My real passion - Prospecting

[bc.gold 3,399]

When your out prospecting be sure to take your rock hound hammer, natural ( inorganic ) Jade without flaws is especially valuable with a value much more than gold.

 

When they closed the asbestos mine at Cassiar BC I attended the auction, strewn about the landscape were many large Jade boulders all of which were already under the control of an individual from the USA.

 

Often a Jade find will have a skin hiding the beauty that lays within, this is where your prospectors hammer comes in handy to break through that skin.

 

River Jade is easier to identify as the stones wear in a similar fashion to those we used to skip across the surface of a pond when we were kids. Jade is from the same family as asbestos made up from long fibrous strands. 

 

Looking at the ends of the river Jade it will be easy to see the ends of the fiber protruding with the rest of the stone will be worn smooth.

 

The price of the finest jade has increased tenfold over the past decade, to $3000 an ounce, making it far more valuable than gold.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/china/2010/09/30/the-soaring-price-of-jade/#1529613457b6

 

 

Edited March 17, 2019 by bcgold

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Black sand from placer, incinerated first then ball milled, the camera flash reflects off of the precious metals and the purple hue is a good indication for gold.

 

 

 

 

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Small sample of the ball milled black sand digested in an acid has released more values.

 

The early Spanish had it right gold rides an iron horse

 

 

 

Edited April 2, 2019 by bcgold

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Interesting experiment with black placer sand, the yellow has been separated from the magnetic portion with a leach then evaporated down to crystallize. I think its chromium salts but only an assay would confirm this.

 

Any how it's a very nice yellow.

 

 

Edited April 21, 2019 by bcgold

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If this experiment is a success I'll post the results I'm hoping to achieve.

 

Lead free solder is mainly tin with perhaps a small percentage of silver, the leach is saturated with enough tin that needle crystals have formed during the night as the hot pregnant leach cooled down.

 

 

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Follow up on the experiment, what your looking at on the stainless steel plate repurposed from a computer hard drive is the tin from the solder used on the ram sticks.

 

The tin scraps off from the stainless steel surface effortlessly, this is called sponge. In the real world this sponge would get melted into anodes then re-refined.

 

A unique property that tin metal has is that it cries when you bend it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_cry

 

Stannious Chloride a compound made from tin metal is used to detect precious metals in a leach, the bottom image show the telltale color's of each metal detected.

 

 

 

Edited April 27, 2019 by bcgold

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Part two of the experiment, tin will dissolve in a weak soloution of HCL whereas the silver alloyed with the tin solder will not, the black fluffy material laying on the bottom of the plastic container is silver oxide.

 

Using an old power supply from a donor computer I've plated out the tin ions from the pregnant leach onto the stainless steel sheet and the silver which as now been converted to an oxide stays behind waiting to be harvested.

 

Along with the silver it's quite possible there will be a small percentage of gold, when they manufacture the mother boards they use a process called wave soldering. As the molten solder passes over parts of the board that have been gold plated some of that gold is leached into the solder.

 

Every so often they have to replace the solder with fresh as it has become much to contaminated with gold to do a proper soldering job.

 

 

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Data from lead based solders of yesteryear, technology has improved but the gold still shows up in the tin solder just not as much.

 

These solders are nominally 60-40 tin-lead mixtures containing 50 to 175 oz.gold per ton, and other major impurities such as Ag, Sb, Cu, and Fe.

[bc.gold 3,399]

How many of you use the no salt substitute for cooking, on food or in your water softener, Potassium Chloride.

 

Some interesting facts about potassium chloride, the salt substitute you purchase in the store may actually have a small percentage of sodium chloride thrown in to hide the bitter metallic taste.

 

Potassium chloride is one of the three chemicals used in the cocktail used for lethal injections, as a concentrate it's lethal and brings on cardiac arrest given intravenously.

 

Potassium chloride is used as a fertilizer - plants love it.

 

Potassium chloride is also radio active as Cody's Lab has shown below in the video.

 

Potassium chloride will selectively precipitate platinum from a liquor of mixed metal ions, and this is what I use it for.

