silver chloride mixed with gold chloride

[mitchd]

Hi all,
I recover diamonds and other stone from gold rings etc. by putting them in AR, it just takes to long to cut the stones out and it seems that one or two always brake, so by putting them in AR I am left with the stones which can be picked out, a very dirty gold and copper mix which is droped out with iron sulfate and silver chloride that seem to have gold chloride still mix in it even after 10 washes and a little rhodium.

I have a question on what is the best way to recover the gold and rhodium? The rhodium is from white gold.

It seems best for me to cement the silver chloride and make silver but i am not sure that the gold is dropping out with the silver and the rhodium is mixed in with the silver. then go with a electic cell and refine the silver and collect the gold and rhodium in the anode bag.

Is there a better way of recovering the gold chloride and rhodium which show up on the filteter after the AR as very white metal foils?

There is around 3+ pounds of this gold, silver, rhodium mix. My first try at 3 ounces of dryed silver chloride (Yes dryed , how can you burn or roast the mix off the filteres and other junk like bugs etc. with out drying out every thing?) did not go as planed, tried to make silver with the lye, sugar process and then used nitric acid to take the silver out of the mix and i thought the gold and rhodium would be left but there is a lot of gary powder left about 2 ounces are left out of the 3 but I did get about 15 grams of silver out of it but don't know what to do with the rest of the powder, maybe melt with lots of flux and make a gold, rhodium bead?

can any one advise me as what could be done with the silver chloride, gold chloride, and rhodium mix?

Thanks

Mitch.

 

[butcher]

mitchd

I would cut the large stones out but would leave the small ones.
Melt the gold with silver to in-quarter the gold, stir melt with carbon rod and pour shot.
Use 70% HNO3 mixed 50:50 distilled water to dissolve silver copper palladium and other base metals, Recover silver and Pd using copper to cement metals out of solution.
Recover gold using aqua regia.
Leaving the rhodium undissolved.

Since you have done it differently you have made silver chloride mixed with your rhodium and a little gold, drying the silver chloride was a mistake, making it much harder to deal with.

At this point I would look at few different methods and would probably do small experiments on each.

Powder the silver and put silver back into solution, and try to separate it further from the other metals further and then convert it back to silver melt, it and run it through the cell to further separate the metals.

Or
Powder the silver chloride re-wet it, and try to convert it back to silver with one of several method's, NaOH/Karo syrup, Iron/dilute H2SO4, or HCl aluminum.
Or
Powder use light and heat to decompose some of the chloride from the silver then flux melt it.

Any of these are not going to be all that easy, and there may be loses with the easier methods.

 

[mitchd]

mitchd

I would cut the large stones out but would leave the small ones.
Melt the gold with silver to in-quarter the gold, stir melt with carbon rod and pour shot.
Use 70% HNO3 mixed 50:50 distilled water to dissolve silver copper palladium and other base metals, Recover silver and Pd using copper to cement metals out of solution.
Recover gold using aqua regia.
Leaving the rhodium undissolved.

Since you have done it differently you have made silver chloride mixed with your rhodium and a little gold, drying the silver chloride was a mistake, making it much harder to deal with.

At this point I would look at few different methods and would probably do small experiments on each.

Powder the silver and put silver back into solution, and try to separate it further from the other metals further and then convert it back to silver melt, it and run it through the cell to further separate the metals.

Or
Powder the silver chloride re-wet it, and try to convert it back to silver with one of several method's, NaOH/Karo syrup, Iron/dilute H2SO4, or HCl aluminum.
Or
Powder use light and heat to decompose some of the chloride from the silver then flux melt it.

Any of these are not going to be all that easy, and there may be loses with the easier methods.

Thanks Bucher.
I used the iron/dilute H2S04 with heat on what was left over from the first try and really got much better results than the first try with lot of silver showing at the bottom of the coffee pot. Now it will get filtered and washed then do the 50/50 acid and water to put the silver back into liquid and filter wash whats left and go to AR and if all goes well there will be most of the rhodium and a little left to recover.