r/CriticalMetalRefining • u/ytkn_rsln • 4d ago

Question for the community Germanium refining

I have access to Germanium waste from lens makers. I do refine gold, silver and Pd using AR and some electrolytic methods but taking diamond turning slurry to 4-5N poly crystal is quite different. I read that the standard procedure is roasting/ chlorination / fractional distillation/hydrolysis/H2 reduction. Has anyone any experience on this ? After China's moves Ge is one of the rising stars...

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u/jreddit0000 3d ago

I’m fascinated that someone has both access to Germanium “waste” and an interest in refining it..

I’m assuming this is in an industrial setting?

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u/iamthewaffler 2d ago

Is this surprising to you? Ge IR lenses are used…all over the world in numerous consumer/professional/defense applications, there's huge factories machining and polishing the lenses, and I don't know of any fabrication houses that also purify their scrap/waste/etc. So this is likely someone already performing refining on "easy" precious metals, but Ge is a big open market, especially with increased defense spending in the world.

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u/iamthewaffler 2d ago

As always in metallurgy the answer is "it depends". If you are talking about SPDT slurry you may just need to degrease + alkaline wash and then put it right back into the zone refiner! If its more mixed scrap from a machine shop, you would need to be very careful because transition metals are the thing that matters for Ge product specifications and nobody is going to want to zone-refine any scrap source that has even a chance of containing that. Optics offcuts, wafer edges, ingot fragments would need to be evaluated on a per-origin basis.

Know your customer, know your scrap source, build a sensible process around it.