Smelting video

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OK I watched the video again and see the stationary furnace tipping when you pan across the room with your camera.

So if it tips and pours right off the bottom you never need crucibles. The oxidizing flame puts all of the base metals into a slag that floats and is skimmed into the pots. That is what you pass through the rotary a second time.

That means you get separation of values by burning off the remaining lead. Does that sound right?

I also noticed the stationary furnace has a little twin brother. Can you post a picture of that?

So this refiner produces all of his gold from jewelry and jewelers sweeps by inquartation and parting?
 
4metals said:
OK I watched the video again and see the stationary furnace tipping when you pan across the room with your camera.

So if it tips and pours right off the bottom you never need crucibles. The oxidizing flame puts all of the base metals into a slag that floats and is skimmed into the pots. That is what you pass through the rotary a second time.

That means you get separation of values by burning off the remaining lead. Does that sound right?

I also noticed the stationary furnace has a little twin brother. Can you post a picture of that?

So this refiner produces all of his gold from jewelry and jewelers sweeps by inquartation and parting?
Click to expand...

4metals,

The video shows the rotary furnace being tapped and some of the lead being poured into the crucible the user pours into the ingot molds. It then shows at another part where the rotary furnace is tapped for the final recovery of the remaining lead going into a cone mold with the slag running out onto the ground.

It then jumps to the other furnace with the user throwing another bar in at the 1:44 mark but I don't think this is the silver being added because it is too large of a piece of metal for what is recovered for the final digestion in nitric to recover the final gold. Also the pot is not large enough to handle the amount of lead that was used in the recover process in the rotary furnace if it is poured off from the smaller furnace.

I think a longer video would be necessary to make this more understandable.

I think Kurt made a post last year on how he did this process that went into good detail with the person he was working with with a good explination. He might want to post a link to that thread.
 
4metals,
The first 3 paragraphs of your statement is describing what we do there.

If you look at the following photo, you notice a chained craned that hang on top of the stationary furnace, that is what they use to tilt the furnace to pour out lead plus base metals oxide to round mold.
Kevins styationary furnace.jpg

Once all the lead is out, remains only the silver alloy which does not oxidized. This is what the silver alloy looks like after being cleaned out and prior to dissolving it in nitric,
image.jpg

The way we do oxidizing is lower the flame and let the air flow on the charge, if fuel is cut it produces a very dense yellowish lead oxide fumes, it does oxidation a lot sooner but major hazarod. That is why he sticks to his model of controlled heat and oxygen to oxidize base metals with minimum to no fumes.

The way we part the precious metals are from lead, the silver is used at the stationary furnace, prior to rinsing off the lead oxide.

The rest is just nitric acid and silver alloy, silver is precipitated as silver chloride, then filtered and palladium nitrate is dropped using DMG.

Regards
Kj
 
4metals,

".That means you get separation of values by burning off the remaining lead. Does that sound right?"

That is correct sir. After silver is added of course, then burning off lead, and we are left with a silver alloy containing all precious metals.

He actually has two more stationary furnaces, smaller in size. They are used for testing small samples. I will take photos of them and post here as soon as I get back there.

His main business has been jewlery sweeps, and from what I know he follows the same procedures for the sweeps as well, and based on the constant clients that show up at his shop I am guessing his yields are good.

I was the one who told him about the concept of smelting PCBs and we started a joint venture since then.

I cant get this out of my mind, seeing all those ewastes in that town in China or Ghana with all the toxic smokes from burning, all I need is showing our capability and fume scrubbers to their governments, and we can set this system over there and buy boards from those who burn them like that to just get the copper, I am sure that would be a major business.
 
Barren,
The operator allows the pouring of the molten lead into crucible and case it to ingots, and as soon as the slags start to pour into crucible he holds under the rotarty furnace, they spin the furnace.

At the later frame in the video what pours on the floor is just the slags. No lead is found in there.

