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  • Gold Analysis

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    Akshay AK
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    The document describes the fire assay method for analyzing gold samples. There are 7 main steps: 1) sampling and crushing, 2) fluxing with borax, soda, and litharge, 3) fusion in a furnace to separate slag from an alloy, 4) cupellation to separate lead from silver and gold, 5) parting with nitric acid to separate silver and gold, 6) washing and annealing the gold, 7) weighing the gold to determine concentration in grams per tonne. Flux mixtures and amounts vary depending on the sulphide content of the sample being analyzed.

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    chemical engineering by srinidhi

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    The document describes the fire assay method for analyzing gold samples. There are 7 main steps: 1) sampling and crushing, 2) fluxing with borax, soda, and litharge, 3) fusion in a furnace to separate slag from an alloy, 4) cupellation to separate lead from silver and gold, 5) parting with nitric acid to separate silver and gold, 6) washing and annealing the gold, 7) weighing the gold to determine concentration in grams per tonne. Flux mixtures and amounts vary depending on the sulphide content of the sample being analyzed.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    97 views4 pages

    Gold Analysis

    Uploaded by

    Akshay AK
    The document describes the fire assay method for analyzing gold samples. There are 7 main steps: 1) sampling and crushing, 2) fluxing with borax, soda, and litharge, 3) fusion in a furnace to separate slag from an alloy, 4) cupellation to separate lead from silver and gold, 5) parting with nitric acid to separate silver and gold, 6) washing and annealing the gold, 7) weighing the gold to determine concentration in grams per tonne. Flux mixtures and amounts vary depending on the sulphide content of the sample being analyzed.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 4

    Gold analysis

    Fire assay method


    Acid digestion

    Fire assay:
    Steps involved:
    1. Sampling
    2. Crushing and grinding
    3. Fluxing
    4. Fusion
    5. Cupellation
    6. Parting and
    7. Weighing
    Preparation of mine samples for assay
    Crushing and grinding
    Sampling
    Coding
    Panning
    Qualitative estimation of sulphides
    Approximate gold value
    Fluxing
    Two types of flux mixtures
    I. Much flux ii. Little flux
    Borax - 5.9kgs Borax - 5.0kgs
    Litherage - 11.8kgs Litherage- 10.9kgs
    Soda - 11.8kgs Soda - 9.5kgs

    Flux addition: depending on sulphides present.

    AgNO addition

    Fusion
    Homogeneous mixture of samples and fluxes taken in
    graphite crucibles
    Furnace maintain 1000C for fusion
    Poured in iron moulds
    Slag and alloy are separated
    Lead alloy
    Cupellation
    Lead buttons cupelled in preheated cupel
    Cupellation in muffle furnace 100C
    Silver gold alloy

    Parting
    bead is parted in nitric acid (1:3)
    silver dissolves in parting acid forms silver nitrate
    solution
    separate the AgNO solution, leftover gold washed &
    anneal

    Weighing

    Samples weighed on bullion balance and calculated


    g/t or ppm.
    Fluxes used:
    litharge(pbo)
    Sodium carbonate(NaCO)
    Borax(NaBO)
    Silica(Sio)
    Flour(C)
    Potassium nitrate (KNO)
    silver
    Gold solution assay
    filter sample solution
    add Zn powder + lead acetate solution with warm
    condition
    precipitation by mild heating
    hcl wash
    filter the precipitate
    ppt taken in lead sheet + silver piece
    cupellation
    parting and weighing.

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