Wonderful class, vibrant expectation at the development of the process Yes, you're learning but teaching at the same time. Good to see you're protected like an astronaut. That's also a valuable lesson.
Great beginning to another great series. After doing my stock pot and all my filters I've decided I am done with PGMs. The risk, time and expense is just not worth it to me. Now that I have thoroughly recovered all of the silver and gold, the remaining black sludge is all going to a refinery and I will happily take whatever they will give me. 99% of the Pd is from electronic scrap and I assume most of the Pt came with it so for me it is all just a waste by-product that I can sell off. Seeing as this is just a hobby for me I am not willing to risk my health nor keep wasting money on reagents or time on recovery any longer. Add to this that Pt is only around $35 CDN per gram and the choice was an easy one for me. With that said I would really like to have a nice shiny Pd button from what I have recovered to add to my collection but my time and money are better spent on silver and gold. Thank you very much for continuing your ongoing experimentation and discovery with these series. At the very least you've help educate me on what I am not willing to do. :)
I'm not only seeing the danger of the PGM solutions as an issue, but also with the amount of time it takes to get just 11 grams of metal dissolved. The chief value of the video is that it demonstrates that platinum refining is profitable only as a full-time job and not as a hobby.
Since you have found that the scrap platinum dissolves so slowly in aqua regia, why don't you first alloy the scrap with silver (inquart), then pour the alloy into water to form high surface area castings? These castings could then be more easily dissolved first in nitric acid to remove the silver and then use aqua regia to dissolve the remaining platinum.
Stubborn stuff that Platinum. Gold and Silver certainly behave themselves a lot more. Very interesting. Thanks @sreetips.Looking forward to the end result. 👍👍
Mr. Sreetips, You are truly a master at what you do. I wholeheartedly regret critisizing you a couple of months ago. I should have known to keep my piehole shut when it comes to what, and why people choose to sell things; total embarrasment on my part. That said, I thoughoroly enjoy all the videos you post! Not only are they educational, but show how dangerous these processes are to the leyman. I am happy you diddn't block me when I judgingly spouted off to you in the past and I am truly honored to view your videos. Thank you for the entertainment, Paul. P.S. If you ever travel to Laos, look me up, I got a rack of BBQ. N. Carolina ribs waiting for you. ( gloves and respirator required as well.) 🤣🙈💥
That color could be from the Iridum that you know was in some of those metals i think. Couldn't it? I believe Iridum is that color when first disolved then can change color with time if allowed to sit.
Ow and you deserved a like.. I like youtube so I can watch people do stupid things I want to see and won't do myself :D.. Fun for real ..you are still one of my best watched channels.. I just like chemistry.
You probably ended up with “more” metal not because you incorrectly measured your beaker initially but because you used the beaker for reaction after reaction and inevitably a couple grams of metals and solvents stuck to the sides
If I were you I keep those filter papers with your undissolved platinum and throw them in your optional next refining cause there is toxic ChloroPlatinum salt in it..when they dry up it will become hazardous dust.
Love your videos, I've been watching a very long time. I had a joke for ya, $100.00 if you can tell me in this video how many times he says, "I have a beaker here"! Lol, I'm just kidding on the 100 deal lol, but love how you just always come up with more and much larger beakers all the time. :) Have a very awesome day and GOD bless you and your family and ty for your videos, they really are a blessing :).
PS; I used to watch your videos when they very first come out! I just can't take the waiting for part 2,3,4 and 5 and so on lol, so I'm waiting for all the series to be done before I watch, so I'm not going nuts waiting on the others :).
I got to a point that I only had a few grams of mixed black PGMs so I decided to save it until I accumulated some more. I’ll add it to my next stock pot series so I’ll have a good amount of metal to show for the work involved
Hey Senior Chief. Remember you removed a piece of unknown metal just before dissolving, so that weight is missing from the initial 11.4 grams. Also, did you figure out what that mystery metal was? And as always, keep the great content coming!
I noticed you even took a piece of material out of the amount material to refine after you wieghed the material so the resul tbeing off is even bigger than you thought.
I add ammonium chloride to precip platinum. At that point I’ll add more than I need because the palladium MUST be infused with ammonium chloride to get it out. Ammonium chloride must be added to the palladium whether there’s platinum in there or not. It’s essential for the palladium refining
Quick read on duckduckgo: Ruthenium separated by adding sodium bromate and distilling. Palladium separated by adding di-n-hexyl sulphide (DHS). Iridium separated by using tributylphosulphate (TBP), not sure exactly how it works. Rhodium most difficult to separate, suggestion was to chloridise, roast and then leach the salt, again not sure exactly how that works. The above seems to require some serious NileRed style kit. Feel free to chime in anyone.
