strange reaction with my waste ,help needed

[ericrm]

her i have this mixture of ALL my waste solution. i have been keeping my waste for about a year and it is my first time trying to clean my waste bucket...

i have used aluminium and not zinc because i dont have zinc...
it has been reacting for 2 days in the big bucket and would still be if i keep adding aluminium,i guess i have put maybe 5 to 10 lbs of aluminium in it,and i must have 40 or 50liter of waste
i have used aluminium to cement copper out before and it never did that.........

here is a picture tell me what you think, advise would be apreciated




edit : the beaker is standing there for 2 days and the blue barel is reacting for 2/3 days

second edit just before i put that post i have read hoke on the stock pot and i wasent suposed to put silver in it... well the picture clearly shows that i definitively have purple silver chloride...

my 1 concern is should i put more aluminium inside(how much aluminium should i expect to put inside 50l of waste?
my second concern is about the fact that i wabted to melt the settling powder into an anode bar and discard the rest behind the old shed but now im a bit hesitant ...

 

[butcher]

Why the use of aluminum, it will drop several metals, and the solution can become like a gel,
Why not use copper to cement values, that way you would have less other metals in the powders to remove later.

I would let solution settle well and remove liquid from powder, and test this remaining liquid for values, then treat accordingly.

 

[ericrm]

Why the use of aluminum, it will drop several metals, and the solution can become like a gel,
Why not use copper to cement values, that way you would have less other metals in the powders to remove later.

I would let solution settle well and remove liquid from powder, and test this remaining liquid for values, then treat accordingly.

the main reason for the aluminium is because i wanted something very reactive(very fast) and i dont have zinc with me right now.
i also used the aluminium because i wanted to drop copper with my other metal volontary, while treating my waste i tough this was a good way to see if i could make an anode with my precipitate(im looking for a way to to avoid denoxing .so i tough if i could precipitate everything out of gold bearing solution and make an anode with the precipitate ,i could use electrolysis on copper to pay the cost of acid and use hcl/cl on powder because i realy like the hcl/cl process>

also the reason no to use copper was for me because i have had very bad luck with it, ending with loss of gold, cucl cristal , and taking a long time to complete the process always add to swirl the solution, to be sure that every little salt of gold could make contact with the copper, when once again with a reactive metal everything move by it own and nothing stick to the surface of the metal used.

i have watch it yesterday night ,i have put 2 or 3 lbs of aluminium in it,it is realy less reactive and not in a gel form.
like you said ,now the best is to let it settle and wait.

since i realy have a lot of silver chloride in it ,should i treat my powder with amonia or naoh ,im thinking of dissolving the silver chloride salt in amonia and put it on the side to treat them later and make my anode with the other metal present...

 

[qst42know]

Silver drops well enough with dilution. Copper is an efficient de-noxer. Adding a fish tank air pump for a while makes it fast and doesn't require any additional stirring. Remove the air and allow it to settle well before moving on. Copper chloride washes out with HCL leaving only a small volume of PM. Iron drops copper.

I think you made the job harder than it could be.

Three buckets work well for my small operation. Empty HCL jugs hold wastes waiting to be treated. The first bucket with a copper bar collects wastes and is diluted to drop any silver. The second with scrap iron collects copper. The third is for neutralizing with lime.

One in one out, if you keep after it, it doesn't become such a monster.

 

[butcher]

I agree 100% with qst42know keep it simple, but what I will still need to learn from qst42know is how to keep that monster at bay.

I would use copper to get values, (only valuable metals would be replaced), and iron to replace copper (and metals in the series that are between copper and iron that were in solution, the iron waste is much easier to deal with than trying to dry the aluminum gel, (if you do not have gel in your solution yet, just wait until you try and treat your waste and try to dry the gelatinous aluminum solution).

I would not use ammonia on these powders, too dangerous in my opinion) and you would have several other metals in your silver compound, ammonia should be avoided at this stage, besides unless the silver was a chloride it would not dissolve or work anyway...

You can have a very wide assortment of metals and salts in these powders, much would depend on what went into the stock pot and what and how the materials were processed, what acids and reagents were used in your processes.

From a stock pot much of what you have in these powders would be composed of what went into the stock pot, including acids and metals, since you used aluminum to replace these metals from solution you can have every metal below aluminum in the reactivity series of metals, that was in solution that the stock pot contained, some possible metals, or salts of metals the powders may can contain:
Mn, Zn, Cr, Fe, Cd, Co, Ni, Sr, Pb, Sb, As, Bi, Cu, Ag, Pd, Hg, Pt, Au.
And depending on acids or chemicals you used to process the metals the solution or salts of these metals can also vary, chlorides, sulfates, and other salts can have formed.

You do have a mess depending what the stock pot held, even incineration of these powders can release some very dangerous gases depending what salts or metals have formed in these powders and what they consist of some of these can be extremely toxic, so if you do anything with these take the needed precautions, before incinerating and would not incinerate unless it can be done safely.

I would neutralize these in a solution of NaOH and rinse in hot water (this is to help remove chlorides as salt water, so the silver or gold would not be vaporized off as chlorides), then a boil in HCl to help to dissolve the metal oxides that are soluble in this acid (dilute the HCl just a little but decant while still hot, several rinses with boiling hot water, letting powders settle well before decanting any liquids but keeping solutions as hot as possible, then rinse powders again in a solution of NaOH, with hot water rinses, dry and incinerate again, now you can use nitric to remove silver and any possible palladium and the base metals left from previous treatments, rinsing the powders, this should leave your more valuable metals if the stock pot held them ready for aqua regia or which ever combination of acid and oxidizer you choose to use to dissolve and separate them with reagents of choice.

 

[ericrm]

i guess you are right ,last years i was trying to learn so bad ,and i mad so much mess .i endedup putting everything in the same big barrel .called waste....
this years i have choosed my product and i know my process better i will separate my waste to avoid having pm bearing waste with non pm. this way it is gonna be way simpler as you mension.

do someone here have ever paid to deal with he waste .im kind of scare to dump my thing around my house now... just curious about how much cost the gallon of waste is.

 

[qst42know]

but what I will still need to learn from qst42know is how to keep that monster at bay.

It's more of a goal you shoot for, more often than you actually achieve. :lol:

 

[butcher]

ericrm, dealing with waste is flagged in the safety section.

qst42know, I guess I need better aim, my sights seem a bit off here lately, wet winter and rain this spring has made drying the waste a project on hold, I guess I am going to have to work on another method to dry the treated waste powders, when the weather is not in my favor.

 

[ericrm]

thanks butcher
i already read it a few time but i guess i shuold read it back :lol: after all if i messed up theyr must be something i didnt do right

and by the way im surprise that nobody is able to give me a price for waste ... i guess theyr is a lot of dead grass spot in the world :mrgreen:

 

[Lobby]

Three buckets work well for my small operation. Empty HCL jugs hold wastes waiting to be treated. The first bucket with a copper bar collects wastes and is diluted to drop any silver. The second with scrap iron collects copper. The third is for neutralizing with lime.

One in one out, if you keep after it, it doesn't become such a monster.

That's exactly what I do.