Small scale gold refining: Strengths and weaknesses

Jewelry fabrication process that includes technique like filing, piercing, grinding and drilling are amongst the popular application that have been widely used for such a long time. It is a known fact these processes usually would produce various type of metal scrap at the end of the process cycle. Thus, the gold scrap that is generated from the jewelry fabrication process need to be collected and refined back to pure gold. Interestingly, the nitrogen dioxide formed during the traditional (small scale) gold recovery process has been observed as hazardous i.e. air pollution and profile some risk on safety. The research intent is to measure reliability and effectiveness of local traditional gold recovery method for jewellery scrap and to determine weather the traditional (small scale) process is able to produce a higher percentage of gold purity from the jewellery scrap as compared to the modern techniques. To verify this, a full cycle of physical and chemical testing via traditional methods have been conducted to derive and validate the research findings and conclusions. The analysis of the gold chemical compositions, hardness and metallography are tabulated to strengthen the research findings.