# Questions about Crockpot method



## rewalston (Apr 10, 2014)

I was wondering if HCl/water 50:50 would damage the ceramic lining of the Crockpot. The one I'm going to be using is too small to fit a pyrex coffee pot into and I don't have a beaker big enough for it. I have some HCl/water that I used to desolder some boards in and I have a few more boards to desolder before I can move on to mask removal and AP. I plan on evaporating the majority of the water from the solution afterwards to cut down on waste, approximately 5 gal of solution at the moment.

Rusty


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## nickvc (Apr 10, 2014)

Rusty so long as the enamel on the ceramic is intact it should be fine, do this outside the fumes while not overly dangerous it will make you cough.


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## rewalston (Apr 10, 2014)

Thanks Nick, that is exactly where I was going to do it. I have to run an extension cord though. But it will be out of the way. 

Rusty


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## Pantherlikher (Apr 10, 2014)

Being the lazy gus that I am...
I have 2 waste crocks still sitting less then half full from last fall that still looks good enough to eat from. 1st waste crock has copper in to drop any PMs and the 2nd has steel to drop copper.

Both nicely evaporated to less then half starting level and settled nice. Just have to spring clean some to make room to get back to making messes again...

B.S.


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## rewalston (Apr 10, 2014)

Pantherlikher said:


> Being the lazy gus that I am...
> I have 2 waste crocks still sitting less then half full from last fall that still looks good enough to eat from. 1st waste crock has copper in to drop any PMs and the 2nd has steel to drop copper.
> 
> Both nicely evaporated to less then half starting level and settled nice. Just have to spring clean some to make room to get back to making messes again...
> ...



How was it on evaporating? I know that crockpots by nature (function) retain a lot of moisture. I have about 5 gal of my leach that I need to concentrate. Before concentrating it I was thinking about doing some pins in them after all the desoldering is done. I know that it will be a dirty solution, but because of lack of storage I think it will work to keep waste down to a minimum.


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## Pantherlikher (Apr 10, 2014)

Crocks are great for evaporating. As long as it's not covered. Heated or not. Heat speeds evaporation.
I have a "pssgetty" strainer covering them both and they both are less then half volume over the winter. 

I have turned them on to medium and let them simmer for a couple hours though and have reduced nicely, with ventalation. I heated the first pot with some copper in it with spent AP and it reduced and dissolved alot of the copper that was in the bottom, which also had some steel mixed in. Was before getting the second crock pot so had some steel left in it. Every hour or so, I scooped some warm solution out and put into the second crock with more steel and it dropped alot of copper out which went back into the cleaned out first pot to go through again. (Cleaned sediment out for further processing/ hoping for PMs :mrgreen: 

If you have 5gal. of AP to reduce, grab 2 crock pots and put the pins in the first, while simmering. Just check every hour and add more as it gets down. Keeping it almost full will heat more solution causing more evaporation.

Incinerate a couple few floppy or hard drive cases to oxidize(?) the steel and put into the second pot. This will drop copper like crazy when heated or just sitting. 

A 5gal bucket at the end of the line is for adjusting PH to drop everything out of the spent solution.(Read up on waste disposal).

B.S.


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## rewalston (Apr 10, 2014)

Thanks for the info, it was along the same lines I was thinking on. I only have one outside plug so can't run two pots right now.

Rusty


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## rewalston (Apr 11, 2014)

I just unburied my bucket with the leach I've been talking about. What I found inside after sitting all winter really surprised me. I'm thinking it's either the tin from the solder or possibly silver chloride. Any suggestions? All I know is that before I can continue with my crockpot I need to filter this all out. 

Rusty


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## rewalston (Apr 11, 2014)

I'm guessing a good test for what it might be is to filter and dissolve in HCl, silver won't dissolve.


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## rewalston (Apr 12, 2014)

after some searching of the forum, knew I saw it someplace. The crystals I'm seeing, I now believe are lead chloride. I've done some more searching but can't find it. How is the best way to dispose of the lead chloride once they are filtered out. Can they be converted to something more useful?

Rusty


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## Geo (Apr 13, 2014)

Set some of the crystals out and see if they evaporate into nothing. I had some copper chloride crystals that looked similar to that. After I took them out of the bucket, they evaporated and didnt even leave any liquids.


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## rewalston (Apr 13, 2014)

Thanks Geo, I'll try that as well. Waiting for good weather. Need either bigger coffee filters or a smaller colander for filtering. I had a nice funnel, but it grew legs.

Rusty


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## rewalston (Apr 14, 2014)

Well, I finally got both my leach bucket and my rinse bucket filtered. I have the filters saved in a ziplock bag for right now. I noticed in the rinse bucket, I have a lot of black powder, components and some leaves that crept in there along with the crystals. And, the leach filter has a lot of black powder and saw some gold foils that came off as well as the crystals. I'm wondering about what the best process is to recover this. I'm thinking of boiling water to dissolve the crystals, and then incinerate the filters with the rest of the contents and then process the ash with HCl/Bleach. Am I heading in the wrong direction?

Rusty


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## joubjonn (Apr 14, 2014)

I would skip the boiling part and go straight to incineration

I think you can also just take the papers and dissolve the values in them with HCl/Cl and 
Get most of your values. I find that coffee filters tend to burn and fly ash all over the place 
Which will include your values. If you used coffee filters I would just place them in solution. 

Also would wait until you have a nice quantity of them before you do this. I am finding that the less
Gold you have to work with in refining (less then a gram) the easier it is to loose out in the end. 

The black concentrate from a cell can be misleading as far as quantity of actual gold. I remember seeing a nice
Pile my first time and thought I was going to have a much bigger yield then I actually did. Good luck! Glad it went well for you


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## rewalston (Apr 14, 2014)

Thanks Jonn, I have some more boards that I'm going to do in the crockpot, less to filter out. I'll have more filters to add to the pile after they are done, as well as after mask removal and then AP. I'll do all the filters at the same time. I just need to find something to heat the NaOH in, I don't think the crockpot would like that stuff. 

Rusty


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