Selling Rhodium Precipitants

[roccottt]

I have seen about 5 postings in the forum with the same request as yours. I don't think anyone in the forum has ever sold rhodium in any form to any refiner.
All the refiners that I have contacted are not intersted. The question here is not that you have rhodium it is where can it be sold. I am sure a refiner/buyer would
verify before he wrote a check out if it was rhodium or not. Just like they do with gold. I have been told there is no market for it.
The best you can do is get out the 25 percent gold. That everybody buys. If its stuck in with the rhodium I am sure the guys here can help you get the gold out.


By the way what color is it in dry form (the concenrate)

 

[teclu]

I have seen about 5 postings in the forum with the same request as yours. I don't think anyone in the forum has ever sold rhodium in any form to any refiner.
All the refiners that I have contacted are not intersted. The question here is not that you have rhodium it is where can it be sold. I am sure a refiner/buyer would
verify before he wrote a check out if it was rhodium or not. Just like they do with gold. I have been told there is no market for it.
The best you can do is get out the 25 percent gold. That everybody buys. If its stuck in with the rhodium I am sure the guys here can help you get the gold out.


By the way what color is it in dry form (the concenrate)

No market for rhodium? demand is low for Ir, Os, Ru, but in no case for Pt, Pd and Rh, someone will probably want to misinform you.

teclu

 

[Lou]

It's not demand at all. The simple truth is that unless you have quite a bit of it, and in good purity, and with traceability, no one wants to guess.

People will buy it, but they're not going to buy it from just anyone who has no history of producing it or for using it in an application.

I suppose if you were a major rhodium electroplater, then you'd have refiners jumping you...

 

[teclu]

For example here, I do not have difficulties with rhodium sale whatever is the purity and quantity, but about Ir I can not say the same thing, even if I have 20 oz...

teclu

 

[WIZZARD]

Let me understand some of this.
For over 30 years I been sucking sand and trapping native NM metals. Separating the native metal is rather easy, it's the mineral complex metal that is hard. I chemically tested the tail concentrates over 30 years ago with no visible shinny metal present as the table got the stuff that glitters in pocket one and two. The tails show high levels of complex PGM's so I stock piled my tails. I sent 10 lbs sample to a dental scrap refinery in 1983 and they sent me a check for 1.5oz of Pt, indicating other PMG's and Au present but not recovered, as Pt was the objective. Paid on an extraction not a reading. A big shot refinery got into the mix and shut down any further payment on my tails. (why). However, a top metallurgy lab confirmed values, including Rh, Ir, Ru, Pt, Pd and Au. I own the tails, been getting them for dredging open waters with permits legally obtained stuff for over 30 years. If you buy scrap and refine it you don't have to have a chain of custody.

The question is, who will refine and make payment on concentrates?



The stuff that glitters, no problem, but the black/gray grains contain up to 17% Pt, along with Fe, Cr, Ti, ect. I have 50 tests using SCM/EDD reading of concentrates, and groups of grains, and individual grains, AA Elmer Perkins units, and some out of country readings all confirm PGM/Au, but the refineries all act like they have gun to their heads?

Who knows?

WIZZARD

 

[nickvc]

The stuff that glitters, no problem, but the black/gray grains contain up to 17% Pt, along with Fe, Cr, Ti, ect. I have 50 tests using SCM/EDD reading of concentrates, and groups of grains, and individual grains, AA Elmer Perkins units, and some out of country readings all confirm PGM/Au, but the refineries all act like they have gun to their heads?

Who knows?

WIZZARD[/quote]
I think i might have a refiner who will treat this material for you here in the UK,i know the owner personally and he seems a fairly straight guy,he will process most materials and seems fair with his charges his main concern is the legality of the transaction which you seem to have covered and im sure payment would be direct to your bank via transfer.If your interested PM me and i will have a word with him and give you the details to have a trial batch done which seems the safest way to proceed.

 

[rhodiumfever]

Hi Ulyczz. I opened a post on SSN and iodine leaching which is supposed to be a way to separate Rhodium from ore. 2-3 years ago I got hold of some concentrates from tailings that assayed at over 20% Rh. I also had a curious experience with J M. They were very polite at introduction but when I showed them the concentrate and the assay the dialogue basically stopped and they said they weren't interested. Maybe Rh isn't as rare as we have been led to believe?

 

[Platinum]

Here's something i ran across and found interesting since the topic is Rh.
http://silverprospector.com/assaying/rhodium.html

 

[Irons]

Hi Ulyczz. I opened a post on SSN and iodine leaching which is supposed to be a way to separate Rhodium from ore. 2-3 years ago I got hold of some concentrates from tailings that assayed at over 20% Rh. I also had a curious experience with J M. They were very polite at introduction but when I showed them the concentrate and the assay the dialogue basically stopped and they said they weren't interested. Maybe Rh isn't as rare as we have been led to believe?

JM has a 400 PPM limit on Arsenic. High grade concentrates can run over 40% Arsenic. They know what a pain in the butt it is to process.

It takes a lot of time and money to set up a process stream to convert the 'concentrates' into pure metal. They're used to dealing with folks like Norilsk/Stillwater who can supply them with tons of Nickel/PGM Matte on a continuous basis.

They don't have the time or inclination for people like us. They're running a business and concentrate on suppliers that give them the greatest return.

 

[WIZZARD]

Irons knows his stuff..

