Non-Chemical Seperating and Classifying Ore & E-Scrap

[rusty]

A big step forward, I knew from last year that the gold was abrading off going into the ash while in the ball mill.

This year learned how to use this to my advantage, yesterday I loaded a bunch of pins, gold plated cpu tops into the mill along with some IC's this morning sure enough the gold has abraded off.

I did run the mill for an extended time of 24 hours, the job may have been completed in less time but wanted to be sure the gold had abraded off of the pins.

The next load is going to be all pins with a handful of sandblasting media to assist with abrading the gold off, once the milled pins have been removed from the mill and the pins screened out working with a handful of gold bearing dust will be much easier to process.

To assure that I collect all the values from the spent pins I do my screening with my screen submerged under water.

I think this method is going to be a great success in concentrating the gold values off of this large lot of pins I have to process, just thought I would share my discovery with our forum members.

 

[joem]

A big step forward, I knew from last year that the gold was abrading off going into the ash while in the ball mill.

This year learned how to use this to my advantage, yesterday I loaded a bunch of pins, gold plated cpu tops into the mill along with some IC's this morning sure enough the gold has abraded off.

I did run the mill for an extended time of 24 hours, the job may have been completed in less time but wanted to be sure the gold had abraded off of the pins.

The next load is going to be all pins with a handful of sandblasting media to assist with abrading the gold off, once the milled pins have been removed from the mill and the pins screened out working with a handful of gold bearing dust will be much easier to process.

To assure that I collect all the values from the spent pins I do my screening with my screen submerged under water.

I think this method is going to be a great success in concentrating the gold values off of this large lot of pins I have to process, just thought I would share my discovery with our forum members.

You definatly got my attention and woke my brain up. What size of screen do you use? How would I process the powder without nitric ( It's hard to get here), Just HCL to dissolve other metals but not gold or HCL+Clorox to dissolve thin particles then drop?
And Mechanical wise: If I have small amounts of pins at a time (say 1/2 a cup) could I buy a rock tumbler (like kids use to polish stones)?

 

[rusty]

A big step forward, I knew from last year that the gold was abrading off going into the ash while in the ball mill.

This year learned how to use this to my advantage, yesterday I loaded a bunch of pins, gold plated cpu tops into the mill along with some IC's this morning sure enough the gold has abraded off.

I did run the mill for an extended time of 24 hours, the job may have been completed in less time but wanted to be sure the gold had abraded off of the pins.

The next load is going to be all pins with a handful of sandblasting media to assist with abrading the gold off, once the milled pins have been removed from the mill and the pins screened out working with a handful of gold bearing dust will be much easier to process.

To assure that I collect all the values from the spent pins I do my screening with my screen submerged under water.

I think this method is going to be a great success in concentrating the gold values off of this large lot of pins I have to process, just thought I would share my discovery with our forum members.

You definatly got my attention and woke my brain up. What size of screen do you use? How would I process the powder without nitric ( It's hard to get here), Just HCL to dissolve other metals but not gold or HCL+Clorox to dissolve thin particles then drop?
And Mechanical wise: If I have small amounts of pins at a time (say 1/2 a cup) could I buy a rock tumbler (like kids use to polish stones)?

I think that one of the 2 gallon tumblers maybe large enough to abrade the gold off. and don't think that adding an abrasive is actually needed for large lots.

You could probably throw in some fingers along with your pins to wear the gold off, fingers alone would not abrade well. No balls necessary.

For small lots you may have to add some sort of a collector, like I'm using the dust from the milled IC's. Back when I was in school the janitor used sawdust on the floor while sweeping to contain the dust.

You could build a tumbler from an old tire like this one, http://www.acc.umu.se/~widmark/lwtrumla.html

Might be wise to rum a tire tumbler with a bit of water to keep your dust where you want it. To empty the tire tumbler use a damp filter paper then incinerate to collect the values.

I stole the screen from my wifes kitchen.

Credits for the large tire tumbler pdf file belong to Alan Silverstein, [email protected]

 

[rusty]

Twenty liters of Gold pins abrading in the ball mill, run time 14 hours, grinding media - plastic.

