With rhodium commanding high prices on the commodities market these days, retrieving the precious metal from used rhodium solutions might sound like a good idea to gain some easy additional income. However, inviting as that cash-cow dream may be to small jewelers, product repair shops or local retail businesses with repair facilities, the actual reality may not be all that attractive.

Rhodium is used primarily in the production of catalytic converters for the vehicle industry. In solution form, the silvery white metal is popular with jewelers for plating and for adding protective, wear-resistance finishes to rings, pendants and other pieces. The rhodium solution used by jewelers, though, is generally an acid solution, tethered to either sulfuric acid or phosphoric acid.

Once a container of rhodium solution is opened, the material becomes a regulated hazardous waste under federal law. Shipping hazardous waste by ground (hazardous waste cannot be shipped by air) requires expensive containment specified by the U.S. Department of Transportation, in addition to detailed preparation and packaging, correct labeling and manifesting. Most small businesses are not trained and certified in this protocol, nor do they have enough potentially recoverable rhodium to make it worth the expense.

For example, a 1-liter bottle of rhodium solution may only contain one or two grams, or 0.03 to 0.06 to  troy ounce, of actual rhodium. If the container is unopened, the material can be shipped via FedEx or UPS, but that still requires the proper paperwork and certified training. Moreover, the amount of material you are sending will probably not be enough to cover the cost of transportation, let alone the processing charges for retrieving the precious metal. And if the container has been opened, then you are subject to additional federal regulations.

If you believe you have material worth processing, we advise customers to first send us a sample material for analysis. A sample has exemption under 40CFR 261.4(d), and does not fall under the same regulatory oversight requiring manifesting for shipping, if it is for analytical services or treatability studies. With that said, our analysis may still reveal that processing is not financially feasible for the customer when all costs have been considered. More beneficial refining services for jewelry companies are “sweeps.” (polishing rags, metal filings etc.).

Occasionally, it might seem simpler to dump rhodium solution on “sweeps” such as rugs, aprons or cloth rags, figuring the material will be properly processed once shipped to us. However, once that acid solution becomes part of the sweep, the sweep itself becomes a regulated hazardous material. While we welcome sweeps containing rhodium solution, you then must engage in the detailed documentation and strict shipping protocol procedures noted earlier.

If retrieval of rhodium is not financially feasible, how do you dispose of the acid solution once the rhodium has been depleted through use? We advocate ethical and responsible disposal of any waste material, hazardous or not. No one wants these materials going down the drain and into our sewer systems. We suggest contacting a company that provides environmental services (ex. Clean Harbors), and employ their services for proper waste disposal. There is a charge for this type of service, so be sure to get all your costs outlined up front. You want to have enough waste material to make it worth your while as an overhead expense.

You can also neutralize the sulfuric or phosphoric acid in the rhodium solution using a base solution such as sodium bicarbonate or something similar, but be cautious; neutralizing any acid is an exothermic reaction that generates heat and fumes. It should only be done in a well-ventilated room, and you should wear appropriate personal protective equipment such as eye goggles, gloves and synthetic aprons.

If you have any concerns not covered in this blog, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We’ll be happy to discuss your situation or concern and answer any additional questions you may have.

One of the most crucial aspects of shipping hazardous goods like precious metals is to properly describe and code the waste being transported on the shipping manifest. The responsibility for ensuring this is done properly lies with everyone involved in the transportation process. The person who generates the manifest needs to ensure the material is marked correctly.

The driver transporting the goods should also be trained to verify that the manifest is in order. The driver will also certify that the material has been packaged in the right type of containers and properly labelled and marked. Once the material is delivered to the receiver, the receiver becomes liable for accepting the material.  Incorrectly marking or insufficiently packaging hazardous material carries a maximum fine of $52,500 per occurence.

One of the changes implemented by the US DOT involves the proper shipping name of Cyanide Solutions N.O.S.:  A “G” has been added in Column one, the “Symbols Column,” of the 49 C.F.R. Part 172.101 Hazardous Material table. This amendment signifies that the technical name is now required in the sequence. For example, here is what we have interpreted to be an acceptable listing on a manifest:

UN1935, Waste, Cyanide Solution N.O.S. (potassium auro cyanide), 6.1 PGII, RQ,  (F007)

It’s important for everyone shipping these materials to include this change on their shipping paper immediately. There are two additional ways to prepare the sequence. Please verify your sequence. Incorrect sequences can be considered a violation, with all companies associated with that shipment held responsible. The penalty for this type of violation can range from $1,000 to $1,500.

