Magnesia cupels --cs ceramic co.,ltd
Magnesia cupels are very hard, which is an advantage in that they do not suffer so much breakage in shipment. They are always factory-made and are decidedly more expensive than bone-ash cupels, which may be home-made. Certain brands of magnesia cupels give an apparently lower loss of silver in cupeling than can be obtained with bone-ash cupels but it is a question how much of this is real and how much due to an increase in the amount of impurities retained in the silver beads. Magnesia cupels behave quite differently from ordinary bone-ash cupels, and the assayer who is accustomed to bone-ash cupels will have to learn cupeling over again when he starts using those made of magnesite. This difference in behavior is due mainly to the different thermal properties of the two materials. Both the specific heat and the conductivity of magnesite are decidedly greater than those of bone-ash, so that with cupels of both kinds running side by side, the lead on the magnesia cupel is comparatively dull while that on bone-ash is very bright. This is due to the greater conductivity of magnesite, which allows a more rapid dispersion of the heat of oxidation of the lead, with the result that magnesia cupels require a higher muffle temperature than do bone-ash cupels. An especially high finishing temperature is required for magnesite cupels, to insure the elimination of the last 1 or 2% of lead. A bone-ash cupel will finish in a muffle, the temperature of which is sufficient to cause uncovering, but this is not true of the magnesia cupel, because in this case the heat of oxidation of the lead is diffused too rapidly and is not conserved to help out at the finish. Magnesia cupels absorb about two-thirds of their own weight of litharge, those of cement about three-fourths of their weight of litharge
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