Chemical stone removal

What is the chemical process refiners use to remove diamonds from
gold?

Gary L. Mills

Hello,

You can use Aqua regia for this purpose. It will disolve the gold.
Diamonds are unaffected. If you need more details please feel free to
ask.

Regards

What is the chemical process refiners use to remove diamonds from
gold? 

Don’t try this at home, they use boiling aqua regia.

James Binnion
James Binnion Metal Arts

Removing or separating?

You could just melt the gold and the diamonds will either burn away
or float as dross on the gold. Heating gold to reach its mushy phase
will allow you to remove them without burning them. Now diamonds in
Pd claws is another problem altogether.

Nick Royall

The refiners I know run the gold through aqua-reiga and then decant
the liquid and sieve the diamonds. The diamonds come out perfectly
clean and ready to use after a little bath in a neutralizing agent to
remove acid residue.

Frank Goss

Anyone tried this?

It claims to be “Safe, Odorless,” and dissolves the metal to refine
gold (any kt) without heat, removing gems safely. (So they say and
since it has supposedly been around for a long time I imagine that
it does.)

John Dyer

Anyone tried this? http://www.ganoksin.com/gnkurl/191 

It’s far from odorless, and it’s a major PIA. You’re better off
using the aqua regia method or Parting (one troy ounce or less.) But
if you’re hell-bent on getting one, I’ll sell you mine cheap. Write
me offlist.

I used it years ago, probably 20 years ago. It works and is
interesting, like a science experiment. But it was sort of fussy and
a little too time consuming. I had it sitting there but continued to
send the scrap out just because I didn’t have the time to mess with
it. I can see they seem to have changed the containers, which is
good…the old ones were easy to spill.