kjavanb123 said:
Harold,
Thanks for the comment. Please kindly advise what do you think about the golden color of the metallic alloy? Could that be Cu-Au alloy since the materials were incinerated IC ashes.
I think I'd agree with patnor. Whether you used copper or not, assuming you managed to get a collection, I expect it would be yellow in color, and most likely would have nothing to do with the presence of gold, as it is in just trace amounts. The color of your recovered metal leans towards a copper color more so than that of gold, which is most likely due to the fact that you have added a large percentage of copper, used as a collector. The color, therefore, likely means very little, if anything.
I am making another flux, this time incude 4 parts volume soda ash along with 4 part borax, and keep it a lot longer in the induction furnace to see what happens.
Working out a good ratio is an excellent idea, as is the idea of determining how long it must "cook".
As I don't know anything about the induction furnace in use, I feel I should make mention. If you are melting directly in the furnace or not, you risk penetrating the refractory, destroying the coil. As you increase the use of flux, in particular, soda ash (which is used to dissolve silicon to make glass), you accelerate the destruction of the melting chamber. Keep a close eye on the furnace, to ensure you don't ruin the coil.
Last time I poured the slag seemed fluid.
I'm of the opinion that it was not, in spite of how it may have behaved. The opaque color troubles me, as did the mention of finding prills. If your flux is proper, and you've "cooked" the material long enough, especially if you have provided a collector (copper, in your case), there should be no prills. The simple addition of a small amount of fluorspar will ensure it is thin enough.
I am thinking to use lithrage next time see if I can collect the precious metals, dissolve in nitiric determine how much gold or silver I can recover.
That litharge has been used as a collector, I don't dispute, but attempting to process with nitric wouldn't be in your best interest, at least not in my opinion. Any silver that may be present would be somewhat difficult to separate from the lead, which will self precipitate as the solution cools. You'd be far better served by cupelling the lead, but that opens a whole new case of snakes for you, and that may not be necessary. It would be a good way to do your testing, but likely not so good in production.
If you must use a collector, give some thought to using silver. In my case, I relied on silver chloride as a collector, and I was pleasantly surprised to achieve my goal, albeit at the cost of severe erosion of the lining in my furnace, which I considered a small price to pay for so much value recovered.
Contrary to the opinion expressed by some, silver chloride is reduced to metallic silver when melted in conjunction with soda ash, which you already have in your flux.
Harold
