What methods to concentrate platinum sands?

[Ragnor]

Howdy all, I am wondering on how I should go about pulling the platinum from my cons? I did a search and didn't find anything. All of the material passes a house window screen.
I have already processed the material several times and the visible gold is pretty much all stripped out. While I was doing that I found that I had a certain amount of heavy grey material that pans heavier than gold. There is a history of platinum in the area and lets just say I am confident that it is in fact platinum.

I have noticed that in my cons there is a percentage of the material that is strongly attracted to a magnet and then there is another fraction that is much more weakly attracted. I'm assuming the latter will be the bulk of the platinum?

I have a home brew blue bowl, but the results seamed less than satisfactory in getting my flour gold out. It just wouldn't separate from the other heavies. I think the angle on the funnel I used was wrong maybe?

So anyway, how, on a show string budget might I best go about concentrating my platinum from my dredge concentrates?

 

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[johnedoe]

SP of gold is 19.320..... SP of Platinum is 21.400

Panning it out should be easy and since it is heavier than gold it should have been at the bottom of your pan with the gold laying on top of it .... when you snuffered out the gold the PT should have come with it.....

So... on your shoestring budget getting the PT should not be an issue since it will come out with the gold.
As to the magnetic issue. Pure PT is not magnetic but like Gold it creates eddy currents when passed through a magnetic field.
Placer Platinum can be slightly magnetic since it is often alloyed with iron.

Also remember that cleanup is much easier when the cons are classified....
These videos may be of some help, most of them are short, a couple of them are longer but worth the watch.

http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/panning-gold/459664-art-gold-panning.html

And here is a video of how gold acts when passed through a strong magnetic field. the video starts at the 29 second mark so you don't need the intro.

 

[deserdog]

I looked up palcer platinum, and most is weakly magnetic due the fact that it usually has some iron alloyed with it.

 

[Goldwasher]

SP of gold is 19.320..... SP of Platinum is 21.400

Panning it out should be easy and since it is heavier than gold it should have been at the bottom of your pan with the gold laying on top of it .... when you snuffered out the gold the PT should have come with it.....

So... on your shoestring budget getting the PT should not be an issue since it will come out with the gold.
As to the magnetic issue. PT is not magnetic but like Gold it creates eddy currents when passed through a magnetic field.

Also remember that cleanup is much easier when the cons are classified....
These videos may be of some help, most of them are short, a couple of them are longer but worth the watch.

http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/panning-gold/459664-art-gold-panning.html

And here is a video of how gold acts when passed through a strong magnetic field. the video starts at the 29 second mark so you don't need the intro.

actually on of the ways to see if mystery gray/silver heavy sands in your cons may be of the pgm groups is to see if they have a weak magnetic attraction. A platinum nugget may not be "magnetic" but, there are platinum minerals that are.

 

[johnedoe]

A little more info on Platinum...
Platinum: The mineral native Platinum information and pictures

 

[Ragnor]

I guess one thing I should clear up is that the 'platinum' is by no means pure. The source material is hydrothermal in nature and appears to be a set of about 3 alloys. Calling it PGM would be much more appropriate. The primary alloys in larger pieces seams to be gold and copper. I have not done the crystalography on the smaller bits yet. There are beads and cubes and elongated cubes. Some beads have cubes embedded, which is kinda cool also.

In the cons there are rare earth elements that will jump to a magnet from a long distance and even a small amount will fix the magnet to a container and is hard to separate. Then there are standard 'iron' type sands which are pretty fond of the magnet but not attracted nearly as strongly as the first. Then there are grey sand that will follow the magnet and stick to it if you touch them, but they wont jump to it. I believe the third case is going to be my PGM's. I know rhodium and ruthenium are weakly attracted to a magnet in labratory testing. While some other pgm's are paramagnetic and diamagnetic. Another problem with the PGM complexes is that they are alloyed with other minerals and do not have the actual mass of pure elements. So they are gonna be in there with your galena and bornite and stephanite, etc.

 

[johnedoe]

We get a little platinum from the beach here in Oregon. The richest deposits had approx. 10% platinum.
Like the gold the platinum on our beaches is extremely fine.... -80 mesh and finer, Mostly -100 to -325 mesh.
The beach I frequent hasn't proved out regarding any platinum .... yet.

Good luck on your endeavorer,, It sounds very interesting.

