# Bleach for plated gold?



## Anonymous (Nov 30, 2008)

I read this on another forum and was wondering if any one has tried it?

This is Very Simple and is the basis of all Chemical Gold recovery in the Au gold mines in the early days.

Take the gold coated item , (we do this with gold tailings in exloration) Boil it in a solution of Concentrated household bleach,50% water to bleach 50% for 45 Min.

Drain off the solution

Put in plastic pail

Put in stainless Steel rod (one side)

Put in roll of wire wool (other side)

get a powerful battery charger

Attach (plus) to wool and minus to SS rod.

Turn on Battery Charger .

leave 40 mins, Gold will be converted from solution to the wire wool.

Take wire wool and dissolve in crucible in hydroclauric acid, carefully drain off the acid and keep sludge at bottom.

Place crucible over Bunson burner and melt.

Small gold nugget will form in the bottom.


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## Gold Nut (Nov 30, 2008)

This sounds interesting, but it sounds too easy! I hope it works...I'm gonna try it.

Gold Nut


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## butcher (Nov 30, 2008)

bleach solution dissolves the gold, 
then they are just using electricity to plate out gold, and then making an impure iron and gold nuggrt which would need further processing.
no I have not tried it because to me there are far better ways to recover gold.

something is wrong with your instructions?
if the positive terminal was on the steel wool it would try to plate the gold to the stainless steel cathode and fill solution with Iron,disolving the wool.
looks like your polarity got messed up in the translation of this process?
I wouldnt try this in an enclosed enviroment (chlorine gas).


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## Anonymous (Nov 30, 2008)

I used bleach by adding the hcl to it on some fashion jewerly, it would foam up instantly and remove the gold down to the nickel plating. Seemed to work good, but then I realized that there just was not enough gold on the fashion jewerly to pay for the bleach and acid.

I did 5lb give or take and only got a small bead that I could not weight because my scale only measures in .1grams.

Jim


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## Anonymous (Dec 1, 2008)

butcher said:


> bleach solution dissolves the gold,
> then they are just using electricity to plate out gold, and then making an impure iron and gold nugget which would need further processing.
> no I have not tried it because to me there are far better ways to recover gold.
> 
> ...



It was not mine, I just read it and thought it looked like a maybe. Yes I thought it was wrong as well for the current flow but left it the same way I saw it.
I used to use something similar when I was gold plating. It was called chrome striper and it worked the same way in striping chrome off of nickel.

I just thought it might be more cost effective striping with this and then using AP


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## butcher (Dec 2, 2008)

AP disolves most of base metals (copper main component) and not gold if peroxide not used in excess (although you could get a little gold into solution) this leaves mostly gold powder to redisolve and refine further.
usually better used on gold plated to thin copper items like fingers (foils), or CPU (pins) it will work for plated pins to remove gold, dissolving pins it just takes more time, or heat and more control of HCl acid peroxide.
I usually use nitric on plated pins.
some here use Steves wonderful sulfuric cell
the process you propose would work if properly set up, but to me would be more trouble and use more acid to get the gold to a pure state,it would in my opinion be better suited for ore recovery, just my 2 pennys.


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