Observation, the thinly plated newer pins the gold has worn off, the older pins some gold has diminished but still needs another 12 - 14 hours of run time.

The nickel layer under the gold plating is much better than the gold and is staying attached to the pins.

October 16/2010 emptied the ball mill, observations. The pins and gold plated cpu tops you would get from PC scrap have all the gold abraded off, some of the pins I loaded into the mill were from another source and the gold is plated much heavier these have approximately 80 percent of the gold abraded from them.

The nickel plating underlay is staying affixed very nicely to the pins.

All I used for grinding media was the shredded plastic perhaps a more aggressive media would have removed the gold quicker.

Screening out the powder, and another four 20 liter pails of pins left to mill. this lot has some shredded iron which will help to abrade the gold off.

October 16 2010 9:57 PM put the plastic and pins from the original load back into the mill, this time running wet.

October 17 2010 10:00 am Success running the pins wet removed all the gold, loaded a fresh 30 liters of pins - wet.
October 17 2010 8:15 pm emptied ball mill, gold has abraded off the low grade pins with great success.

After screening the pins the plastic are damp to the feel, but still has plenty of liquids clinging on. A short video and some pictures showing the liquids being extracted from the pulp. About 2 liters I would think.

In the last picture you will notice the water has a brown muddy look to it, this is the gold which has been abraded from the pins.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hpHG4HK_nI[/youtube]

View attachment 3

View attachment 2



View attachment 1

 

[rusty]

If you had a lot of pins to process, you could use an apartment size washing machine that has a spin dryer. The last Hitachi I wrecked out had a plastic spin drum along with plastic tubs. So you really don;t need any fancy equipment to run this process.

Once the plugs have been shredded from the hammer mill, I add everything into the ball mill for abrading and run this wet with a bit of soap added to my water.

For 30 liters of pins and mixed plastic I add 20 liters of water for my second batch of pins I recycled the water from my first batch after the powder had mostly settled out.

Once you unload the pulp and screen it if you don't want to build a centrifuge just give your pulp an extra rinse to wash off any excess gold powder.let this settle overnight then siphon off the top liquid and filter out the powder for further processing.

Hope this is of some help to our members. I know it saved me a lot of time and grief worrying how to deal with all that shredded metal and plastic from the plugs with the pins mixed in.

 

[rusty]

Finished milling and abrading the pins from a total of 230 liters shredded cable end plugs, now I've got 40 liters of liquids to filter out, heavy with brown mud and I suspect some other impurities but this is what refining precious metals is all about - elimination.

The fine gold does not settle well at all, and I do not have the patience to wait out 40 liters to settle out.

Some of you may be old enough to remember the felt hats men wore back in the 1950's early 60's, I have removed the head band and liner from one then inverted the hat into the centrifuge opening only to hold the felt in place while filtering.

Plenty of surface area on the felt hat and the filtering is going fairly quick, the liquids coming off are so clear you would think it were spring water.

Of course I'll have to incinerate the hat to reclaim the values, which is not bad since everything needed incinerating anyhow before refining.

Well I think that about wraps up this thread for me.

 

[samuel-a]

Well I think that about wraps up this thread for me.

Gil
That's good info.
I think you should call it once you finish the refining stage of the filtered matirial.
The whole process is very interesting aswell as the final outcome and your investment in that project is amazing, it's very interesting to know the yields out of thous pins using that mathod.

Thanks
Sam

 

[rusty]

A another discovery which requires a reply from one of our chemists on board, if only to keep this post truthful.

I have two twenty liter pails full of brown liquid recovered from abrading the gold plated pins in the ball mill.

The one pail was filled last evening and this morning the powder had still refused to settle out, here is where is gets interesting.

This afternoon I emptied out the ball mill adding the liquid form the mill to another pail, then started filtering the first pail through a felt hat plus using my 4 liter buchner filter with coffee filters.

