A Brief Description Of Assaying

Assaying is defined as the subjection of the metal to chemical analysis in order to determine the strength, and quality of its components. This is one of the processes in metallurgy. It is a process of extracting precious, or essential metals form their ores. An ore is a combination of many metals. Some of them are found in traces. This process analyses the specific metallic content of the ore, alloy, or any other combination of metals.

This whole process can be simple as well as complex. If the complex process is followed, the ore is subjected to complete metal analysis. However, in the simple process, the quantity of only one or two specific metals is measured.

When the weight of the metal is measured in the assaying technique, it is called gravimetric assay. Generally, the wet assay technique which involves the liquid reagents is used in such systematic process. Similarly, when the volume of the metal is under consideration, it is called volumetric assay. The dry assay utilises the process of fusion of the ore to get the metal in a pure state.

There are many traditional and sophisticated methods used in the assaying process. The ancient alchemists and the goldsmiths employed the method of subjection of the base metals to heat. This process is termed as fire assaying. This traditional method is still very popular among the commercial reefing processes. The other sophisticated method is by means of spectrometric analysis. It has its own importance, but it is not suitable when the precious metals are randomly scattered. As in this case, large sample is subjected to analysis.

The most ordinary and the conventional fire assaying process consist of six steps. The primary step is the compilation of the sample. The composed sample is then subjected to the combination procedure. This includes the melting of the ore, and its combination with the other reagents. Therefore, metal gains the form of droplet. This droplet then, with no trouble descends into the crucible. The left over substance is called slag, which is evicted through an opening.

The impurities are oxidised by using certain reagents. These impurities mainly include lead, and iron. At the high temperature, the left over precious metals such as gold, and silver assume the shape of droplet. The next very important step is the weighing of these beads. All the beads are weighed to determine the quantity of the precious metal in the ore.

The next step is the entity extent of the mass of gold and silver. For this reason the silver is dissolved by means of nitric acid. Now the left over gold beads are calculated. This is the heaviness of the gold. The heaviness of silver is calculated by subtracting gold weight form the whole gold silver weight.

There is a chance of molten impurities to get mixed with the gold silver beads. For this purpose, further specification are made by the use of arc spectrograph. This separates the gold, and other impurities based on their mass to charge ratio. A graph is obtained that shows the percentage of gold, silver, and other impurity metal present in the ore. Other metals including bismuth, tin, antimony, and copper can also be analysed by this method.