Gold refining is a process that has been around for centuries and is necessary in producing a high purity product having both value as jewellery and for investment. Prior to purchasing gold in a store, there are many steps that take place before that special investment becomes available to you.
A mining operation requires extensive exploration and development before they can offer gold for refining. On average, it takes 10-20 years of work before an operation is ready for production.
Processing ore to extract the precious metal is the first step in this chain of events, which is followed by recovery and refining in a sequence of processes to achieve the purity required.
Redox Reagent Products
Redox reagent products have been successfully used by our customers for many years. Recently one of our newest clients produced their first bars of gold Doré using our many high-quality reagents.
The reagents worked well as the bar had a very nice clean separation between the yellow gold and the dark grey/black slags. This gold is nice and yellow, a sign of few impurities.
Redox regents were efficient in removing copper and silver that enabled our client to refine 95-99% pure gold from the starting material.
The reagents used were of such high quality that they enabled a great quality flux, in much the same way as making a great cake starts with quality ingredients – so should gold be refined from high-quality fresh ingredients to produce a better product.
Some of the reagents used were:
- Silica Flour
- Borax Pentahydrate
- Soda Ash
Our reagents were used to refine the metal bar product and it appears from the above image that the operators were skilled, as seen in the clean separation of yellow gold against dark grey slags. This indicates a nice quality of ore, likely containing less copper than other ores, which would result in a rose gold-like appearance.
Redox offers client’s access to chemical additives which cover the entire vertical integration process of gold production such as:
Typical reagents for gold rooms
- Silica flour
- Anhydrous Borax
- Soda Ash
- Potassium Nitrate
Cyanide destruction reagents
- Ferrous sulphate
- Hydrogen Peroxide
- Sodium metabisulphite
Other reagents
- Activated Carbon
- Sodium Cyanide
- Lead nitrate
- Anti-scalants
- Flocculants
- Coagulants
- Collectors
- Frothers
- Caustic soda solution
- Hydrochloric acid
- Nitric Acid
- Sulphuric acid
Have you considered Glycine?
Redox is a large and experienced supplier of glycine for the Australian market. Glycine is an emergent technology which in some circumstances eliminate the need for cyanide destruction as it prevents the formation of WAD (weak acid dissociable) cyanide whilst simultaneously improving leaching kinetics in difficult to process ores such as reactive iron sulphides or copper rich ores.
Want to know more? Contact one of our industry specialists today and ask them about our wide range of regents.