 

 

[bc.gold 3,399]

Yesterday I purchased an ammonia household cleaner to make some ammonia chloride another chemical that will precipitate platinum  from a liquor.

 

Ana-hydrous ammonia besides being used as a fertilizer it's also used as a refrigerant to make ice for large hockey rinks, if you have a small fridge in your RV it also contains ammonia combined with water.

 

If your interested ion knowing more about your RV fridge just google absorption refrigeration, I've known for years these fridges contained ammonia but had never learned how to evacuate the system. You can not use the standard refrigeration manifold made from brass which is not compatible with ammonia.

 

These RV fridges often end up in one of the landfills I visit and was thinking they would be a good source of free ammonia.

 

Ammonia chloride is cheap to purchase but everything I order is delivered via couriers or by postal service and I can manufacture my own for what the postage would set me back, one of the joys of living rural.

 

Doing some research on ammonia learned that you can run your tractor on piss once its been fermented and the ammonia has been captured.

 

During WWII when diesel fuel was not available in Belgium they ran a fleet of bus's used for public transportation on ammonia.

 

My yield was impressive.

 

 

 

Edited June 25, 2019 by bcgold

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Gas bag vehicles https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/11/gas-bag-vehicles.html

 

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As the pregnant liquor cools down the crystals form the ammonium chloride crystals were made from household ammonia cleaner with hydrochloric acid added.

 

Evaporating the water off causes the salts to fall out by morning there will be a thick layer of ammonium crystals laying on the bottom any impurity's will be left in the remaining liquor.

 

This will be used to precipitate platinum.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[bc.gold 3,399]

This pair of catalytic converters came  from two different diesel trucks, the cat buyers pay around $600.00 us each.

 

I'm going to attempt to get the precious metals from these and a few others that I have saved up for the occasion, this is why I needed the various types of precipitants for platinum.

 

I delivered the diesel engines that I had sold into the big city and had a chance to purchase a few other chemicals and have a chat with the chemist. He thinks that my procedure will work at recovering the metals but in no way viable as a commercial operation where time and money needs a quick turn around to keep the flow happening.

 

Anyhow here's what your diesel cat looks like inside.

 

 

Edited June 27, 2019 by bcgold

[bc.gold 3,399]

Long ago for one of the jobs I worked at was required to take several safety courses, one of was about the hazards of Hydrogen Sulphide (H2S) a deadly toxic gas with that rotten egg smell but in higher concentrations one whiff will end your life.

 

The instructor told us of an incident where two workers were servicing a large tank that had been empty for sometime but had a layer of water on the bottom. When the first worker entered the tank he had of course disturbed the water unknowingly released entrapped H2S.

 

After the first guy collapsed the co-worker immediately entered to assist his partner, both died.

 

Yesterday that training paid off in spades when a worker at the place I often purchase acids accidentally tipped over a 45 gallon drum containing 98 percent sulfuric acid. Fortunately he was wearing full protection gear then after up righting the drum was able to pour a base onto the spill neutralizing the acid.

 

Also lucky the drum was only partially full as a full drum would have been impossible to up right, to give you an idea of the weight 98 concentrated acid weighs 15.373 lbs gallon. Full drum weighs 691.785 lbs.

 

Five gallon pail weighs 76.865 pounds.

 

I'm glad the incident ended without serious injury and that his training paid off as did mine by not rushing in to assist.

[formariz 11,849]

Years ago I did business with a metal place called FRC Metals in Newark , NJ. They would fabricate specialty items out of bronze that I used such as pivots and pieces to be inlaid in woodwork. They were located in a bad area, but the place was secure like Fort Knox. I never understood all the security until one day they took me in the back to see some of my work in progress and I then understood why. They would recycle all the precious metals from printed circuit boards and similar items. The place was loaded with it and it was their real main operation. They actually had a stack of gold ingots ready to be picked up by an armored vehicle.

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I have the large comb sitting in hydrogen peroxide which reacts with the platinum sisters to make small bubbles which in turn release the metals from the comb. This is in the experimental stages, I know it works but not sure what the recovery rate is yet.

 

On my list of to do is build a fairly large ultrasonic tank using 25MHZ transducers which are pretty aggressive.

