To drop Pt, or to the stock pot?

[Lobby]

1st batch, so the dumb questions are everywhere. :mrgreen:

I've dissolved 10k gold with AR, precipitated with copperas, and dried the gold. :lol: Now I'm wondering what to do with the solution left after gold filtering.

Here's a pic with a stannous chloride test:

Is there enough Pt to hassle with the drop? Or should I just stock pot it?

If ya'll suggest dropping the Pt, would cementing with heavy copper wire be good enough for now? Or should I get fancy with the ammonium salts? Oh, there's about 10 - 12 cups of solution.

 

[maynman1751]

I think maybe you messed up! Karat gold needs to be inquarted with silver to reduce the karat to 6K and then digested with nitric. You have digested the base metals as well as the gold and more than likely have a contaminated drop. Someone with more know will have to help you out on this one. Also, I don't think you have any Pt at all, just green, on your stannous, from the base metal (likely copper).

 

[Lobby]

Yeah, I did that. Just didn't explain that I'd done the inquarting and the nitric acid dissolving of the silver and base metals, prior to the AR dissolving of the gold and Pt.

I guess I believe there's enough Pt color in the SnCl2 swab to indicate Pt. But am wondering how to proceed.

 

[4metals]

Pt comes down much better when concentrated, chasing after small amounts can be frustrating.

I would hold it in a stock pot until there is enough to make cementing with copper worthwhile and then collect the solids dry them and hold them until you have enough to process.

 

[Lobby]

Thanks. A couple of questions:

- Should I prepare a "Pt" version of the stock pot, or can I use the one where I dump gold containing solutions?

- After the level of the stock pot gets to the point where I need to do something with it, what do I do? Heat it to slowly evaporate the liquid to make the salts easier to handle?

- What about adding iron pieces to the stock pot and leaving them there to stew? Shouldn't they drop pretty much anything of value (including copper)? That way, all I have to do is deal with the solids instead of all the liquids?

 

[Geo]

why would you want to mix copper back in with your values that you worked so hard to separate to begin with. be patient, wait till theres so little room you have to do something. the wait is worth it. its like my filters, i would save a big freezer bag full and burn them and add the small bit to a batch i had going. but now i wait till i have a 30 gallon trash bag full. :lol: sometimes i get a couple of grams out of that stuff.

 

[4metals]

Proper cementation of the stock pot will put the copper into solution and only precious metals (and mercury) will drop out (check out the electromotive series).

It doesn't pay to separate them by keeping the solutions separate, because there is usually a little Pt in the gold and some Pd and some Au so it's a mix already. It is a mix of metals not salts at this point, no need to evaporate.

Never add the iron until you have filtered off the precips from the copper, that will mix in a lot of unwanted metals.

 

[patnor1011]

I would say that Pt comes orange. Your swab is yellow/green.