. I still have my plating equipment, stainless steel anodes, ect. The plater is a 10 Amp, variable voltage.
This is not worth sending to a refiner so I'd like to deplete the solution, and give the cyanide solution to the guys at the local hazardous waste collection for proper disposal. (Yes, they will take it)
I seem to remember that I can just use copper(?) foil or wool and run it until depleted, then melt the resulting au-cu which I will send out with some old gold rings that I have to be refined.
It seemed wise to ask for suggestions such as should I use cu foil, or zinc foil and would someone remind me when reverse plating which +/- goes to which anode/cathode. Should I use a stainless steel anode/cathode, or something else.
How do I tell when the solution is depleted? Shor (or is it Shore?) sells a indicator test for depleted solutions, but I'm not sure if it works on cyanide solutions.
Lastly I seem to remember that there is a chlorine based cyanide destruction destruction method. Perhaps this would be better than worrying about the liability and real danger of transporting 1 Liter of cyanide solution to the haz waste day. I suppose technically I could go and get hazmat added to my license (I have a Hvy Com license already) and properly manifest and placard but that might be more work than cyanide destruction.
Lastly, I also have an old bottle of acid-gold plating solution that only contains 1dwt of gold (cyanaurate, I think) to deplete. I would not worry anywhere near as much about transporting the depleted solution to the haz waste site but need to deplete this also.
*lol* Now you guys have me wondering... and I'll have to look around as I do have some gold filled items and now I look at about 20lbs of electronic waste that I have collected over about 20 years. No way I'll pay my dump $10 to get rid of an old computer, so I have dismantled them, sorted the plastic, steel and aluminum, and have thrown all the boards and components in a bucket. Hmmm.....
And for those who might be interested, now I wonder.... Once I placed a mining claim (we're talking 1986 so it's now expired) on an area in BC where flour gold had concentrated over millenia and the gold is NOT recoverable by mechanical methods. Sieving the alluvium down to <160 mesh, analysis by AA shows that it's there at a rate of about 1.1grams/ton of dry sieved alluvium. But there is only 2-6,000 ounces in the entire deposit which is essentially an ancient natural riffle box at the edge of an alluvial lake. (I'm beginning to wonder if the gold's origin actually was organic, with the leaf gold being deposited by sulphide (gold-bearing) chomping bacteria. This quantity is too small to consider commercial cyanide based removal. The gold is "leaf-like," imagine a yard full of maple leaves (though in this case nanometer sized). Their shape precludes any gravity separation and fluidized bed transport over mercury would cause too much contamination, and would be prohibitive to permit. Now that gold is rising in value I wonder if vat leaching with iodine-nitrate might become practical.
These days I'm an Occupational Health RN & Safety Specialist. Back in the '80's I was a tiny manufacturing jeweler (craft fairs, some wholesale) that mostly made titanium jewelry but also some silver and gold jewelry. In the mid-80's I had a small line of gold plated items.
I have one liter of cyanide based rose gold plating solution that is probably less then 5% depleted. It had 5 Dwt (1/4 oz troy) gold content to start with. I still have my plating equipment, stainless steel anodes, ect. The plater is a 10 Amp, variable voltage.
This is not worth sending to a refiner so I'd like to deplete the solution, and give the cyanide solution to the guys at the local hazardous waste collection for proper disposal. (Yes, they will take it)
I seem to remember that I can just use copper(?) foil or wool and run it until depleted, then melt the resulting au-cu which I will send out with some old gold rings that I have to be refined.
It seemed wise to ask for suggestions such as should I use cu foil, or zinc foil and would someone remind me when reverse plating which +/- goes to which anode/cathode. Should I use a stainless steel anode/cathode, or something else.
How do I tell when the solution is depleted? Shor (or is it Shore?) sells a indicator test for depleted solutions, but I'm not sure if it works on cyanide solutions.
Lastly I seem to remember that there is a chlorine based cyanide destruction destruction method. Perhaps this would be better than worrying about the liability and real danger of transporting 1 Liter of cyanide solution to the haz waste day. I suppose technically I could go and get hazmat added to my license (I have a Hvy Com license already) and properly manifest and placard but that might be more work than cyanide destruction.
Lastly, I also have an old bottle of acid-gold plating solution that only contains 1dwt of gold (cyanaurate, I think) to deplete. I would not worry anywhere near as much about transporting the depleted solution to the haz waste site but need to deplete this also.
*lol* Now you guys have me wondering... and I'll have to look around as I do have some gold filled items and now I look at about 20lbs of electronic waste that I have collected over about 20 years. No way I'll pay my dump $10 to get rid of an old computer, so I have dismantled them, sorted the plastic, steel and aluminum, and have thrown all the boards and components in a bucket. Hmmm.....
And for those who might be interested, now I wonder.... Once I placed a mining claim (we're talking 1986 so it's now expired) on an area in BC where flour gold had concentrated over millenia and the gold is NOT recoverable by mechanical methods. Sieving the alluvium down to <160 mesh, analysis by AA shows that it's there at a rate of about 1.1grams/ton of dry sieved alluvium. But there is only 2-6,000 ounces in the entire deposit which is essentially an ancient natural riffle box at the edge of an alluvial lake. (I'm beginning to wonder if the gold's origin actually was organic, with the leaf gold being deposited by sulphide (gold-bearing) chomping bacteria. This quantity is too small to consider commercial cyanide based removal. The gold is "leaf-like," imagine a yard full of maple leaves (though in this case nanometer sized). Their shape precludes any gravity separation and fluidized bed transport over mercury would cause too much contamination, and would be prohibitive to permit. Now that gold is rising in value I wonder if vat leaching with iodine-nitrate might become practical.