 

[arizau]

This may not exactly answer your question but may be a solution. I am far from being and expert but here is my guess.......when smelted as a mixture of gold and platinum particles, the platinum will probably report to the slag(?) since it has a melting point of over 1,000 degrees F higher than most if not all of the other metals in the resultant dore bar/button (usually a mixture of gold, silver and other metals). If there are enough values of platinum in the slag then some type of concentrating and/or refining process would be necessary to recover it. I would do my best to separate the two but in the end it is probably not a big deal since either way you will be paid for what you have if there is an economically payable amount of platinum.

 

[Ragnor]

This may not exactly answer your question but may be a solution. I am far from being and expert but here is my guess.......when smelted as a mixture of gold and platinum particles, the platinum will probably report to the slag(?) since it has a melting point of over 1,000 degrees F higher than most if not all of the other metals in the resultant dore bar/button (usually a mixture of gold, silver and other metals). If there are enough values of platinum in the slag then some type of concentrating and/or refining process would be necessary to recover it. I would do my best to separate the two but in the end it is probably not a big deal since either way you will be paid for what you have if there is an economically payable amount of platinum.

One problem I expect I would have in smelting is that platinum has an affinity for silver. As I recall platina means 'little silver' and it was a troublesome alloy for the Spanish in South America as it made the silver brittle and could not be separated. The area I am working runs high in silver. It's copper, silver, lead, gold, platinum in order of abundance from my observations. I'll leave out bismuth, nickle, chromite, molybdenum and antimony as I have no way to readily identify them. I just know that some of the ores I have collected show characteristics of those and they are listed in the mine reports. So really it's a mess. I have no real way to control the heat in any fire work I do. I just have a pit and a shop vac for that. I do have the supplies to make up a batch of nitric acid, but that is a project I have never done yet and I only have a limited amount of hcl and nitrate on hand and about 4 gallon of cons. I could just smelt the whole lot and then hope it has reduced enough to be workable with whatever nitric i can make. But I was hoping maybe there was some way that I could make a 'high grade' concentrate to get the most bang for my buck. I suppose i could just pan down to the heaviest material and then pull off the strongest magnetics and hope that the best material is what's left. But I figured I'd put it out there and see what folks had to say about it.

 

[Rob in KS]

Maybe separate things as best you can and find someone that has an XRF device to tell you what you have. It uses X-rays to measure the material by it's florescence. It gives a list of the elements, but it only sees the surface of the material.

 

[Tuolumne]

Send me a sample I can blast w my Olympus XRF

 

[Rob in KS]

Treasure net to the rescue.

 

[Ragnor]

Send me a sample I can blast w my Olympus XRF

I'll send yah a half dozen samples if you'll tell me what's in em

 

[Johnnybravo300]

An assay would answer all that. They don't cost that much.

 

[Tuolumne]

I'll send yah a half dozen samples if you'll tell me what's in em

Sure thing, send me a PM . If your in the San Francisco Bay Area you can always stop in for a blast, any other tnet member can do the same

 

[johnedoe]

san francisco..... not in this lifetime...... or the next... but thank's for the offer.

 

[Hoser John]

Not all that hard to get all the gold, silver and platinum when done by chemical removal in stages. A GREAT engineer named Robin Lee published a fantastic book with 4 ways to recover any/all precious metals. Ez standard equipment and step by step illustrated pics to follow. The Placer Miners Alchemy Cookbook was a great seller back in the day in my store. Still have my original signed copy as covet great literature for miners. Camp stove, few beakers, coffee filters and a few mostly household chemicals/items and good to go. MUCH Respect to Robin as his EIR comments and engineer work for Treasure Emporium were righteous also. Fun factoid-Who invented and produced the absolute first triple sluices---TE in the 70s and Robins design!!!!!!John

 

[Ragnor]

Not all that hard to get all the gold, silver and platinum when done by chemical removal in stages. A GREAT engineer named Robin Lee published a fantastic book with 4 ways to recover any/all precious metals. Ez standard equipment and step by step illustrated pics to follow. The Placer Miners Alchemy Cookbook was a great seller back in the day in my store. Still have my original signed copy as covet great literature for miners. Camp stove, few beakers, coffee filters and a few mostly household chemicals/items and good to go. MUCH Respect to Robin as his EIR comments and engineer work for Treasure Emporium were righteous also. Fun factoid-Who invented and produced the absolute first triple sluices---TE in the 70s and Robins design!!!!!!John

Thanks John!