A second change being implemented by the US DOT will come into effect January 1, 2013. The US DOT is changing the sequence for listing hazardous material on a bill of lading or manifest to become better aligned with international shipping regulations. For the past six years, there have been two acceptable sequences for manifests: the old sequence and the new sequence.  As of January of next year, only the new sequence will be allowed. If you are still using the old manifest sequence and you are caught by US DOT, you will be subjected to fines up to $6,000.

Lastly, the US DOT will be issuing a new emergency response guidebook (ERG) that will replace the 2008 edition.  As in the past, the ERG contains implications for hazardous material listed on manifests and bills of lading.  The 2012 Emergency Response Guidebooks are expected to be available in late April or early May.  Our customers can order the new guide through J.J. Keller.  If you have any questions, call 800-327-6868.

At Advanced Chemical, we encourage all our customers to check with us before shipping precious metals or hazardous waste to ensure compliance with current regulations.  Following US DOT guidelines saves us all time and money.

Why is there gold in electronic parts? The three metals that conduct electricity best are gold, silver and copper. Since copper and silver tarnish, electronics that are meant to last for a long time are often coated with gold. To produce a reliable circuit and still keep costs down, manufacturers will often plate copper with gold. The plating process generates a variety of waste streams. For the purposes of this discussion, we will focus on electronic scrap.

Some people don’t realize that Advanced Chemical refines precious metals from electronic components. We absolutely do, depending on what the electronic component is. Before you ship us a storage room full of old circuit boards, though, let’s go over a few basics that could save you time and money.

We always ask customers with electronic components to send us pictures of the materials first. While we don’t process cables and wires from inside electronics, we do process connector pins, IC chips, edges of the trim on circuit boards and something we call ribbon scrap. We look for these materials in the pictures, and once we determine the electronics look like something we could process, we ask for samples to analyze in our labs.

Lab analysis enables us to figure out which of our processes would yield the best result. One customer recently sent us a few samples that included IC chips. Sometimes IC chips are ceramic; these particular chips may contain gold within the chip itself. If that is the case, then another process would be needed in order to extract all of the gold because a simple cyanide strip process would not attack any gold that is not exposed.

Ribbon scrap is usually generated by a large volume industrial plate shop. It is a perfect fit for cyanide strip because all of the gold is exposed and it’s generally plated on high grade copper.  Our customers benefit because they get a high yield off of the gold solution when we refine it back down to the grain. The copper doesn’t get melted or destroyed, so you can also recover the full copper weight from your ribbon scrap, which can be quite valuable.

One of the main things we look for when analyzing samples is the overall weight of the material, because everything - including our processing fees – is based on that weight. You wouldn’t want us to process dead weight – components that offer no return. That’s why we advise customers to send us materials that have mostly gold and little dead weight, as the less dead weight on the components we process, the better the return. For instance, chips on a circuit board often have no value, but because they still add to the total mass, it reduces your return by increasing the weight from which the processing fees are based.

Our analysis also helps the customer decide if it’s worth their effort to remove some of the dead weight themselves. Sometimes it pays for customers to break off large component pieces that don’t have precious metals. On the other hand, a customer with 400 lbs. of electronics may opt not to have us process it at all if it’s only going to render 10 pounds of valuable material. In some cases, it’s not worth the time and effort to even break off the dead weight. Why pay a processing fee on something that’s not going to pay you back?

At Advanced Chemical, we’ve designed our processes to extract as much value from electronic components as possible, and we do our best to make sure everything we process offers a benefit to the customer.

On our blog, we have talked about a number of different refining methods we use at Advanced Chemical to help clients recover gold and other precious metals - from our expanded burn room to our efforts to protect and refine oversize materials for our clients.

Acid digestion, an integral process in our multifaceted approach to reclaim every last ounce of precious metals for our clients, is one method incorporated when melting and/or chemical stripping will not suffice.

Acid digestion is used to separate multi-layered or alloyed metals that may contain one or more precious metals. This process is not available at many refineries, but it is a service that we offer to our clients.

Without the technical expertise and equipment required for acid digestion, other processes are limited in their ability to provide a quick and efficient valuation of a customer’s material. Processing variety that presents all options for assaying, processing, valuation and reclamation of a customer’s material is an important aspect to consider when choosing a refiner.

