The Atlantic Method of refining strictly follows a carefully designed 5-stage protocol that guarantees you the highest returns on your precious metal scrap.
HERE’S WHAT WE DO:
Stage 1: Documentation & Preparation
When your scrap lot arrives at our secure facility in Pittsburgh, it is verified against the accompanying paperwork, and if there are any discrepancies, they are immediately resolved. Once the materials have been verified, the lot is photographed and recorded in our custom-designed database.
Depending upon what types of scrap are included, your lot may be broken down into several parts, each of which will take a slightly different workflow path through the refining process. This helps maximize precious metal content reclamation.
Since each scrap lot is unique, Atlantic has multiple and detailed workflows to handle whatever type of scrap you send.
Stage 2: Smelting
Precise temperatures, specific mixtures and various smelting techniques are chosen to amalgamate the metal in your scrap lot. Precious metal is separated from slag, then coalesced and melted into ingots.
These rough ingots are melted again, poured into bars and cleaned to remove rogue elements which results in the purest metal possible.
Another important step in our quality control process involves x-raying each bar on opposite ends and sides. This allows us to make a comparative analysis of the bar’s metal content and ensures that the bar is homogenous.
Drill samples are taken from both sides of the bar and delivered to our assay department.
Stage 3: Assay & Settlement
Our assay department weighs each drill sample, digests it and feeds it into one of our state-of-the-art ICAP instruments, spectrometers that accurately measure in parts per billion. No less than three samples of each scrap lot are sent through the ICAP instrument which verifies exact metal content.
The ICAP findings are displayed as a percentage of the known weight of each element for which we are testing. Finding the percentage by weight of each payable element (Au, Ag, Pt and Pd) gives us the assay. Total weight divided by the percentage of each element, multiplied by the value of each of these four elements gives us the total value of the bar.
Settlement calculation is based on 100% of recovered metal content for gold, silver, platinum and palladium, and we use the 5-day moving average of the second London Close (PM).
Charges are 10% and a $25 USD assay fee, and settlements can be made by check or wire transfer or in bullion.
Stages 4 & 5: Digestion, Extraction & Purification
Atlantic utilizes the latest technologies during digestion, extraction and purification which allow us to produce .9995 elemental materials for sale back into the industry.
Our ability to refine precious metal from scrap to pure with no middleman to pay and no outsourcing of any step of the refining process places us in a unique position and translates into the highest returns in the industry.
