How Is Gold Refined?

You have probably heard things like “Cash4Gold buys jewelry and sends it to our refinery,” or “Unlike its competitors, when you deal with Cash4Gold you cut out the middleman and deal directly with the refiner.”  What does this mean?  What is a refinery? How is gold refined? And how do I get more money by dealing direct with the refinery?

Your gold jewelry is mixed with copper, silver and other metals.  In other words, it is not pure gold.  When Cash4Gold buys jewelry, the gold must be separated from the other metals so that it can be sold in its pure state.

This is what a refinery does.  Items containing gold are melted down and the metals are separated.  The process is rather complex and sophisticated, but let’s take a look at how it works.

Step 1: Melt down the metal.  The process begins by melting down the material to homogenize the gold.  The bars are then molten and dumped into a bath of ice water to reduce the particle size.

Step 2: Separate the gold.  After Step 1, you are left with bars that contain gold, silver, copper, and other metals.  To separate the metals, these bars are dissolved into a mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid in order to reduce the particle size.  Nitric acid reacts with metals other than gold, so once the bar is measured for gold purity, the necessary amount of nitric acid is determined.

Nitric acid will attack the copper and silver.  The dissolving process takes between six and twelve hours.  Once the material is dissolved, it goes from a metallic material to a liquid.

When the dissolving process is complete, the result is a brownish, rust-colored, highly acidic liquid.  Urea is added to neutralize the solution before the gold can be separated.  Once the acid is neutralized, the liquid is gassed by bubbling sulfur dioxide into the “pregnant solution” (impregnated with gold).  As the gas bubbles in, the gold drops to the bottom of the tank.  Once all gold is dropped out, a solution containing copper and silver remains.

This solution is then pumped into another tank.  The bottom will be coated with a “yellow mud” that is actually gold.  At this point, the gold is about 99% pure, but it needs to be washed with sulfuric acid to clean out all remnants of silver and copper.  De-ionized water is then used to wash the material through a highly sophisticated filtering system.  The result is a cake of gold powder.  That pure gold is then melted at a temperature of 2200 degrees and poured into bars.

Step 3. Remove the copper and silver.  The remaining liquid still contains silver and copper and needs to be treated in an alternative process.  Chemicals are added to remove the ammonia and raise the PH level of the liquid to remove the sliver.  A coagulant material is added to pull out small particles of copper.  A muddy cake of copper remains.  The left over liquid is then put through a polishing filter.  After filtering, all that remains is salty water.

NOTE:  This process is handled by experts with state-of-the-art machinery.  Cash4Gold is skilled in this process and takes precautions necessary to assure safety.  YOU SHOULD NOT TRY THIS YOURSELF as the process, if conducted by an amateur, is extremely dangerous.

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