Small Scale Gold Refining by Zinc

precipitation & Gold cathodes

Gold mining operations treat their ore by cyanidation and precious metals are recovered from
the pregnant solution by Zinc Dust (Merryl Crowe process) or activated carbon and
electrowinning. Big operations treat zinc precipitates or cathodes by smelting in order to
obtain a gold-silver product (Bullion). However, small operations don’t treat their final
products because they have economical and technical restrictions. Therefore, here is a process
on how to extract, refining your own gold.
Considering the aspects mentioned above, the objective of this paper is show the possibilities
of employing a refining process without investing a large amount of money like the refining
processes that are used everyday in many jewelry shops.

TREATMENT OF ZINC PRECIPITATES.

A zinc precipitate can have a chemical composition like this: 12% gold, 5% silver, 12% CaO,
20% Cu, 11% Zn, 5% Zinc. The process involves the following stages:

• Treatment with nitric acid.

• Silver precipitation.
• Gold dissolution with aqua regia.
• Gold precipitation.

Treatment with nitric acid: Zinc precipitated

Batch HNO3 Extraction (%)

Ag Pb Zn Cu
(mol/l)
1 2 42 80 98 94
2 5 55 84 99 98
is leached with hot nitric acid so that can be dissolved
silver and common metals. Then, the slurry is filtered
and the residue is washed with hot water. The result
depends mainly of nitric acid dosage and temperature.
The next table shows some possible results.

Silver precipitation: The obtained silver nitrate solution

is treated with sodium chloride in order to precipitate
silver as silver chloride. The reaction is shown below.

NaCL + AgNO3 = AgCl + NaNO3

The amount of silver in the solution from acid leaching

can be calculated by simple calculation. Now, it is
necessary know the addition of sodium chloride. For this
must be considered the following rule of thumb: each
gram of silver in solution requires 0.55 grams NaCl.

The silver chloride precipitated is filtered and washed

with distilled water, after, must be transferred to a
beaker for its treatment with zinc dust which has been
previously acidified lightly with sulphuric acid. The
metallic product obtained is filtered and washed with
hot distilled water. The final product is dried and finally
smelted in order to get metallic silver.

Gold dissolution with aqua regia. The precipitated

obtained in Step (a) is leached with hot aqua regia (85 –
90 oC). The amount of aqua regia to be employed must
be in
excess (at least 100 times) to the required theoretically.
The reaction is shown below.

Au + 3HNO3 + 4HCl = HAuCl4 + 3NO2 + 3H2O

After attacking with aqua regia will be added urea which

decreases the residual HNO.

6 HNO3 + 5CO(NH2)2 = 8N2 + 5CO2 + 13H2O

The slurry is filtered and the residue is washed with hot

distilled water until eliminate a yellowish coloration in
the filtered solution.

Gold precipitation. Metallic gold is precipitated from

the solution obtained in step (c) by adding sodium
bisulphite. In theory, each gram of gold needs 1.89
grams of sodium bisulphite. However, must be added
more, approximately 1.5 more times.

2HAuCl4 + 2NaHSO3 = 2Au + 4HCl + Na2SO4 + SO2

The gold precipitated is filtered and washed with hot

distilled water and an ammonium solution. Finally is
dried and smelted. The smelting process can be done
with borax, silica and saltpeter for one hour to 1100 oC.

There are alternative reagents to sodium bisulphite such

as oxalic acid, sulphurous, acid and sulphur dioxide.
The cost of treating zinc precipitated can be in the range
8 to 12 dollars/Kg zinc precipitated.

With this treatment gold recovery is higher than 98%

and the impurities are almost imperceptible because the
obtained gold is practically pure, 995 to 999 fine.

TREATMENT OF GOLD CATHODES.

Steel wool cathodes need a previous treatment with hot

hydrochloric acid in order to dissolve all the metallic
iron. The residue obtained is filtered and washed with
distilled water. Then, the residue will be treated with
aqua regia as was described in the previous steps for
zinc precipitates.

Flowsheet for each treatment is shown in Figure 1 and 2.