I have been processing my primary wast barrel. (seeded with copper)
Because my main activity is the inquartion of scrap gold jewelry this is mostly silver chloride with the odd small particles of Au, Pt, Pd.
So I converted as much as I could of the AgCL in a drum mixer with iron and sulphuric acid.
Then washed and dried the solid, before mixing with a flux that was slightly alkaline and running through my furnace.
I slowly increased the loiter time and temperature.
My first few runs at about 1200c and just over an hour produced very little metal with lots of small beads visible in the cooled flux.
So ramped up both the loiter time and temperature.
now I seem to get two distinct alloys from one hot recovery at the same time.
A heavie dirty silver alloy and a lighter distinctly separate alloy on top that in my cone mold.
The first alloy is not attracted to a magnet but the second is very attractive to a magnet and looked like stainless steel.
The more I loitered and the hotter I ran the larger that second alloy recovery got.
The dirty silver alloy worked fine when put back into an inquartation if only a little dirtier than one would like.
But the second stayed intact well above 1200c so was taken out of the melting dish for further inspection.
These buttons have survived both nitric acid and A.R.
Have any of you had your waste separated into two alloys?
I intend to try and see if they will alloy with copper instead of sterling next.
Any suggestions?
Because my main activity is the inquartion of scrap gold jewelry this is mostly silver chloride with the odd small particles of Au, Pt, Pd.
So I converted as much as I could of the AgCL in a drum mixer with iron and sulphuric acid.
Then washed and dried the solid, before mixing with a flux that was slightly alkaline and running through my furnace.
I slowly increased the loiter time and temperature.
My first few runs at about 1200c and just over an hour produced very little metal with lots of small beads visible in the cooled flux.
So ramped up both the loiter time and temperature.
now I seem to get two distinct alloys from one hot recovery at the same time.
A heavie dirty silver alloy and a lighter distinctly separate alloy on top that in my cone mold.
The first alloy is not attracted to a magnet but the second is very attractive to a magnet and looked like stainless steel.
The more I loitered and the hotter I ran the larger that second alloy recovery got.
The dirty silver alloy worked fine when put back into an inquartation if only a little dirtier than one would like.
But the second stayed intact well above 1200c so was taken out of the melting dish for further inspection.
These buttons have survived both nitric acid and A.R.
Have any of you had your waste separated into two alloys?
I intend to try and see if they will alloy with copper instead of sterling next.
Any suggestions?