Precious Metal Refining

The world today is a very crowded place. As the entire human population grows, so is the demand for natural resources, which are at best limited. Because of this, the human race has taken to recycling materials like wood, paper, plastic, oil and even precious metals.

As we all know, precious metals are highly valuable and rare chemical elements, which include gold, silver and platinum. Compared to most other metals, these elements are valued for their ductility and malleability, their higher melting points and their luster and attractiveness. These very qualities make these metals very much in high demand. But since the world’s supply of these metals is extremely limited, those in the precious metals business have adapted by coming up with precious metal refining services.

Precious metals refining is essentially part of a recycling process. It refers to the recovery and refining of precious metals such as gold, silver, platinum, iridium and rhodium. Many of these precious metals are reclaimed by precious metal refiners from everyday products that many of us are unaware they contain certain amounts of precious metal.

Gold, for instance, can be recovered by scrap gold refiners from objects that include broken jewelry, dental products, electronic components such as circuit boards and laboratory materials. Silver, for its part, can be recovered by a silver refiner from everyday items such as silverware, unwanted or broken jewelry and even photo developing waste, the world of film photography being one of the top consumers of silver due to its being highly reflective. To recover platinum, refiners of precious metals can reclaim them from old platinum jewelry and discarded catalytic converters, that thing attached to car mufflers designed to reduce the toxicity of an internal combustion engine’s emissions.

In the precious metal refining process, precious metals refiners would need to remove the other metals that were alloyed with the valuable metal. Typically, the refining of precious metals starts with smelting. Smelting is a process done by a precious metal refiner, where the item is melted in a furnace to separate the impurities from the precious metal. In refining gold items, for example, the gold sinks to the bottom of a cone-shaped container where the molten gold is usually poured. The impurities stay on top, where they can be scraped off. The gold is melted again and poured into bullion bars once the precious metals refiner is satisfied all the impurities have been removed.

To determine the level of purity in the bullion bars, a process called assaying is then performed. This process requires that two samples be taken from each end of the bar, and put through a “fire assay” test, which is considered as the most accurate assay for gold and silver. Most gold refining companies prefer this method.