For a trained chemist not familiar with separating the six sister metals in the platinum group, a clean separation is not possible. For the non chemist - forget it. These metals are so much alike that they follow each other through the refining process. Palladium is soluble in nitric, platinum is not. This would lead one to conclude that a simple nitric boil will remove all the palladium from a Pd Pt mix. But not so. Even after full nitric boil for hours, there will still be some palladium left in the platinum and some of the platinum will be in the palladium. The only process that I know of is a bromate hydrolysis, developed by Raleigh Gilcrest. Impure platinum sponge is dissolved then a saturated sodium bromate solution is injected slowly. The bromate forms metal hydroxides of other PGMs, if present. Platinum, not forming a hydroxide, is left in the mother liquor, and can then be precipitated making very high purity platinum sponge.
@@sreetips Cool! Being a chemist trained to high school levels.... for me... forget it lol This is a cool subject and one I find highly interesting though. I do realise a rudimentary internet search won't cut the mustard, but it is interesting we both mentioned sodium bromide. What do you think of TBP for iridium extraction? I remember you using DHS once to extract palladium from platinum in one of your videos (wasn't it?) I know chloridising would be pretty much out of the question without some serious kit and safety equipment. Holding a chlorine atmosphere would be highly dangerous enough on its own, using the chlorine atmosphere to process platinum group salts would take it to another level altogether.
Iridium does NOT react with ANY acids you have. It will literally only be dissolved in molten cyanic salts. Other precious metal impurities like ruthenium and rhodium will also not react with Aqua regia. Palladium however, as well as copper and cobalt (other uncommon impurities) will readily dissolve in aqua regia immediately
My same thought....he had extra metal that wasn't even dissolve during the initial process which means he was actually at less than the original 11.4g he started with, so it must've come from the Zinc somehow.(unless sreetips really screwed up and mis-weighted his beaker somehow, which I find highly unlikely given his attention to detail 😊)
You started with Platinum / Iridium . The zinc will drop out all the metal so you will end up with what you started with? How do you separate the Platinum from the Iridium?
I have a few questions on the PGMs when it comes to refining and dissolving in aqua regia mainly separating rhodium from platinum. The material is alloyed together
@@sreetips awesome thank you for the info I have found a paper about "A Procedure for the Separation of the Six Platinum Metals from One Another and for their Gravimetric Determination" this explains everything in great detail I was just missing that small piece of information
Sreetips, could you filter the black platinum metal and keep rinsing in the filter until it was clean? Maybe the vacuum filter? I finally understand about you not using the copper precipitate! I didn't realize it was contaminated with iron. Maybe sell it to the scrap metal people lol!
Yes how you doing I find what you do very interesting even though I'm just some dumb auto mechanic but I was curious where did the fumes go when they exhaust from your fume Hood
Outside. You wouldn’t pull your car in the garage, shut the door, start the car in the closed up garage. Same principle with the fumes from these reactions. Both would end up killing you.
Do you think you can get your little torch hot enough to Melt Platinum? the melting point of platinum is 3215F about 1267 degrees F hotter than gold. (1943 F) You might not be able to melt it in an open dish. My enclosed gold furnace barely melts copper, and it's maximum temperature is 1150c (2102F)
I’ve melted platinum with my oxy/acetylene torch in a previous video. While it’s not the best gas to use (hydrogen torch is preferred) it will get the job done with small quantities.
YES! I was wondering, when you put the zink in the solution to cement out the platinum, is that also producing heat? There was some kind of white fume coming off of it.. Great video again and already looking forward to part 2!
is the black ring around the inside of that beaker just really fine platinum/palladium? if so, is there enough of it to warrant trying to clean it off and collect it along with the rest of it? and if it is how will get it off of there? all the rinsing didnt do much to it. so im guessing youd have to wipe it off somehow without it clinging to whatever you wipe it with. be interested to find out the method.
You don’t think it’s a bad idea to have the aqua regia solution at boiling considering you have precious metals dissolved in there? You might be losing some as vapors
not sure if you caught that but you said "Niner" while reading out the weight :) I know why but many will not know why. thanks for another great video !
Mr Sreetips, could you say what that "black powder" that sunk to the bottom after the zinc treatment is? Is that platinum oxide or platinum chloride ? I guess the black powder is chemically inert ?
There’s other metals in there too. Other platinum group metals and high probability of copper. The copper will be a black powder also and indistinguishable from the precious metals. Any metal under zinc will cement out
OK, but, what's a reation?I guess you paid the light bill, @ about $1,000.00 for circa10 grams of .999 platinum who needs to worry about keeping the lights on?
