Non-Chemical Sand blasting for gold recovery

[Old gold]

Has anyone used a sand blasting technique for recovery of gold from industrial plated items?
It seems to me that it could work

 

[Phishin_ca]

Out of curiosity, what is the proposed process for removing this ultra-fine gold from the sand? Everything I can think of would be extremely wasteful

 

[nickvc]

Many many new members think they can find a better way to recover gold than the tried , tested and proved methods, unfortunately most of the ideas have little merit because they do not understand the processes or the problems their new ideas would cause.
Remember gold is one of the least reactive metals we know so to recover and or refine it fairly aggressive chemicals are needed, if that thought scares you or you really do not want to learn the basics and then the processes then simply collect sort and sell.

 

[Old gold]

Recovery of gold from industrial plated items poses some challenges, mostly from the presence of tin lead, solder and copper. A fine sandblast to remove the gold plate will obviously also remove solder as well as copper, however, the metal sands can be treated first with nitric acid, then sodium or potassium cyanide for final extraction. All of these techniques are not some newbie idea, these methods are tried and true.
I thought there were some knowledgable people here.

 

[butcher]

There are a few here who have spent some time gaining knowledge while they have been members of the forum.

Most are open-minded, and many of us have had some ideas we may have thought were great, before we gained more knowledgable on the subject, and then sometimes with that gain of knowledge, we can develop, modify or scrap that idea for a better one, or a process known and proven to work.

I thought there were some knowledgable people here.

How much time, and work, how many years have you spent gaining knowledge on this subject?

You are the one asking questions, why bark at those trying to help you in gaining knowledge?

Your time would be better spent gaining knowledge about your ideas than barking at those who believe they would have other ideas but are also willing to help you with your problem...

I would want to hear every single reason, why that my idea may not be a good one, I would want to discuss why I believed it to be a good one, and hear of any problem others may see with the idea, and if they can convince me of a better idea, or show me the unforeseeable problem I may have with that idea.

so basically, I would not consider my self as the only one knowledgable, I would take advice from those with more knowledge, and consider advice from those with less knowledge who may have a different or even a better perspective than I have with my closed mind.

When NickV gives advice I always keep my ears open, I have learned a lot from the man.
Maybe your idea is a good one maybe a bad one, but it would not hurt to keep your ears and mind open, and maybe watch the tounge a bit.

 

[g_axelsson]

This is a topic that pops up about once a year. So far I've never heard of anyone that made it work.

Removing gold plating isn't hard, there are two ways that is commonly used. Sulfuric cell or cyanide, both methods work fine and can be scaled up to run larger batches.

Göran

 

[Yggdrasil]

Another thing with sand/glass blasting is that,
even if it looks like the plating /oxide or coating has been removed, it seldom is.
The surface are scrached, scarred and pitted so it looks clean, but in a microscope one would see that quite a bit of the coating has been left.
We used to glass blast stainless steel after welding to remove the oxide layer, even if it looked beautiful, shortly after it would start "rusting" due to the remains of the oxide layer.
The only thing that works are chemical removal or proper grinding.