I will try to make a longer video next time when we will smelt ceramic catalytic converters or this lot 75 lbs of boards.
image.jpg

Regards
Kj
 
kjavanb123 said:
Barren,
The operator allows the pouring of the molten lead into crucible and case it to ingots, and as soon as the slags start to pour into crucible he holds under the rotarty furnace, they spin the furnace.

At the later frame in the video what pours on the floor is just the slags. No lead is found in there.

I will try to make a longer video next time when we will smelt ceramic catalytic converters or this lot 75 lbs of boards.
image.jpg

Regards
Kj
Click to expand...

Curiosity would probably get the better of me and I wold ball mill the slags and pan them just to check and see if any metals were in the slag. I think it is a simple and good setup.

You are incinerating and sifting and getting the magnetic parts out of the material before it goes into the rotary furnace, correct?

You answered my biggest question when you stated that the lead is burnt off.

Thanks for posting this thread.
 
Kevin,

Thank you for posting this thread, it is interesting.

Concerning the pots of lead oxide poured off from the stationary furnace that are added back into the rotary furnace, is that remelting performed as part of your job with you getting credit for the values recovered? I hope so because I will bet they are holding values! While skimming the surface it is impossible not to skim a little molten lead. That lead has your values in the alloy.

Another secondary point is that burning off of the lead is a rather toxic way to go. Cupellation with a bone ash hearth will still result in 10% of the lead volatilized but 90% is absorbed into the bone ash so you don't have to breathe it.

What you are doing is oxidizing lead metal into lead oxide and removing the lead oxide, along with the other base metal oxides, from a floating surface slag. Essentially the exact opposite of a litharge assay fusion.
 
Kevin,

Your process does not take copper out of the system. The copper, as an oxide is constantly reintroduced into the rotary in the reprocessed slags. Are you fluxing to remove copper?

With copper as a collector in the rotary, instead of lead, you could set up electrolytic copper sulfate cells and get paid for copper, eliminate the health risks associated with lead fumes, eliminate silver inquarting and the expense of recovery. The downside is you will not see payment as quickly.

As you grow in size, greater profitability comes from the ability to batch jobs together, that will involve more of the analytical lab side of the business.
 
You are incinerating and sifting and getting the magnetic parts out of the material before it goes into the rotary furnace, correct?

You answered my biggest question when you stated that the lead is burnt off.

Thanks for posting this thread.
Click to expand...

Barren,
Glad I could be any assistance. As for your questions, no we do not use magnet or any pre treatment of ashes from pyro or incineration.

Everything is fluxed, mixed with lithrage and some coals and charghed the rotary furnace.

Regards
Kj
 
4metals said:
Kevin,

Thank you for posting this thread, it is interesting.

Concerning the pots of lead oxide poured off from the stationary furnace that are added back into the rotary furnace, is that remelting performed as part of your job with you getting credit for the values recovered? I hope so because I will bet they are holding values! While skimming the surface it is impossible not to skim a little molten lead. That lead has your values in the alloy.

Another secondary point is that burning off of the lead is a rather toxic way to go. Cupellation with a bone ash hearth will still result in 10% of the lead volatilized but 90% is absorbed into the bone ash so you don't have to breathe it.

What you are doing is oxidizing lead metal into lead oxide and removing the lead oxide, along with the other base metal oxides, from a floating surface slag. Essentially the exact opposite of a litharge assay fusion.
Click to expand...

Thank you sir.

The lead which is used as the main collector metals and its final poured off lead oxide belong to my partner. So I dont get paid or anything for that.
As for the values being in those lead oxide, I have tested this myself twice, gathered all the lead oxides which we have accumlated using my stationary furnace, and melt them in our own furnace and result was absolutley 0g of values.

I also remelt the slags from my previous operations, and from over 500 kg of slags which was smelted using rotary furnace, we only recovered 2.2g of gold at the end. This was from many different batches, which tells me still a good recovery rate and minimal losses.

But I will do what Barren mention to just break a few slags and pan it.

