Induction makes refining gold in office possible.

When you melt gold on the 8th floor of an office building in downtown Manhattan, you want your operations to be reliable, clean and efficient. That's why Ibrahim Fadl, owner of Express Metal Refining Co., New" York, N.Y., replaced his torch with an advanced induction system for melting precious metals.

Since the Stone Age when man first melted gold with fire, melting gold with fossil fuels has not changed fundamentally. But electric induction offered Fadl significant advantages for his business.

"My business is basic," he explained. "We buy scrap precious metal, melt it, refine it and sell it back to the jewelry manufacturers. When we were melting with a torch, it presented safety issues, dealing with the acetylene and oxygen, especially here in the city."

Express Metal Refining replaced its torch with a 10 kW flexitune induction melting system with an integral No. 6 push-out crucible furnace from Inductotherm, Rancocas, N.J. Fadl reports that it has drastically improved his business.

"Not only has tire new induction melting system eliminated the flammable gasses, it's cleaner and faster than melting with a torch," he said.

Faster melting gives Express Metal Refining more production capacity without adding costs and allows it to turn around its inventory taster, which is crucial when gold market prices are volatile, as they frequently are.

"We could have used a gas furnace to keep up with increasing production, but, unlike induction, which is virtually silent and only heats the metal, a gas furnace would have generated a lot of heat and noise. That would not have been acceptable in our 8th floor office location," he noted.

Induction also enhances metal quality, Fadl said.

"With the new induction furnace, we are melting a much larger batch of scrap metal than had been possible with the torch," he said. "That alone would have given us better metal homogeneity. But induction's magnetic forces also stir the metal during melting. Now our samples are much more homogeneous when we assay the bars we pour."

An important advantage induction melting gives Express Metal Refining is the ability to melt light material, such as filings and bench sweeps.

"Try melting filings with a torch, and you'll find the stuff often just flies away," Fadl said. "But with induction melting, it's no problem. The material melts easily, with mini mal metal loss."

Fadl notes that the ability to melt filings is particularly important because there is a wider spread between the cost of the filings he buys and the market price of the refined gold he sells. It's twice as profitable as melting standard precious metal scrap, he said.

"The melting of filings has become a very high percentage of our business," Fadl said. "I would say for melting it is more than 50%."

Fadl added that the Inductotherm Flexitune melting system is the ideal induction system for his company.

"We are located in the city's business district, not in an industrial park," he said. "The 10kW induction power supply does not require a lot of power, which would not have been available in our office building any way, and a connection to a single water tap is enough for cooling. Finally, the entire setup, with its integrated furnace and power supply, is extremely compact, rugged and arrives ready to work."

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