Can anybody guide me on how to recover lost gold from the
effluent of mass finishing equipments like Vibrator or
centrifugal disc finishing machine. Suppose loss of gold is 5
gms., How much gold can be recovered? and how?
I use plastic media for cutting and wall nut shell for buffing
with a buffing paste.
Larry.
Good morning. On this thread, I was wondering if anybody has
tried the Shore gold refining thingajabob. It works off a
rectifier. I’d like to know if it works like they claim before I
put out $600 bucks. Thanks in advance.
Jeff Kaiser
JBKJEWEL@USLINK.NET
Larry, We are electroplating gold from ocean black sand using a
stainless steel anode.
I am not a plating person, but have seen it done from slurry
after cutting and cabbing massive jade with ore inclusions.
Members of the J.A.D.E Society in San Diego have been shown how
to do it. Teresa
Evaporate all the water that comes out of the tumbler. Save the
walnut shell dust and put it in with your other polishings, but
most of the gold is in suspension in the water from cut down
along with the soap or whatever you put in there and
abrasive/plastic/ceramic dust. BTW don’t try to burn this out
your self as the plastic dust stinks to high heaven when it burns
and is probably a dioxin source. Send it to the refiner, where we
will probably all be sent when they are through with us here. j
Dear Larry,
There is a very easy and very inexpensive way to recover ALL
your gold from wastewater (generated by tumbling, washout,
ultrasonic cleaners, pickle, you name it). I’m referring
toWastewater Treatment Powder which is with an inert chemical
powder that you stir into the wastewater. Within seconds it
bonds with the gold (actually with ALL the metal in the water).
In fact Wastewater Treatment Powder bonds with ALL the dirt and
particulate, no matter how tiny, in the water leaving behind
clean reusable water. (It will leave unspent soap behind as
well - so if you batch treat the water, you can reuse it. For
example, if you treat just tumbling effluent , you can recover
all the gold leaving behind clean water with unspent soap in it
so you can reuse it for the next tumbling run.)
After a couple minutes of stirring, all your gold and other
metal is bonded with the powder and the powder sinks to the
bottom of the container. Pour off the clean water and sediment
thru a coffee filter. Allow the sediment to dry in the coffee
filter. It is specially formulated to take only minutes to dry
to a solid brick which you can then easily ship to your refiner.
Best of all, the powder is very inexpensive. There are 3 types
of powder depending on what type of wastewater you are treating,
but a pound is about $12.00 and treats 100 gallons of
wastewater!
If you are treating small amounts of wastewater, you can do
everything manually but if you are treating more than a few
gallons a day, there are treatment tanks with automatic stirring
and filtering functions to make the whole process easy and fast.
There are a variety of sizes to these tanks as well depending
on whether you want to treat say 10 gallons at a time to 30 to
hundreds of gallons at a time.
And yes, Gesswein carries both the powders and the treatment
tanks. If you would like additional please give me
a call at the number below or email me here and I’d be happy to
answer any questions you may have.
Best Regards,
Elaine Corwin
VP Technical Services
GESSWEIN CO INC USA
Phone: 1-800-544-2043, ext. 287
(or 203-366-5400, same extension)
Fax: 203-335-0300
Elaine, does the wastewater treatment powder only treat
particulates, or can one precipitate metals ions out of solution
also? (I’m assuming the former, but thought I’d ask).
Rene Roberts
Wastewater Treatment Powderbonds with all the metal in the water--"
So, I assume you can use this for silver also?
(Is the Powder gray and rather metallic looking? if so, it’s
probably zinc dust, which is used for recovering silver from
photographic solutions. And it might be even cheaper to buy as
Zinc dust than as “Wastewater Treatment Powder”. Margaret
Larry, Geisswein has a submergable filter they sell with their
gold trap. This is a big jug you fit under your sink. Most
jewelers have some sort of water filter trap to get every
molicule of metal. Washing your hand after polishing as well as
your spent ultrasonic solution can be poured right down the sink.
I scrap this sludge out every other year and get back several
hundred dollars. With a little thought you may even be able to
build your own.
Best regards,
TR the teacher
Thanks for your reply. Do you have any figures on how many
percentage of gold can be recoverd? For e.g. if while finishing
1Kg of gold articles if I lose 50Gms of gold in barrel, how many
Gms do I get back? Will it be 50 gms 40 gms or even less? If we
are getting lsee then 50gms, where is balance gold gone? is it
dissolved in water? Main point here is whether is it worthwhile
spending so much money on recovery and get very small qty in
return ? Whether cost of recovering gold is more then the money
spent on it?
We may require entire treatment plant as we will be treating
about 50 Gallons per day. How much it would cost? What will be
the cost of consumables? Can you attach the brochure with your
e-mail? rgds larry
Hi Larry,
Under separate email I will send you a paper that might help
explain more about the Wastewater Treatment Systems. If anyone
else wants it too, please just ask. 
