# Poor man's AR, How to make?



## Never_Evil (Apr 30, 2008)

I was reviewing the General Reactions List from Steve's site and come across the poor man's AR. My initial trails were to make the poor man's nitric, but I think all attempts have failed because it will not disolve any copper. I was going to make AR with the poor mans nitric until I reread for the poor mans AR. (Wow thats a lot of poor mans)

Do I follow the same steps as the PM nitric where I dissolve the Sodium Nitrate into the water over heat, then add the Muratic and put the vessel in an ice bath? 

Or do I dissolve the Sodium Nitrate into the water add the HCl and its all set?

I do know that AR is dangerous with the cloud fumes and respirators, tight fitting goggles, and a wide open area are secured. I just have too many pins that I dont want to deplate and the AP process is a little too slow for my liking.


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## lazersteve (Apr 30, 2008)

The AR is made by dissolving the sodium nitrate in hot water and adding the HCl. Boil until it turns orange and it's ready to go.

There will be a huge cloud of red fumes if you mix up 1/4 pound or more (the red cloud lasts for 3+ hours).

Steve


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## Never_Evil (Apr 30, 2008)

Thank you Steve, you are a god! 8)


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## warrendya (Jun 17, 2008)

I'm a newbie and have read quite a bit of the forum but have a question. Steve says to mix the sodium nitrate with hot water, then add to the HCL and boil until the solution is orange. My question is, since the boiling point of nitric acid is 83C, won't this drive off the nitric acid in the poor man's AR solution?

Kind of a related question, if I made nitric acid using the recipe Steve posted at http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=11223#11223, would using this nitric acid plus HCL make a better AR than the poor man's recipe?

And since I'm asking questions, here's one more. Some techniques for dropping gold from AR say to neutralize acid with Urea, others say to boil it off. I assume the choice is between whether you want to buy Urea or put up with nitric vapors, all else being equal. But if I did boil, would it be feasible to condense the nitric vapors with a Liebig condenser to reuse the nitric?

Thanks!


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## lazersteve (Jun 17, 2008)

Warren,

Welcome to the forum and thanks for the post.

Either way when you make the nitric acid or poor mans AR you will lose some nitric as vapor. The amount is small unless you boil the solutions for an extended amount of time before using.

I think making the nitric first then using it to make AR would be slightly cleaner (not as many dissolved salts in the solution) than just making poor man's AR.

Just like the answer above, the fewer chemicals you add to the mix the cleaner the reaction, so I always opt to boil down my solutions. Recovery of the fumes would require a glassware setup and the nitric would have other contaminants (HCl). A better acid recycling scheme may be to convert the copper nitrate and other nitrates formed in the AR reaction back into nitric acid. Your idea would be better if you run the fumes into a basic solution to recover the nitric as sodium nitrate then use this sodium nitrate in the formation of more nitric. Either way the end result is about the same

Steve


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