Some the big shots refineries have the next few decade planed out of what they have, what have control of and fully understand that this world is full of NM, whats in the ground and off the E shelf. They will put a water soaker to head of any secondary refinery that steps out line with their policy. What they do not have control of is the underground, and guess what, we are they. If you want to sell Rh you might want to put it into solution and prove to the jewelery folks you got pure Rh solution that will electo plate on their stuff. I would like to compare notes on how to convert Rh to a plating solution? I'll use a quote from:

http://www.webelements.com/rhodium/index.html

"Preliminary treatment of the ore or base metal byproduct is required to remove silver, gold, palladium, and platinum. The resulting residue is melted with sodium bisulphate (NaHSO4) and the resulting mixture extracted water to give a solution containing rhodium sulphate, Rh2(SO4)3. The rhodium is precipitated out as the hydroxide by addition of sodium hydroxide, NaOH, and redissolved in hydrochloric acid, HCl, to give H3RhCl6. This is treated with NaNO2 and NH4Cl to form a precipitate of the rhodium complex (NH4)3[Rh(NO2)6]. Dissolution of the precipitate in HCl gives a solution of pure (NH4)3RhCl6. Evaporation to dryness and burning under hydrogen gas gives pure rhodium."

They sure make it sound like whipping out some chocolate chip cookies.

So whats next, to make the same solution jeweler's buy from jeweler supply distributors? Who knows what the chemistry is of the plating solution?
So is it the (NH4)3RhCl6 the solution? O yeah! be sure if you do, make sure some cartel agent, you know the men in black, don't come knocking at your door asking to see your paper's.

WIZZARD

 

[rhodiumfever]

I'm sure your right Irons but I'm also sure that it doesn't hurt their business any by taking the combined small prospectors Rhodium out of the market!

 

[lazersteve]

Wizz,

Check out this thread:

Rhodium Sulfate

I've always used ammonium hydroxide to precipitate the Rh out of solution after the first time around, then put it back in hot sulfuric to make the sulfate when required.

I'm hoping Lou will come along and enlighten us all on his techniques. I'm sure he'll have something valuable to add.

Steve

 

[WIZZARD]

Steve, thanks.

The penny is now a 20 dollar Rh piece! or more?

I hoped becoming a member of the forum would be informative, and I hoped to learn something, make contact with others that can help with the flow. I've been self taught and know some stuff, and was around folks with old timer knowledge. So far I have to thank you all or your input. I might ask a few question that may seam basic, but that's because I don't have all the answers. As a very stubborn guy and thinking I can learn all this on my own was posterior thinking. So far I've made about 10,000 mistakes........and few successes, I hope my successes will be of value from time to time.

While I got your attention. Can some one explain how this nut I created using a Bugbee flux non niter, 100g of ore, 100g of Ag came up with stacked metals of loaded Ag, and hard, hard nut on the top that polishes up like Rh? The jeweler told me hardest metal he ever worked with?





The nut is before polishing, the bottom metal is Ag, using Mobuis cell the mud from the Ag part is about 8 to 12% of loaded Ag, the top metal has Fe and a lot more. Zr, Ti, PGM's? Jeweler said the luster of Rh is very present.


Fission with niter produces the Ag with what looks good but has about the same black residue in anode bag. With niter no hard shinny top metal?
Some of pic's some how posted out of order, could not fix, but they seam to there.
Thanks,
WIZZARD

We all have three parts, a mouth, a foot, and posterior, and sometimes those parts are interchangeable.

 

[Lou]

Silver is a whiter metal than rhodium. I would never make any qualitative determinations on the presence of a reduced metal (even gold) based off of luster and hardness alone. You will never get the complete picture that way.


Frankly, what you need to do is send a large sample in to Ledoux, or other large, well-reputed, internationally recognized assay house and spend about $1000 to have them sample and assay your concentrates via ICP technology. They'll probably do a fire assay (corrected as well, for silver) on the gold.Then you will know were you stand.

If refineries aren't interested in your material 'as-is' despite it having proven precious metals content, then you're simply talking to the wrong refineries. You should looks for refineries in the big mining states (namely NV) because they focus on concentrates, not high grade scrap like most average Joe's out in the East.

Your other option is to get it into a presentable and easily processable state from which refiners or you may easily recover values. This means you ball mill it, and roast it to remove any volatiles and nasty compounds. Depending on what your expensive multielement assay says, roasting the material may be illegal, so you'll have to use alternative routes to remove the arsenic, tellurium, selenium, and other likely poisonous contaminants. Each process should reduce the volume and mass of the material, concentrating the values. Then you can attack them with a selective gold leach (i.e. aerated cyanide). The rest of the values I would collect with nickel (gold works well too, but it's an expensive investment) and then electrolyze away the nickel in a green-as-all-hell nickelous sulfate/sulfuric acid bath. Collect the residues. Boil with HCl, look for color. Rinse very well with distilled water, then once with ammonia and heat to drive off residual chloride, then boil with nitric to see if palladium or copper is present colorometrically. Then give it the aqua regia treatment and remove the platinum. Residues are the lonely members of the PGM family, Ir, Ru, Os, and Rh. The objective is to remove as much trash/gangue as possible and then pick off the low hanging fruit (namely gold, silver, and palladium). Your first objective should be to recover the values as pure as possible, then we'll talk about refining in detail.


As far as actually refining the rhodium (and other PGMs), I'd like to wait until this fellow gets his assay and gets his act together on the material.