Getting pure gold (shining)

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silver is pretty much insoluble as a chloride in water ( if high acid and oxidizer slightly more soluble). so this is were letting solution sit or heating to lower chlorides and not using too much acid or oxidizer and adding water several volumes of water help to precipitate the silver,

lead is insoluble as a chloride in COLD water (more soluble if acidic high or oxidizer) lead is slightly soluble in boiling hot water,
lead sulfate is insoluble, hot or cold, this is where a few drops of H2SO4 (sulfuric acid) can help to get the lead out.

lead is not very soluble in acid peroxide it is usually not to acidic and if you havent used too much peroxide it settles to bottom. silver similar.

lead can be in the HCl / bleach, letting sit and adding water will precipitate it if contents are not too high, if you dissolved alot of lead adding couple drops of sulfuric will also help. silver will also precipitate when diluted and less acidic,

since silver and lead are insoluble as chlorides they wont hardly dissolve in solution of HCL. although with high oxidizer some will this is a contaminate we eliminate by lowering the oxidizer in solution and diluting with water etcetera, then after precipitating gold with washing proceedures, we still are after these contaminates, and sometime by
re-refinining a second time.
 
Butcher, would it be a good practice for me to take my AuCl filter it clear then add few drops of Sulfuric and filter soilids then dilute with water, let it sit and filter out whatever is on the bottom?
then precip, rinse and repeat.

My AuCl sometimes has white stuff that does not sink well, and sometimes it looks kinda grey, and the longer the AuCl sits seems the more whitish stuff, like somthing is preciping as the acidity goesd down from gassing off. Now, since I know their is only AU, CU, and solders going into my AP baths then it has to be either lead or silver from the soilder, Correct?
 
it can help to boil a little chlorides off or just let it sit for a day or so, if you have lead few drops of sulfuric can help remove it in later step,
filter, add water to dilute ( this also lowers acid concentration so the silver chlorides and lead will precipitate, if after a day you still see some white powder in a dilute solution add a little HCL or table salt to help precipitate the silver as chlorides, in this dilute solution it should not be salts of your acids you are seeing. it is pretty much similar for Aqua regia solutions
 
Sounds good.

One thing struck me when you said salts from the acid, I did not know about that and I knowticed if their is whit stuff floating on the bottom nad I dilute it goes away instantly. Am I correct to say that would indicate it is acid salt?
 
table salt can be made from HCL + NaOH muratic acid and sodium hydroxide to make sodium chloride NaCl and H2O,
when you add sodium hypochlorite (bleach ) to HCL hydrochloric acid (Muratic acid), NaClO + HCL, you will also be making some table salt in solution,

any acid and a metal like sodium or copper when added together make salts of those metals the sodium metal salt is just one of the salts we put on our french fries or food, some salts are water soluble some are not, some are soluble in acids, and some are not,

hope this helps
 
IT does TYVM

Now I feel confident that the white stuff is salt not silver but, for the sake of getting clean gold I will use dilution and drops of sulfuric to get out any silver or lead..
 
GSP
Could you please elaborate on this? You probably have some where but I haven't seen it. Also will this work in HCL/clorox solution as well?

When it's finished, transfer to a clean bucket. Add 3 times it's volume of tap water. This dilution will precipitate about 99% of the silver as silver chloride. To about 4 gallons of dilute aqua regia, add about 60 mL of battery acid and stir. This precipitates the lead. Allow to settle.

I'll go over the precipitation later.
 
I didnt have chance to read all of this thread but in the first few pages Harold is saying to dissolve the gold in AR
Thats the impresion I got
Hoke always says to remove the base metals first with nitric.
I could be wrong about this
Is this trued
Tommorow I will read this more carefully
 
Yes Harold would advise removing base metals, sometimes when we discuss things we may start at a certain point, especially when the person we are talking to already has an understanding of basics, it takes books and books to cover all the details, and it is hard to write them all in one post.
Harolds post here is excellent advice, the washing technique is just great, this info is worth copying and putting up on the refining wall.
 
goldsilverpro said:
Damn, Ralph,

You keep bringing up this damned thread and I'm just trying to forget it :lol:
Click to expand...
no-lassie-joke.jpg
 
Harold_V said:
lazersteve said:
I'm sure I used enough nitric (70% Lab Grade). I even poured off the first batch and added more to be sure. I didn't get much more action. I think heating is the issue. Since I don't have a fume hood yet I do everything cold and just wait it out. As I've stated many times, I'm in no hurry.
Click to expand...

There were a few batches I ran that were difficult to process. In my case it was a matter of not having added enough silver, so the end result is much as you describe. Even with a hard boil for a prolonged period of time, there were occasions when all action ceased, yet the core of the material being processed didn't have the base metals removed.

What I discovered in that instance is that you're more or less between a rock and a hard place. The only thing that works with certainty is to melt any un-dissolved pieces along with an ample amount of silver, to lower the gold content. Seems like if you run the first results in AR to exclude the gold, by the time it has been removed, the silver exposed will have formed a hard crust and makes running the balance of the material in nitric next to impossible. Re-melting eliminates all the headaches.
Click to expand...

Have you tried hammering it out into a thin sheet? More surface area will stop the gold from blocking access to the silver and other base metals.
 
MargueriteMingorance said:
Have you tried hammering it out into a thin sheet? More surface area will stop the gold from blocking access to the silver and other base metals.
Click to expand...
I didn't consider that as a viable option. I ran my operation for gain, and couldn't spend that kind of time messing with the material when I could remelt, adding more silver, and have it back in acid in just a couple of minutes, with no fear of loss.

I'm not suggesting it wouldn't work---it would---but chasing the splintered values and spending the time just made no sense to me.

By the way, more surface area isn't why it works. It works because the inquarted material, now being thinner, is dissolved to the core before a hard, impervious crust can form, isolating the remaining material from nitric. The increased surface area just happens to be the result of thinning.

Harold
 
What is the name of this EDTA product? What is its formula? Did you add the salt to the AR solution? perhaps the sodium in it took the place of the gold, while the EDTA held everything else in solution.
 
MargueriteMingorance said:
What is the name of this EDTA product? What is its formula? Did you add the salt to the AR solution? perhaps the sodium in it took the place of the gold, while the EDTA held everything else in solution.
Click to expand...

That's being pretty pushy. This is one of few things that I invented and consider valuable. I doubt that I'll divulge it on an open forum although I'm sure that Manuel will have something to say about that. If you really want it, I will consider selling this information to you. I am including it in a book that I am writing, but who knows when that will be finished.
 
Whoa, hey, sorry, didn't mean to step on your toes. I'm not a refiner, I'm not looking to pry out your secrets. I was just curious what the mechanism was. Do you think it was the sodium going into solution that did it? EDTA doesn't decompose back into the formeldehyde it is made from, as far as I can tell.
 
Sodium is way smaller than gold? How would they trade places? No, it must be a redox and a VERY specific one at that!
 

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