An example of an acid digestion process is the use of aqua regia (royal water), a combination of nitric and hydrochloric acids. The mixture of these two acids, added along with other processes unique and proprietary to Advanced Chemical, will dissolve away multi-layers of metal and permit us to filter out the lesser base metals from the precious and desirable metals. Acid digestion can aid in the recovery of gold (Au), silver (Ag), platinum (Pt), rhodium (Rh) and palladium (Pd).  Thanks in part to his royal highness – Aqua Regia.

Cyanide strip solution is highly efficient at stripping off exposed gold, however it will not attack other precious metals. Acid digestion allows us to recover gold and other precious metals from deeper layers, or layers that cyanide cannot otherwise penetrate. This process is so effective that large jewelry manufacturers will use it for ‘stone breakout’ to recover their precious and semi-precious stones. It would be a time-consuming process for a jeweler to remove stones individually from ring shanks and other types of jewelry, using an acid digestion process releases the stones and recovers the precious metal quickly and safely. As we recover the stones, we wash them and separate them by color, or we invite the jeweler to sort the stones in whatever manner they prefer. They are invited right into the refinery to complete the final process of separating the stones.

Jewelers are not the only clients who benefit from acid digestion. In addition to jewelry, we use acid digestion to help refine metal from various industrial manufacturers (electronics, aerospace, dental etc.). Clients may elect to send us pictures of the material that they would like processed, so that we can determine the best process to reclaim the precious metals. If client is unsure, they can always send us samples and we can do a process analysis for free.

Acid digestion is one of the many exceptional processes we offer at  Advanced Chemical to help our clients recover their precious metals. Acid digestion helps refine the refining process.

Metal recovery is the perfect place to apply the concept of hedging. The settlement options we offer after recovering your gold, platinum, palladium, silver, and rhodium can protect you against inflation, rising gold prices, and costs of doing business. There are two settlement options you can use to hedge:

1.    Accepting physical metal as payment
2.    Transferring the metal to companies who fabricate your materials

Many manufacturers and electroplaters use potassium gold cyanide, a salt that gets added to plating baths which also contain gold. Rather than take a monetary settlement these companies may take their settlement in potassium gold cyanide. If you choose to get physical metal back instead of dollars, it can reduce your manufacturing costs. Taking a check and buying the same amount of gold when you need it will cost you more than the settlement amount if the price of gold has increased; returning gold to you eliminates the cost of buying that amount of gold later. Effectively, taking metal or PGC as payment is like investing in the metal, protecting (hedging) against increases in cost.

Another way to hedge is to do what we call a “metal transfer.” Physical metal is transferred to a company that you do business with, say a company that fabricates gold sheeting for you. All you need to do is pay them the fabrication fee to turn your metal into the products you’ve ordered. You don’t have to worry about buying gold on top of the fabrication fee so you’ve protected yourself against price fluctuations that make business planning difficult. In other words, you’ve hedged.

Hedging is a great option, but there are other options. You can place your metal in a pool account to be sold later at a higher price. The metal can stay in the pool account until you decide what to do with it. Let’s say the refining we do for you nets you 100 oz. of gold, and you ask us to put it in the pool account. Three months later, the price of gold might have climbed $300. You can then authorize us to sell it, and we’ll complete the sale within 24 hours. It’s a low risk strategy because it’s highly unlikely that the market will drop significantly within that 24 hour period. You can profit from the gold you’ve held.

At Advanced Chemical, we’re always happy to discuss the various options with you so that you can take the course of action that is best for your business. From hedging to pool accounts to using your gold to pay your fees, there are many ways you can reduce costs, protect against rising prices, and manage cash flow.

The MJSA was interested in finding out more about what we believe to be a critical part of the refining process: representation, or “repping” for short. Advanced Chemical believes it is important for customers to participate in repping - to witness their material being processed -because it allows them to learn a lot about the refinery. Witnessing also helps reassure clients when they hand us their material.

All first-time visitors are given our “right to know” training before they rep or even enter the refinery because refining is hazardous. (Being the largest hazardous materials refiner in North America brings with it certain dangers.) They need to know that we ensure their safety and they need to be aware of hazards. The training takes 10 – 15 minutes, and then the client can safely walk through the refinery and watch their material being processed.

We start the repping process by sending them the shipping material and a security seal after they’ve notified us that they want to rep their material. The client packs their material and seals it, record the security seal’s number, notify us when they’ve shipped the material, and schedule a time to rep the processing. We’ll hold their order in our vault until they arrive.