 

The object is to have precious metals as concentrates for further refining.

 

[bc.gold 3,399]

Here;s why I decided to stay home rather that go bush.

 

The diesel emissions scandal helped make palladium more valuable than gold

https://qz.com/1530156/the-diesel-emissions-scandal-helped-make-palladium-more-valuable-than-gold/

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large comb looking good on the recovery, peroxide reacting with filtrate. The filtered solution goes back into the pot to do more work.

 

 

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I've been using rain water from one of two barrels that Pat set out under the eve-troughs, never had any problems using it to refine gold and silver but this new process to recover platinum sisters from cats has produced unexpected results.

 

There's enough sulfuric  acid in the rain water that with the addition of a 10 percent hydrogen peroxide the combination makes a weak piranha solution but  strong enough to take up the palladium sister into solution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piranha_solution

 

Of the six platinum sisters palladium is the weakest and she will giver herself up to a number of weak acids now we can add piranha to the list.

 

For those of you that prefer a natural patina those unpainted areas are going to react to acid rain.

 

The amber color of the solution was the give away, the palladium is easily recovered nothing is lost.

 

Edited June 29, 2019 by bcgold

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Stage two, the ultrasonic tank.

 

Four 200 watt transducers will be epoxied to the bottom of this stainless steel tank later today, if it does not do as anticipated then I'll have one heck of a cleaning tank. There's even a port to install a heating element.

 

The tank was a dump find, I cut one end off then welded the legs on, there is also a half inch pipe nipple on the bottom that I'll use for a drain. The legs are high enough and positioned such that a five gallon pail can be placed underneath.

 

 

 

 

[bc.gold 3,399]

All that's left to do on the tank is wire up the transducers to the driver boards, but have hit a snag with this plan. The liquid used in the ultrasonic cleaner has to be de-gassed, the catalyst I'm trying to remove reacts with water to create gas bubbles which will negatively impact the performance of the ultrasonic.

 

With Palladium increasing in value as each day pass's expect the price of your next vehicle to increase, diesel cats use palladium exclusively while the gasoline engines use a combination of precious metals.

 

This mornings discovery,

 

Just loaded a pail with auto cats, the palladium biscuit is rather passive when it comes into contact with 35 percent hydrogen peroxide but platinum gets really hot and turns the liquid peroxide into instant steam. I had enough water nearby to dilute the solution back to 10 percent where it once again settled down.

The diesel cats contain palladium at market closing valued at

$1516.00 troy ounce. Approximately 31 grams

Edited June 30, 2019 by bcgold

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Sonic cell is operational.

 

 

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89.4 grams recovered.

 

Palladium in solution.

 

[bc.gold 3,399]

Found some gold, probably from the diesel cats.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalytic_converter

 

Definition - What does Immersion Plating mean?

Immersion plating is the process of applying adhering layers of nobler metals to another metal's surface by dipping in a nobler metal solution ions to produce a replacement reaction. It causes the deposition of a metallic coating on a base metal from solutions that contain coating metal. In this, one metal is typically displaced by metal ions that have lower levels of oxidation potential, relative to the metal ion being displaced

 

[bc.gold 3,399]

I added a few drops of dish soap into the water I used on the ultrasonic cell when something unexpected happened.

 

A huge lot of foam started to form, so much that I had to physically remove it, placed it into my large bowl quickly ran out of room to accommodate the ever growing amount of foam being produced.

 

The monster had taken on a life of its own, to make room for more foam had passed a flame over the foam forcing the bubbles to collapse. It immediately became apparent that precious metals had attached to this foam.

 

I've heard and read about flotation cells used to recover precious metals but was lead to believe the chemistry of the liquids used in these cells to attached the metals to the bubbles was rather complex.

 

The magic starts with the ultrasonic cell that I built and what it did to the soap.

 

Ultrasonic cavitation is used to disperse nano-size particles into liquids, such as water, oil, solvents or resins. The application of ultrasonics to nanomaterials has manifold effects. The most obvious is the dispersing of materials in liquids in order to break particle agglomerates.

 

In this image you can clearly see scum on the foam where I have passed the flame in comparison to the fresh foam added which appears more white.