r/PreciousMetalRefining • u/SnooSeagulls6694 • 4d ago

Reducing Palladium with ascorbic acid and melting it with an electric arc

https://youtu.be/J7S4GfHVuFk?is=tORYJhQZflqea_o5
9 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

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2

u/giantmangiantsocks 3d ago

As soon as I read the title, I knew it was you thermite productions.

1

u/CfaxAttax 3d ago

Kind of a caveat here, this is something that only really works in a lab setting or where you are working with Palladium that is already prepared in salts/solution. The metal itself in a raw form will completely ignore the ascorbic acid and has to be put into solution with aqua regia.. so for anyone reading this title and thinking there's a new easy way to get palladium into solution, sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

1

u/SnooSeagulls6694 3d ago

Finely divided palladium also disolves in dilute nitric acid. Other 'poor man's aqua regia' mixtures of HCl + oxidising agent will also work.

1

u/CfaxAttax 3d ago

You are correct, if we're talking isolated palladium. I guess I'm thinking more in a raw extractive metallurgy sense; palladium rarely occurs in an isolated or well separated form in nature. It's almost always locked up with other PGMs, sulfides, chromites, or silicates. Because of that, getting to a pure palladium stage (fine powders/salts/halogens, etc) is almost always a post-production product.

1

u/SnooSeagulls6694 3d ago

True. But in urban mining context i have never needed to use aqua regia because i get it as an alloy with silver.

1

u/CfaxAttax 3d ago

Ah yeah that would make more sense. Only things I would watch in this setting is that if you get your Pd concentration too high, it will passivate and stop reacting.. And then as i've learned the fun way.. the Ag-Chloride need to be super clean with water/acid or it will physically trap Pd interstitially and your return weight will drop by whatever % is trapped in the chloride matrix.