REVERSE Inquartation? 🤔🤔🤔

[OldManSam]

So the process of inquartation "dilutes" the gold in an alloy to a concentration which allows the use of nitric to attack the base metals in the alloy ... Aqua Regia won't dissolve gold unless it is low concentration ... or high concentration ...

So ....... What if you inquart in reverse? Instead of adding base metals to lower the karat to 6k, you ADD fine gold to raise the karat to a level high enough to refine?

Would that even work?

 

[Yggdrasil]

So the process of inquartation "dilutes" the gold in an alloy to a concentration which allows the use of nitric to attack the base metals in the alloy ... Aqua Regia won't dissolve gold unless it is low concentration ... or high concentration ...

So ....... What if you inquart in reverse? Instead of adding base metals to lower the karat to 6k, you ADD fine gold to raise the karat to a level high enough to refine?

Would that even work?

It will work but will be expensive.

 

[FrugalRefiner]

We use inquartation when the silver in an alloy starts approaching 10% of the alloy. At that point, the silver will create a crust of silver chloride that will keep AR from dissolving all the gold. If there is no silver in an alloy, there is not a need to inquart. For example, if the alloy is just gold and copper, you can go directly to AR because the AR will dissolve both the gold and the copper. You'll end up with a dirty solution, but it will all dissolve.

So, it's not the low or high concentration of gold in the alloy that's important, rather it's the concentration of silver. You can still end up with a small amount of gold tied up with any silver chloride that forms, but it can be recovered when the silver chloride is processed.

Dave

 

[kurtak]

Would that even work?

Yes it will most certainly work - BUT - you need to know how much silver - percentage wise - is in the gold to start with in order to figure out how much gold to add in order to dilute the silver in the alloy enough to prevent the silver chloride crust that builds up on the surface of the gold that prevents the AR from fully dissolving the gold

To prevent that silver chloride crust build up on the surface of the gold the silver percentage in the alloy needs to be 6% or less

That means there can only be 6 grams of silver in 100 grams of alloy

So for example - if you are starting with 100 grams of 18 karat green gold that is 75grams gold & 25 grams silver you need to add enough gold to dilute the silver to 6 grams per 100 grams

So divide 25 by 4 = 6.25 (close enough to the 6 grams per 100 grams you are looking for)

So to dilute the original 25 grams silver per 100 grams to 6.25 grams per hundred you need to add 300 grams gold to the original 100 grams = 400 grams alloy @ 6.25 grams silver per 100 grams alloy - or 6.25% silver in the alloy

So you need to know the silver percentage to start with to know how much gold to add to get to 6% or less silver to prevent the silver chloride crust

If you starting silver percentage is only 12% (per 100 grams) you would only need to add another 100 grams gold (Instead of 300 grams as in the above 25% example)

Kurt

 

[autumnwillow]

It will work, but it's a bad idea. AgCl is unwanted in AR gold refining, it coats your gold.
You'd be surprised how much gold you can get by processing your filter papers from AR properly.
You want to proceed with AR with as little silver as possible.