Also skimming is where these operators got skills, This is a simple test they do to make sure the lead is not coming off with the skimmed oxides, as they tilt the furnace, they collect a small sample on the metallic part of a shovel, if it is lead oxide mixed with base metals, once cooled, that stuff on metallic part of shovel will just fall as one piece, but it contains silver or value it will stick to shovel.

They claim once the silver is added, it will collect all the PMs in the molten lead.

As for fumes, we use the following filter and scrubbing system,
image.jpg

It contains cooling section, bag house and cyclone, all the lead fumes are collected by bags in the bag house. These recovered lead can make up to 6% of the lead used up in operation. Also recovered once a year.

So it is very enviromentally friendly operation, and local EPA approved.

Regards
Kj
 
4metals said:
Kevin,

Your process does not take copper out of the system. The copper, as an oxide is constantly reintroduced into the rotary in the reprocessed slags. Are you fluxing to remove copper?

With copper as a collector in the rotary, instead of lead, you could set up electrolytic copper sulfate cells and get paid for copper, eliminate the health risks associated with lead fumes, eliminate silver inquarting and the expense of recovery. The downside is you will not see payment as quickly.

As you grow in size, greater profitability comes from the ability to batch jobs together, that will involve more of the analytical lab side of the business.
Click to expand...

4metals,

Copper can be used but we need to go through the whole scheme of electrolysis which is a one time large investment and as you said time consuming to get the goodies.

Since we depopulate boards manually, pyrolize both sections, smelt the components ash to get the values, we can pyrolize the bare boards and melt the ashes in rotary and get the copper.

Advantage of lead smelting using what we do is the quick value back from the precious metals and purchasing more materials next day.

With the right equipments and scrubbers etc this along other components can be so easily used for replacement of cu smelting.

Regards
Kj
 
4metals,

There are ways to check if we overskimmed or not, one would be slag remelting or panbing the milled slags, the other one would be smelting a known amount of materials that we know how much gold we expecting, like jewlery sweeps, since in their books they know how much gold they purchased and how much jewlery they made and sold during the time they have created that sweeps.

So if they bring their sweeps for smelting here, the jewler alreayd knows how much gold is expected from this smelt, and if any parts of his smelting lacks efficency, I am sure he would be out of business.

He smelted 60 kg of cell phone boards for a client and got 49g of gold.

My case, we smelted 34 kg of half chinese and half non chinese motherboards plus 2 kg of misc cards, and got 6.56g gold.

Regards
Kj
 
Platdigger said:
Would you happen to know or be willing to share how much pd he got from those cell boards?
Click to expand...

Platdigger,

We have not precipitated Pd yet. As soon as I get DMG. I will report that.

Regards
Kj
 
So if they bring their sweeps for smelting here, the jewler alreayd knows how much gold is expected from this smelt, and if any parts of his smelting lacks efficency, I am sure he would be out of business.
Click to expand...

I processed jewelers sweeps for years and assayed thousands of lots and I can assure you jewelers sweeps vary lot to lot. It all depends on what they were polishing. The only way he would know if he was short on a lot would be if he burned crushed and sifted a lot and sampled it before smelting. From what you describe, the rotary furnace is where it gets burned and smelted so it cannot be sampled properly.

You are making 2 assumptions, 1 is that jewelers know how much is in their sweeps. Without proper sampling and assay they will never know. They may be satisfied with their return but that is different than knowing from having done an assay. The second assumption you are making is that he would be out of business. Generally speaking when a refiner makes a mistake, he just increases his profit.
 
kjavanb123 said:
All,

After a long waiting, I video recorded our smelting process.

Feed materials are actually components depopulated manually from about 74 lbs of mixed motherboards and 2 kg of cards.

They were pyrolized prior to smelt. Please leave comments.

I will be doing more sample smelting specially on cell phone boards, ceramic catalytic converters and telecomm boards.

You can check out the video at


Best regards
Kj
Click to expand...

The video link is not available, could you share its link again,thanks
 

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