Gold parting in 1860's Australia. It is able to refine gold up to 99.5% purity. The process involves blowing a stream of chlorine gas over and through a crucible filled with molten impure gold. Impurities in the gold form chlorides before the gold does and these insoluble salts are removed from the melt by skimming the surface. Invented by Emil Wohlwill in 1874, this produces the highest purity gold (99.999%). It is an electrolytic process using pure gold for the cathode (or titanium as a starter cathode) and chloroauric acid (gold chloride-hydrochloric acid) as the electrolyte; this is made by dissolving gold
Industrial separation processes operations are having several different functions: A heterogeneous mixture (e. g. liquid and solid) can be separated by mechanical separation processes like filtration or centrifugation. Homogeneous mixtures can be separated by molecular separation processes; these are either equilibrium-based or rate-controlled. Equilibrium-based processes are operating by the formation of two immiscible phases with different compositions at equilibrium, an example is distillation (in distillation the vapor has another composition than the liquid). Rate-controlled processes are based on different transport rates of compounds through a medium, examples are adsorption, ion exchange or crystallization. Separation of a mixture into two phases can be done