Background

Alloys of gold, silver and base metals are used for many purposes, including jewelry making and refining to pure precious metals. Gold is very soft, and often palladium or platinum is mixed in the alloy to harden the gold when making jewelry and other gold alloy items.

At the mine site, initial extraction and primary refining may be performed to establish initial gold and silver semi-pure alloy content before sending material for final refining. The Rigaku NEX QC EDXRF analyzer offers a simple, non-destructive and low-cost analytical technique for measuring alloy chemistry of doré bars, ingots and foils, as well as other gold alloy materials. Non-technical operators obtain results without the need for special sample preparation, sample conditioning or technical knowledge.