# Contaminated Silver Chloride, need help please.



## Jonbot5k (Mar 26, 2018)

First off I'm a newbie so bare with me here. 
The other day I finally decided to process some of the waste from My exploits in electronic scrap gold recovery. I used the copper chloride or "AP" process, using HCl and H2O2 to dissolve the base metals and free up the gold. All waste was poured into a 5gal bucket to which I added a bunch of bare copper and let it bubble for a few months to cement out remaining PMs, then I removed the air pump and let settle for another month before decanting and collecting the grayish white sludge at the bottom. I assume the bulk of the sludge is AgCl but at the very bottom of the collection beaker is a dark black powder (gold powder?) and I can still see flakes of gold. I intend on converting the AgCl to metallic form using the lye and sugar method but before I do is there a simi easy way to separate the AgCl from the other material? I was thinking about dissolving the AgCl in Ammonia and filtering to remove the "other crap" but I've read this can form a touch sensitive explosive, which I'd rather stay away from no matter how rare it might be. My other idea is to continue with the lye/sugar method and once I've gotten "contaminated" metallic silver dissolving it in Nitric and filtering out what ever doesn't dissolve. Any ideas/Help would be much appreciated.


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## FrugalRefiner (Mar 26, 2018)

I would guess your grayish white sludge is more likely to be mostly CuCl, not AgCl. Take a small sample of the sludge and add some HCl. If it dissolves and the solution turns green, it's copper.

Dave


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## Jonbot5k (Mar 26, 2018)

...and its copper, thanks Dave


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## FrugalRefiner (Mar 26, 2018)

Was there anything left that didn't dissolve? Even just a little? Gold can dissolve into AP. It cements out as a very fine, black powder when the leach gets loaded with copper, as yours did. It would probably be very hard to see from a small sample, but there's the possibility that there's a bit there.

Dave


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## Jonbot5k (Mar 27, 2018)

Yeah there is, enough that I can see it settling to the bottom of the sludge. In one of my runs I added WAY too much peroxide and watched some gold dissolve. oops .


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