If you or anyone else
has any questions, please email, fax, or call me. I’d be happy
to be of assistance.
Best Regards,
Elaine Corwin
GESSWEIN CO INC USA
Phone: 1-80-544-2043, ext. 287
Fax: 203-335-0300
Hi Rene,
The wastewater treatment powder we stock comes in 3
formulations: I will send you the details in a Word file under
separate (private) email. These 3 formulations will take care
of particulate. However we can add an ingredient to one or make
it a separate treatment step (depends on what kind of wastewater
solution we’re talking about here). In either case we can
reclaim ions, yes.
Best Regards,
Elaine Corwin
GESSWEIN CO INC USA
Phone: 1-800-544-2043 ext 287
Fax: 203-335-0300
Hi Margaret,
No it’s not zinc dust or powder. It really is specially
formulated chemistry, we stock 3 kinds depending on the type of
wastewater you’re generating (and yes one is all purpose). We
can custom formulate if necessary and even provide a powder that
will clean up metal IONS from your wastewater.
It picks up ALL metal including gold, silver, platinum, and even
zinc for that matter! Down to 1 micron (one millionth of a
meter) in size.
It picks up ALL metals and ALL dirt and particulate, leaving
behind clean water. If water has UNspent soap in it, it will
leave the unspent soap behind as well.
I will send you additional info via private email.
Best Regards,
Elaine Corwin
GESSWEIN CO INC USA
Phone: 1-800-544-2043 ext 287
Hi TR,
Larry, Gesswein has a submergable filter they sell with their gold trap. This is a big jug you fit under your sink.
Yes we do have this as do all the other supplier. But ummm it
does NOT trap every molecule of gold. It traps only the
particulate that is larger than the mesh size of the filter.
There are several different systems for this and filter mesh can
vary from 40 micron to 100 micron.
Only Wastewater Treatment Powder will capture gold down to 1
micron (one millionth of a meter) in size. A custom formulation
will even allow you to reclaim gold IONS from your wastewater.
If you would like additional info, please let me know and I’ll
email privately. Thanks!
Best Regards,
Elaine (Corwin)
GESSWEIN CO INC USA
Phone: 1-800-544-2043, ext 287
Fax: 203-335-0300
Hello Jeff! I know two guys who have used this system. One bought
it from the other. The first guy ( a jeweler) ended up in a
partnership with a small refining operation. He had closeted the
thing for a couple years before Darrell was looking into one.
Doug was happy to get rid of it. Darrell was in hog heaven at
only 150 dollars! He new he had the chemicals to purchase and
was excited to do refining himself. After two or three uses he
tried to convince me to get one. It was the best thing he’d seen
since the ultrasonic! After a few months a few chemical bills,
an honest evaluation of the time he was spending he now uses a
refiner I refered him too. I use a retired friend who works out
of his house. He will take your sweeps and give you back 24k for
$25 for each ounce he produces. His yield on my sweeps ( 70% -
18k, 14 and ster., plat. etc.) averages about 35 to 40%. I give
him 5 ounces of sweeps he returns avg. 1.75 pure. Most refiners
work real close to these figures I’m told. Some are higher. By
the way your usually better off taking the metal instead of cash
or credit I’ve heard. Anyway I could ask Darrell if he’d like
to sell his system if your interested. Contact off list.
tpdooleyAaol.com
A note to all you wood be refiners out there. You may have to
purchase a chemical license to be able to purchase acids in some
states. Most of the refining chemical are really nasty ones.
Using them with a proper venting AND filtering system is
mandatory with the EPA. The legal and code vent stack above you
facility could cost you a fortune. Unvented usage will kill you.
Now here’s another fun part. Dispose of your spent chemicals.
Pour them down the sink? I don’t think so. If you purchase them,
the government wants to know how you are going to dispose of
them. Just receiving acids through the mail is costly. I
received a sample antiquing material that had an acid base
(cyanide) and was told I’d get the product sample for free if I
paid for the shipping. That’s great says I. The sample came to
my door freight collect $127.00. Another local manufacturer had
a refining unit leak and had to evacuate the building they were
in. Scary and embarrassing. To all the refineries out there.
Hat’s off, keep up the good work and don’t worry about me taking
business away from you. I firmly believe jewelers aren’t
refiners and shouldn’t attempt to be.
I’m really getting hooked on Orchid.
All the best,
TR the Teacher
Jewelry Dept.
Minneapolis Community & Technical College
www.mctc.mnscu.edu/acad/academic/programs/tech/jewelman/index.html
Do you have any idea about how much lost material can be
recovered from the waste water of mass finishing system in terms
of percentages. For.e.g. if we lose 10gms of gold while
finishing 1000gms of gold, gross loss is 1%. How much of this 1%
can be reclaimed? Whether it is in particle form or is it
dissolved in water? If dissolved in water, can we recover use
the waster water treatement system. Do you have any data
available on this? Meanwhile I am arranging to buy some qty of
waste water treatement powder thru my commercial dept. Rgds