The gallon jar I"m using with the buchner was half full of copper chloride from another job which I left in, anyhow the gold is so finely divided from milling the coffee filters tripled allow the gold to pass. So I dumped the waste from the gallon jar back into the 20 liter bucket with the brown powder that has escaped the filter..

This was just before the wife called me in for supper. Later this evening I went out to attend to my filters refilling them.

The first pail from last evening still has the brown powder not settled out, what struck me funny is the pail I added the copper chloride too, the powder is settling fast with a nice clear layer of water on top.

I have now transfered the clear liquids over the the muddy pail and we shall see what the morning brings.

I might add that the copper chloride in the gallon jar was only rinse water from a previous filtering job, just enough to give some color. I was not concerned about adding the copper chloride as part of my refining process will be to incinerate the powder.

Question is why has this happened, I'm rather pleased with the situation, especially when the contaminate is added during the first phases of my refining.

 

[Platdigger]

Is there any chance that copper chloride was even a little bit acidic?

 

[rusty]

Is there any chance that copper chloride was even a little bit acidic?

Yes, I just went out to the shop then added half a cup of HCL to another small batch I had, same thing the mud has started to settle out already.

When you have gallons of this stuff to filter this is helpful to know. Hopefully there will some mud left behind.

 

[Barren Realms 007]

Is there any chance that copper chloride was even a little bit acidic?

Yes, I just went out to the shop then added half a cup of HCL to another small batch I had, same thing the mud has started to settle out already.

When you have gallons of this stuff to filter this is helpful to know. Hopefully there will some mud left behind.

Hopefully gold mud. 8)

 

[samuel-a]

Gil

Take a small sample of the settled mud and put in new clean HCL.
if color change is visible within the first cuple of minutes to green/yellow at room temp, that mean that what's suspended in your water buckets is impurities mostly, but they can trap some gold with them.
what ever left is gold.

 

[rusty]

A brief description of the process outlined in this thread.

I started with one 45 gallon barrel plus 1 pail of plastic cable end connectors with gold plated pins. To liberate the pins feed the plugs through a hammer mill using a screen with 3/8" holes which gives you and industry standard of 3/8" minus coming from the mill.

Theoretically nothing larger than 3/8 inch will escape the mill.

The pulp discharged form the hammer mill now 3/8" - consisted of shredded plastic, bits of iron , the pulp was now screened by hand using a screen of 1/4 inch holes to extract the larger bits of plastic and iron.

This screen material now consisting of mostly pins and some smaller pieces of plastic was feed directly into a ball mill running in water to assist in abrading the gold from the pins, the shredded plastic was the only other grinding media. Run time 12 / 14 hours.

Once this material is removed from the ball mill, the pulp was feed directly into a centrifuge to extract the liquids from the pulp which carried with it the fine powders containing the gold we're chasing.

Further processing of the powders, the lot was put into HCL then heated over a Coleman, then filtered, washed and filtered before going to AR.

About the mud processed in AR the filtered liquids are green - tested with stannous using a q-tip swab the color leans towards brown.

Diluted solution on filter paper gives a large blotch of purple with green in the center that looks like someone smudged the green color in. But very visible just the same - suggesting there is palladium present.

Observing the stannous on the filter paper after it has sat several minutes have now noted there is more green showing up on the perimeter of the purple.

FYI the volume of liquids recovered from AR is so far is almost 1 full Canadian gallon =160 fluid oz. I still have 10 liters of liquids to filter out then incinerate the felt hat which has now become so clogged that only a drip comes from it every minute or so.

The felt hat is working very well at capturing the very finest of fines, the filtrate is coming off nice and clear with no sediment in the waste water after two days of being undisturbed.

The felt hat holds one gallon of liquids and would hold much more if the rim were not folded over to secure the hat in place.

The only change I would make is that next time I would add HCL to each pail of liquid before filtering.

To finalize this experiment I'm going to hand screen the waste pulp to see if the centrifuge left any values attached.

Cheers from
Rusty

 

[Barren Realms 007]

Have you considered turning the hat inside out and washing the material out of it?