Waste Paper Refining

[Dreamer]

It's been three years that I've been keeping anything (with few exception) that touches values (Paper towels, filters, anything incinerable) and when the bucket gets full, I incinerate to ash. My ash container is now full, so I gave it an extra thorough incineration and here is my refining plan that I hope to get comments and suggestions on:

1) Crush and screen the material
2) Remove any ferrous metal (with a magnet)
3) Dissolve base metals, Ag, Pd in nitric
- Filter solute to clear
- Drop the Pd with DMG
- Cement out the Ag
4) Process the undigested material with AR
5) Filter to clear and drop the Au with FeSO4
6) Cement out the Pt in the waste treatment stream (I don't expect much, so not worth the NH4Cl)
7) Incinerate the remaining undigested material and throw it in the crystalized AgCl bucket. I'm just accumulating it for now and will do a large pyroconversion on it in the future.

I know that I am going to have an appreciable amount of crystalized AgCl undigested because the starting material contained quite a bit of it. I'm worried it may cause some complications along the way.

My feed stock has been mostly GF, Karat and a whole bunch of silver along the way.

Your shared experience and comments would be greatly appreciated before I execute my plan.

~Dreamer

 

[Alondro]

Sreetips has done several recoveries of values from his filters. I'd check out his Youtube series on the subject, as they are highly detailed.

 

[4metals]

Did your bucket also contain test papers from stannous chloride testing?

 

[Martijn]

I first put all paper filters in a beaker and fill it with warm water with some SMB in it to reduce any gold chloride.
I'm not sure if it will go up in smoke if you don't.
The rest sounds like a good plan to me.

 

[Dreamer]

Did your bucket also contain test papers from stannous chloride testing?

Yes, they did.

 

[Dreamer]

Sreetips has done several recoveries of values from his filters. I'd check out his Youtube series on the subject, as they are highly detailed.

Got a lot of respect for him. By the book kind of guy and unselfishly shares his journeys.

 

[Dreamer]

UPDATE: So I digested everything I could in nitric and filtered the material until clear. The Filtrate stanous was negative so decided to forego the DMO and just cement out the Ag to run through my silver cell.

I went to AR and cooked it for a couple hours. I intentionally used excess nitric because there was a lot of insoluable chlorides and I kept it at a low boil to keep the material agitating. Here's the pic

 

[Dreamer]

I filtered it and evaporated overnight, the steam was clear so I iced it down to filter and I got this:

I have no Idea what's going on here. Stanous looks good.

It looks like gold on the surface and I can't get it to rehydrate. Since I did not use any sulphate, could trace lead cause this?

What would you guys suggest I do next?

 

[Yggdrasil]

UPDATE: So I digested everything I could in nitric and filtered the material until clear. The Filtrate stanous was negative so decided to forego the DMO and just cement out the Ag to run through my silver cell.

I went to AR and cooked it for a couple hours. I intentionally used excess nitric because there was a lot of insoluable chlorides and I kept it at a low boil to keep the material agitating. Here's the pic

We do not "Cook" our solution we heat it or simmer it.
We also never Boil it since it can cause droplet losses.
What is DMO? Do you mean DMG?

 

[Dreamer]

Thank you for the reply.. Yes DMG sorry for the typo and for the colloquial term of "cook". The material necessitated agitation and I opted to bring it to 102-105c in excess nitric. I do not have a device to adequetly keep the material agitated at 60-90c for optimal digestion. The vessel was sufficiently covered with a watch glass to minimize any loss.

Besides my communication faupaus, do you have any suggestions to my dilemma ?

Thank you for your work in moderation of the GRF.

 

[Yggdrasil]

I filtered it and evaporated overnight, the steam was clear so I iced it down to filter and I got this:View attachment 66474View attachment 66475

I have no Idea what's going on here. Stanous looks good.
View attachment 66476
It looks like gold on the surface and I can't get it to rehydrate. Since I did not use any sulphate, could trace lead cause this?

What would you guys suggest I do next?

The ice is still there and it is murky, so this is not filtered? Right?

Dilute a few drops of the solution until you get a color ,not black then we can see what it is.

 

[Dreamer]

Once again a spelling error, the correct spelling is "fauxpas".

 

[Yggdrasil]

Thank you for the reply.. Yes DMG sorry for the typo and for the colloquial term of "cook". The material necessitated agitation and I opted to bring it to 102-105c in excess nitric. I do not have a device to adequetly keep the material agitated at 60-90c for optimal digestion. The vessel was sufficiently covered with a watch glass to minimize any loss.

Besides my communication faupaus, do you have any suggestions to my dilemma ?

Thank you for your work in moderation of the GRF.

I had a post stuck in my box.
It went out now.
When it is properly filtered just treat as normal.
When treating filters there are a plethora of organics and residues that can cause foaming and such "funny" things

 

[Yggdrasil]

Once again a spelling error, the correct spelling is "fauxpas".

Not too steady in french

 

[Dreamer]

The ice is still there and it is murky, so this is not filtered? Right?

Dilute a few drops of the solution until you get a color ,not black then we can see what it is.

 

[Yggdrasil]

View attachment 66478

For the stannous test, black says nothing.

 

[Dreamer]

No, I did not do a post dehydration filter yet. The floating material appears to be gold and I believe it will get trapped in the filter. I was thinking "what if I just saturate it with FeSO4, collect the precipitant and reifine from there?"

 

[Yggdrasil]

No, I did not do a post dehydration filter yet. The floating material appears to be gold and I believe it will get trapped in the filter. I was thinking "what if I just saturate it with FeSO4, collect the precipitant and reifine from there?"

Gold should not be floating unless it is hung up in some fatty organics.
No need to saturate anything.
If it is metallic you could reincinerate the filter properly and add it to the next pile.
Just incinerate properly before the next round.