We do not break the seal and check the weight until the rep is there to oversee the process. We record the figures and handle any differences we find.  For example, we once had a client leave a  hammer in the shipping container and it threw the weight off by a couple of pounds.

Another safeguard we provide our clients is the way we conduct our sampling procedure. We draw an assay sample during processing, which is divided into three parts: one for us, one for the customer, and a third sample, the “umpire sample,” to send to a third-party laboratory.  If there’s a discrepancy between our lab’s assay and their lab’s assay and we can’t settle the difference, the middle assay of the three will be used for settlement.

There are secondary benefits to repping. The customer now has the opportunity to learn about other processes the refinery is capable of performing that they might not have known. They learn about our acid digestion and cyanide strip processes, as well as our disposal capability. The latter is nice to know, because some of our customers send us hazardous material such as cyanide solutions or acids. By repping, the customer knows with full confidence that we properly dispose of hazardous materials (cradle to grave) after the valuable metals have been recovered. This gives our customers confidence, because as the generators of the hazardous waste, they are ultimately responsible for proper disposal under EPA regulations regardless of who actually disposes of it. Repping helps us our customers know that their hazardous waste will be handled professionally and ethically when they see our disposal systems and meet our full-time environmental and regulatory manager.

We encourage reps to ask questions about the process and we help them understand how they should segregate their material for a better return.  In addition to our refining operators, our lab personnel and environmental people are always available to answer any questions as well. Having that time with the refining experts is priceless, and we highly encourage our customers to spend time repping a sample to have the opportunity to understand the entire refining process better.

“I’ve got a bottle of rhodium that I’ve had for the past 10 years. Can I just dump it down the drain?”

Or,

“I need to get some gold and cyanide to you. Our guy will bring it over to you, okay?”

The answer is no on both accounts. The shipping of hazardous, regulated and non-regulated goods is quite involved. Know the rules before you ship. Rhodium, for example, is generally associated with acids. In the past, people would just dump it into their sweeps. From a purely legalistic standpoint, they may be okay, but that’s really not how it should be done. The problem is not only one of accountability but about the damaging effect improper disposal has on the environment.

Whether you are a jewelry or semi-conductor manufacturer, the first thing you need to understand is that responsibility for the safe handling, shipping or disposal of your hazardous materials lies with you, not the refiner or your shipping company.

Regulations from the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency specify the gamut of dealing with dangerous materials: how long they can be stored, how they can be treated or disposed, whether they are an EPA-regulated item, what kind of containers they should be in, what materials can and cannot be shipped on the same truck with them, what information goes on the manifest — even what must be written on the placard on the truck transporting them. The details are quite meticulous.

Even before you ship, your building has to properly be identified by the EPA or your local governing body if you in any way deal with hazardous materials.

Advanced Chemical has a team of experts here who are always available to help you determine how to ship your hazardous materials. Granted, to a lot of small businesses, shipping hazardous materials properly can and do raise your expenses. While it’s true that the many different rules and regulations can be a pain to deal with, the trouble of following them pales in comparison to the nightmare we’ll all experience if something goes wrong as a result of improper shipping. The person generating the shipment can face serious fines for improperly shipping hazardous materials.

We go the extra mile to help each customer with understanding shipping for several reasons. It’s a measure of protection for you and for us. As a refiner, we have a number of regulations we must follow, so, if the paperwork isn’t right or the labeling is done incorrectly, we must refuse the material. Keeping abreast of existing and pending regulatory changes in the shipping of hazardous goods will save us all time and money.

In our burn room, we recapture gold and other precious metals. After a mix is ball milled it will go into a sifter that works similar to a colander for pasta - the water flows out of the bottom and what’s left in the colander is the pasta. After a mix is sifted, what’s left up on top is basically metal that could not be pulverized, which is called oversize. Most oversize contains magnetic material - it could be stainless steel material that was part of the lot that was incinerated that becomes magnetic during the processing.  We take the magnetic material out, leaving the precious metal available for melting.

We can either melt the oversize immediately or store it to melt with another lot. Advance Chemical clients generally know what they’re doing and handle their oversize correctly.  Some know that most of the value may be in their oversize others may know there is only a trace amount of value. If they want to process it, we’ll process it. However, we take the time to look at the variables involved in processing their oversize to ensure that the processing cost doesn’t outweigh any potential return. If the cost is too high, the customer can store the oversize with us until they have a larger batch to make a more cost-effective melt.

