Advanced Chemical Blog

We had a visit recently from MJSA, the Manufacturing Jewelers and Suppliers of America. They’re planning an upcoming issue of their Journal around a “refining” theme and had a few questions for us. I think they liked what they heard and saw because they made a video of a melt after we showed them around entitled Refining 101.

The MJSA was interested in finding out more about what we believe to be a critical part of the refining process: representation, or “repping” for short. Advanced Chemical believes it is important for customers to participate in repping - to witness their material being processed -because it allows them to learn a lot about the refinery. Witnessing also helps reassure clients when they hand us their material.

All first-time visitors are given our “right to know” training before they rep or even enter the refinery because refining is hazardous. (Being the largest hazardous materials refiner in North America brings with it certain dangers.) They need to know that we ensure their safety and they need to be aware of hazards. The training takes 10 – 15 minutes, and then the client can safely walk through the refinery and watch their material being processed.

We start the repping process by sending them the shipping material and a security seal after they’ve notified us that they want to rep their material. The client packs their material and seals it, record the security seal’s number, notify us when they’ve shipped the material, and schedule a time to rep the processing. We’ll hold their order in our vault until they arrive.

We do not break the seal and check the weight until the rep is there to oversee the process. We record the figures and handle any differences we find.  For example, we once had a client leave a  hammer in the shipping container and it threw the weight off by a couple of pounds.

Another safeguard we provide our clients is the way we conduct our sampling procedure. We draw an assay sample during processing, which is divided into three parts: one for us, one for the customer, and a third sample, the “umpire sample,” to send to a third-party laboratory.  If there’s a discrepancy between our lab’s assay and their lab’s assay and we can’t settle the difference, the middle assay of the three will be used for settlement.

There are secondary benefits to repping. The customer now has the opportunity to learn about other processes the refinery is capable of performing that they might not have known. They learn about our acid digestion and cyanide strip processes, as well as our disposal capability. The latter is nice to know, because some of our customers send us hazardous material such as cyanide solutions or acids. By repping, the customer knows with full confidence that we properly dispose of hazardous materials (cradle to grave) after the valuable metals have been recovered. This gives our customers confidence, because as the generators of the hazardous waste, they are ultimately responsible for proper disposal under EPA regulations regardless of who actually disposes of it. Repping helps us our customers know that their hazardous waste will be handled professionally and ethically when they see our disposal systems and meet our full-time environmental and regulatory manager.

We encourage reps to ask questions about the process and we help them understand how they should segregate their material for a better return.  In addition to our refining operators, our lab personnel and environmental people are always available to answer any questions as well. Having that time with the refining experts is priceless, and we highly encourage our customers to spend time repping a sample to have the opportunity to understand the entire refining process better.