Redders said:
Not from all of those processors, like. But a lot of good scrap. I reckon that i have lost values somewhere.....
Good quality though (Harold gave me some tutelege, here)...
I'd have to agree-----the quality looks quite good. The gold is nice and shiny, although it lacks a pipe. That can be eliminated by controlled cooling, so that doesn't concern me. Gold that cools with a frosted surface is, guaranteed, contaminated.
One of the best indicators is the flux around the button. When your gold is contaminated, the flux picks up anything that has oxidized, changing the color from clear to anything from blue to dark brown or even black. I've commented time and again, if your gold is clean, the only change you will see in the flux is to shift towards purple, which is a sign of colloidal particles of gold that didn't get included in the button.
Very nice job!
Don't be too concerned about losing the values. Unless you discard solutions without testing, it's never gone-----although you may not identify it as gold.
If you are still concerned, turn to the filter in which you filtered everything prior to precipitation, or any filters you may have used in prior operations. Incinerate them until all the carbonaceous materials have been burned away, then give them a wash in boiling HCL, followed by a rinse in tap water. Anything of value will be included in the remaining material, which can then be recovered with AR.
Filters should never be discarded. They should be incinerated, with the ash stored for future processing, or combined in succeeding batches, so values are recovered. I stored mine for years, eventually running them in a tilting reverberatory furnace-----a wonderful savings plan.
Various stripping or dissolving procedures when dealing with base metals can be deceiving. Many of the processes that are supported on this forum have the potential to dissolve gold along with base metals. Often, when that happens, the gold will eventually precipitate on the un-dissolved base metal, but it now if very finely divided and may not be recognized as your values.
While many of these guys are achieving a good degree of success, there are some things I would change if it was up to me to lead those that want to learn to refine. One of them would be to introduce incineration, and the other is to introduce a wash in HCL afterwards, which often changes the nature of the gold chloride that is the next step-----making it very easy to filter.
But then--------it's not up to me! :wink:
Harold