I prefer the voiceover narration actually. All the whirring of motors and the putter of vacuum pumps can be distracting AND it causes you to sound vocally strained talking over the noise. Just an observation... Always enjoy your videos.
Sreetips - you're starting to make PGM refining looks easy! The process in this video seems really clean which I'm guess reflects the level of expertise you've attained at this over the years. One quick question, do you know what those black PGM compounds actually are at the end? I was wondering if those are a bit heaver than elemental PGMs due to the additional atomic weight in the compound. As an example (and a real chemist please correct me on this!), if I take the molecular mass of Iron oxide Fe2O3 and divide it by the atomic weight of Iron (Fe) I get a ratio of around 2.85 - so am I right in thinking that is how much the weight of my Iron powder would increase by if I could turn it in to pure Fe2O3? (I realizing getting pure Fe2O3 may not be easy...).
Working on part 2 right now. Trying to get the copper and rhodium (if any) out with boiling sulfuric - scary. Your analysis sounds about right. But I’m not a chemist either. The black powder is metallic platinum, with some palladium and copper. Aqua regia won’t dissolve rhodium or iridium. But these metals behave strangely when alloyed with other metals. It’s all new. I’m learning as I go relying heavily on my experience with other refining adventures.
@@sreetips I'm glad you have the skill and knowledge to do this stuff relatively safely, but yeah I can imagine this gets pretty hair raising! I can see you work very hard to go slow and carefully with these processes - I can really appreciate that. I love to see these refining videos, but also like to see you keeping safe! Your warnings are also much appreciated!
@@sreetips I won't be working with any acids & metals without a proper fume hood!! I thank you for instilling that into me for the last 2 and a half years!!
I'm noticing some of these rings are cut. Were they picked up from estate sales? That's a bit creepy, they may have been cut off the ring fingers of the Deceased. Why Else would the rings have been cut? That's what they do at the morgue when they can't pull off the ring. Creepy.
The black powder should be platinum, palladium, and copper. AR doesn’t dissolve rhodium or iridium. But working with PGMs is like a box of chocolates (for me) you never know what you’re going to get.
Can you not inquart molten platinum with copper ?. Treat it like gold because you said aqua regia will not penetrate gold unless it is inquarted with copper or silver.
Nitric won’t penetrate gold unless it’s inquarted with silver. Alloying copper with platinum to “inquart” the platinum like gold has never been tried. But my guess is that it would work very well.
@@sreetips now we wait until you have enough platinum scrap to do a refining lol. Thank you for replying sir. Love your videos . Maybe one day you can do a series on how the big refiners purify metals. I'll pop the popcorn and enjoy.
Hey sreetips love your content. I was wondering if in your next video you could show off and talk about the torch you use, type of tip, psi of oxygen you use, etc. You've shown off all your toys except your torch. Also wondering why you don't use propane or hydrogen instead of acetylene.
Sure, be glad to. I use acetylene because it’s what I learned with and I just tend to stick with proven apparatus and reagents. I’m the the kind who will order the same dish at a particular restaurant over and over because I know what I’m getting.
I’ll have to dig up some pictures. My sponsor dressed me as a hooker. The ENC was Baby Huey. And the FCC was a French tickler. They got my charge book and froze it in a 5 gallon bucket of ice.
@@sreetips I like it. Great videos also sir. Why I'm not comfortable with doing platinum, looking at how you've worked silver and gold, I have learned a lot from you. Great job 👍
I was trying to recover gold and something went wrong and i don't know what to do are what happen i made some nitric acid with potassium nitrate and sulfuric acid i have some pix but i don't know how to send then but i can use some help
Michael, unfortunately there are so many variables that there is no way one could possibly diagnose your problem by looking at pictures. The permutations of the different combinations are incalculable.
Okay okay...but where the murch at?... im a need a Hoodie ... i have a collection going ...i have 45 hoodies from my favored streamers...so plz ..maybe some Periodic table ones ..sum like that
So what did ew learn here? Platinum is hard to suspend/takes a stupid amount of acid/the time is ticking away and the metal has still not gone into suspension while the third batch of acid has boiled off ... you do not want to get platinum in suspension on your skin ... oh, and did I mention that it is really dangerous as in it could kill you? I wonder why not many people refine platinum then?
This was an experiment to see if I could do it. I’ve got some more platinum scrap jewelry. Probably do another video soon using hydrolysis. This was just a practice. I’m not an aspiring platinum refiner because it’s too dangerous. If not for the videos I’d just send it in to the refiner and take his 80% for the metal as-is. But I’ve found that there’s a segment of viewers who enjoy seeing ways to refine platinum.