Hi yall, I’m hoping to start up my first silver cell in a couple weeks at 3.5L. Is there significant gas that is produced while the cell is running or can I get away with running it indoors? Sorry if this is a dumb question but I’m quite inexperienced with electrolytic refining. Appreciate any input, thanks!!

Hey everyone!

I’m hoping someone here might be able to point me in the right direction.

I’ve been searching for used laboratory equipment for a small-scale precious-metal refining project, and I’m realizing that finding affordable equipment is a lot harder than I expected.

I’m particularly looking into fume hoods and gas scrubbers suitable for hydrochloric acid, nitric acid, and aqua regia.

I’ve found a few older laboratory scrubbers on eBay, but I’m having trouble figuring out which ones are worth looking into and whether replacement parts are still available.

I’m also wondering if there’s a market for equipment being retired from universities, laboratories, or industrial facilities that I’m just not finding.

Ideally, I’d like something relatively compact that wouldn’t require permanently modifying my garage, although I’m open to hearing if that’s simply not realistic for this type of work.

For anyone who’s purchased secondhand lab equipment:

- Where did you find it?
- Are there particular manufacturers or models worth looking for?
- Are there any surplus dealers or auction websites you’d recommend?
- What should I watch out for when buying older fume hoods or scrubbers?
- Is a removable setup even feasible once you account for safe exhaust and gas treatment?

I’m not expecting a cheap air purifier to handle corrosive fumes. I’m trying to figure out whether there’s a practical way to obtain proper equipment without paying the price of an entirely new laboratory system.

I’d appreciate any advice or recommendations.
Thanks!

How i can extract tiny microscopic gold particles from soil , through chemically or by any means pls help

I have around 2 kg of soil or 4.409 lbs

If I search it just tells me about RAM fingers and cards but not the sockets. I can't tell if these contacts are gold plated but it looks like they're not. Anyone else mess with these?

My goal was a really aged hand hammered look on the front and to practice getting cooling lines in the back.

This was a first using wood to create the mold/pattern and looking for any feedback on the aesthetics...

It’s was only $65 on Amazon. It melted my cement in 5-8 minutes flat and got my first full ounce of smelted down cement. Worth every penny if you’re sick of torches!

I purchased a vintage glasses lot which was pre cleaned/sorted 113g of frames and 31g of pieces/hardware. I ran the hardware without any issues when sorting I did find 2 10k gold bridges I put to the side. Last night I ran the 113g of frames in nitric when I checked on them this morning there is a large pile of gray/white sedeament at the bottom. When running the 31g of parts I didn't encounter any sediment it was a clean run.

Look for help/advice on identifying the sedeament and is this going to cause an issue when it comes to rinsing. The glasses frames came out in large foils.

Pictures of the parts, frames, foils and sediment added.

Any assistance will be greatly appreciated.

Hey,

I'm currently running a mapp/oxy hot devil pin torch setup to inquart gold in silver ( 80g combined roughly per melt ) in a ceramic melt dish.

I'm running into issues with my metals taking far too long to melt.

I get basically 2 melts per 140g bottle of oxy which is $20 AUD per bottle which just isn't feasible as I have a lot to refine through inquartation.

It works fine with small amounts but I feel that it's the torch tip holding me back. The pin torch is just far too concentrated to acquire a solid melt on the amount I'm doing.

I'm wanting to upgrade my melting setup, larger bottles, better torch etc.

Tossing up between lpg/oxy and propane/oxy.

I'm not too keen on a gas furnace due to the noise and how often I'd be using it.

What are you guys running if you're doing larger melts like this ?

I recently refined quite a lot of gold jewellery. Lots of 22k, and three gold-platinum 18k rings. The result is a 44.8g button.

Used heated aqua regia, urea, SMB, HCl rinse, three distilled water rinses. Decanting throughout.

I’m so surprised by the 9999 purity I got out of this humble process.

Six months ago, I started learning and experimenting with silver refining using a sulfamic acid system because nitric acid is difficult to obtain where I live.

My setup per cell:

• 50–70 g sulfamic acid
• 1.5 L DI water
• 20 g MSG additive
• Stainless steel cathodes submerged, with approximately 8 × 8 cm of surface area per cathode face
• Mixed silver feedstock (95%, 92.5%, and 83.0%) cast into anodes
• Low current density (~0.5 A range)

This is my first time doing any of this, so there have been plenty of mistakes and learning experiences along the way: furnace issues, contamination, poor melts, forgetting to remove base-metal pieces, chemistry mistakes, silver melting problems, filtration challenges, and of course a few spills.

From the first 500 g batch of material, I've recovered roughly 300 g so far (~60% recovery) and still have approximately 160–180 g of material remaining in process as feedstock, silver-bearing powders, slimes, filters, and solutions. The full lot consists of approximately 7 kg of sterling silver and another 3 kg of 800/830 silver.

I've been tracking every run, so I started building my own Android app specifically for this refining process.

Current features

• Cell management
• Harvest logging
• Bleed/populate event tracking
• Photo capture
• Voice notes
• Inventory management
• Waste-stream tracking
• QR labels
• Knowledge library containing information from a separate subsystem, including data extracted from US Patent 3616332
• Local Ollama AI integration

Instrumentation and monitoring

• DPS-series programmable power supply telemetry
• pH monitoring
• TDS/DI water quality measurements
• Temperature logging
• Current and voltage tracking
• Mass-balance and yield tracking
• Photo-based run documentation

I'm also working toward a low-cost silver composition/purity analyzer to help estimate electrolyte condition, contamination levels, and feedstock composition without relying on expensive commercial equipment.

The project has evolved from "How do I refine silver?" into "How do I build a measurable, repeatable, and data-driven refining process?"

The long-term goal is to build a closed-loop refining system that combines process logging, instrumentation, inventory management, waste tracking, analytical tools, and knowledge management. The objective is to understand where every gram goes, reduce losses, improve recovery rates, and continuously refine the process through measurement and data collection rather than guesswork, so I rely less on memory and maintain a proper record of runs, changes, observations, and yields.

It's still very much a work in progress, but it's already helping me manage multiple cells, runs, and experiments while building a better understanding of the chemistry and process behavior.

Photos attached show various snapshots from the past six months, including cell development, harvested crystals, anodes, instrumentation, and the software ecosystem being built around the refining process.

I'm curious whether anyone else here has experimented with sulfamic systems and what crystal morphology you're seeing compared to nitrate-based electrolytes.

Hi all, I have accumulated a large bag (~5kg) of Gold plated/rolled scraps of various purity (9,10,14,18 ct) and wondered how I can refine it into solid gold to reuse for making jewellery. Unfortunately, acquiring any acids, like nitric acid, in the UK for gold refining is very difficult if you dont have a license.

Would anyone be able to share their experience on what the best process of refining and processing gold in the UK is, or where I could have it refined?

I have previous biological lab experience, which I know is different from the chemistry lab, but I fully understand the dangers of hazardous substances.

Hi all. Over the years Ive acquired a couple of pounds of gold filled pins, watches, cufflinks, etc. my question is what to do with it? List it on ebay for scrap? Do any refineries take it?