TRANSPARENT AR....???

Dear friends:
I was trying to refine gold from CPU(AMD) using bleach and nitric acid, after mix and wait 30 minute my AR was totally transparent.
What i did wrong guys ?
Please i need your advise .
Thanks

Aqua regia is made up of what? :wink:

Göran

It sounds like you are going about this the wrong way. AR is not made with bleach. It is a mixture of HCl and nitric acid. Hydrochloric acid and bleach will dissolve gold but it is generally not used to refine CPU's. How are you processing the cpu's and what kind are they? Can you test it with stannous chloride? Do not do anything else to your project for now. If you put it away safely the gold won't go anywhere.

Sorry guys...i used Bleach+Nitric acid to dissolve gold not aqua regia ,but why my solution didn't turn to yellow like usual....still transparent ????

goldfever007 said:

Sorry guys...i used Bleach+Nitric acid to dissolve gold not aqua regia ,but why my solution didn't turn to yellow like usual....still transparent ????

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Have you used Nitric Acid and Bleach to dissolve Gold in the past ?

yes and it works good.....but this time i don't know why ? it looks like didn't dissolve anything..!!!!

bigpagoda said:

It sounds like you are going about this the wrong way. AR is not made with bleach. It is a mixture of HCl and nitric acid. Hydrochloric acid and bleach will dissolve gold but it is generally not used to refine CPU's. How are you processing the cpu's and what kind are they? Can you test it with stannous chloride? Do not do anything else to your project for now. If you put it away safely the gold won't go anywhere.

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Read what bigpagoda said again.

Hydrochloric acid and nitric acid will make AR.
Hydrochloric acid and sodium nitrate will make a substitute for AR.
Hydrochloric acid and potassium nitrate will make a substitute for AR.
Hydrochloric acid and bleach will make a substitute for AR.

Nitric acid and bleach will not make AR!

goldfever007 said:

yes and it works good.....but this time i don't know why ? it looks like didn't dissolve anything..!!!!

Click to expand...

When you did it last time, did it also dissolve the Copper and other base metals ?

yes ..........definitely yes.

goldfever007 said:

Sorry guys...i used Bleach+Nitric acid to dissolve gold not aqua regia...

Click to expand...

I was about to say "Bullshit", but it just need acidity and chloride anions floating around, so that could conceivably work.

There is a simple experiment that anyone with a tiny amount of Gold, bleach and nitric acid could perform to check if this is bullshit or not.

Maybe i'll try it out tomorrow with 30% pool bleach.

Whatever happens, it isn't like the Gold will go anywhere, so why not.

With chlorine it is possible to dissolve gold. But how much would it take to process a cpu?

I do think nitric and bleach would dissolve metals-maybe even gold. Just wondering how strong the nitric you used was, if it is too strong you could be passivating a layer of oxides on the outside of the metal that will prevent the acids from doing their job. Since you did not answer my question about what your process is I don't want to recommend diluting the solution because I don't want you to make it worse. Please let us know what you have actually done.
Are they whole CPU's? What source of bleach/nitric? Did you heat it? How long has it been reacting (or not)? It is very difficult to help you if we are just guessing what you have.

Bleach is partly sodium hydroxide so if you use too much it will neutralize the acid.

Göran