Security for the storage of each oversize batch is essential. The oversize is stored in a sealed container with the client name and lot number. Records signify, for example, a specific oversize is seal number 751. When the owner returns, they can check that seal number and they know it has not been opened.  Each client can even provide us their own seal to further ensure the protection of their property.

Under no circumstances is a seal broken unless authorized by the customer. Rarely is the seal broken for any other reason than to process the oversize, although the customer may occasionally need to examine the contents for some reason. We never break a seal without the company’s permission.

Advance Chemical is not just the leader in the precious metals refining industry - we’re also the experts. Our ultimate goal is to satisfy each customer and exceed all expectations by continually improving upon our performance. Processing and storing oversize to retain the best value is only a small part of how we operate to assist our clients in protecting their bottom line.

Advanced Chemical prides itself on being one of the most efficient precious metals refineries in existence, but we are always looking to improve the ways in which we are able to serve our customers. One of the ways we have been able to improve our service for the manufacturers with whom we work is by more efficiently helping them recapture the gold and other precious metals used in their processes.

We work with a variety of manufacturers who use previous metals in their processes. For instance, electroplaters use Gold Plating solutions for decorative colors or electronic products. These solutions, when passing through filters and ion-exchange resins used during the process, capture traces of gold and other precious metals. That’s where our state-of-the-art burn room can make a difference: Our burn room allows us to recapture the gold and other precious metals trapped inside the filters and resins.

The incinerator burns off all of the organic material, leaving ash and metallics. Once the burn process is complete, any metals left will be emptied out of the incinerator tray and put into a ball mill. A ball mill is a very large container filled with about 200 stainless steel balls approximately 2-1/2 inches wide.

During the ball milling process, the metallic material from the incinerator is crushed into a fine powder. The powder from the ball mill is sifted into a drum where it is blended into a good mix so that a reliable sample can be retrieved. The material is sifted through a 70-mesh screen. The finer particulates fall through the mesh, leaving behind the oversize, which, if it still contains precious materials, will be melted in another furnace. Through that sample, Advanced Chemical will be able to determine exactly how much gold or other precious metals can be recaptured from the burn. It’s a very efficient process. The same process can be used for other materials that can be burnt, for example, a rug ,wood flooring, cloths, gloves, and any other burnable material from a jewelry repair shop or semiconductor fabricating facility. This process is known as “sweeps” within the refining industry.

We have one of the most efficient refineries in the industry. In the last year, we increased the capacity of our burn room tremendously, tripling the amount of material that can be burnt. Our burn room allows us to process our client’s materials with no cross-pollution or contamination quickly and reliably.

The biggest benefit to our clients, though, is our ability to process materials more quickly while still maintaining our high yields. There’s no backup because, with our increased capacity, we can process several client orders at once.

The main advantage to induction is efficiency; we can do the same melt in less time. Induction also creates its own mixing current, whereas gas melting requires some manual stirring and mixing. When done correctly, however, gas melting yields the exact same result. We’re excited to add this technology alongside the methods we’ve been using since we started doing business and are pleased to say that the induction furnace won’t represent any sacrifice in the final yield quality that clients expect from us.

The efficiency of the tilt furnace offers a real advantage for customers with large batches who want to watch the melt process. We have an open-door policy at Advanced Chemical, so customers are welcome to come to the facility and watch the whole melt and sample process from start to finish. One of the primary benefits of the Inductotherm 2500 tilt furnace is its size. Precious Metal Refineries with only smaller furnaces at their disposal may have to split up the melt, adding time to the whole process.

When a customer with a large batch is watching the melt, we don’t want to take more time out of their day by having to do the process twice because only a smaller furnace is available. With this larger capacity tilt furnace, we can do large batches all at once, let the customer watch the entire process and take their samples with them in a reasonable amount of time. Our new tilt furnace allows us to better meet our clients’ schedules and needs.

We are very proud of our continued efforts to offer flexible solutions to our customers. We are excited about our new tilt furnace and the commitment it represents to explore new technologies that allow us to provide our customers with the most efficiency and the best possible end product. If you’d like to learn more about our new furnace feel free to email me at jantonacci@advchem.com.

Stay tuned next month for ‘Always Looking to Improve: A look at our new Burn Room’