# Processing Fingers with CuCl2 etching solution



## samuel-a

Hi all,

Just finished writing and uplading a new tutorial.
I reckon it is quite basic for many members but could be helpful to the new guys.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCmXLXrAtto[/youtube]

Gold Fingers - How to Recover Gold from Electronic Scrap

Please post comments, questions and critique...
Thank you all for helping me, especially to Lazsersteve and his great presentation of the process on his website.


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## goldsilverpro

So what did it weigh, Sam? I guess 1.6g. Good video. Very straightforward and well explained.


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## samuel-a

Thanks Cheris! That means alot coming from you.

But i'm not telling just yet...


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## butcher

Excellent video.


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## jonn

Excellent video Sam, thank you. My guess on the weight is 2.3 grams


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## g_axelsson

Great video, I really liked your schematic diagram of the different layers of plating on the card. But the text showing the reaction after that part was really hard to read. That thick fancy font might be cool but it isn't easy on the eyes.

Good work! 8) 

Göran


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## samuel-a

Thanks for the comments guys.

Given, that much of this batch were partially plated figers, the yield was actually at the low end of the spectrum: 1.47g
meaning 1.32 g/lb.
With all the steps shown in the video, I estimate recovery rate of 98%+.

Despite the not so impressive yield for this particular batch, it is my hope the newcomers will get to learn those very basic steps which are required. At the end of the day, they will get their own numbers and could be certain they have made the process properly. Yields, in my point of view is of lesser importance (processing wise), it's all about recovery rate.

*Merry Christmas to you all !!*


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## sharkhook

I love this video! 

I think this is the 9th or 10th time I have watched it, and I keep picking up useful tips. It has helped me find and fix areas that were causing me losses in my recovery process. That means a lot when working with the small amount I am right now. The way you fold the filter has helped to speed up my filtering times. Your wash cycle, after removing the foils was fantastic, I now know where more losses are in my process. I have been using the dry method to shake loose any dry particles and this made me realize I had to be loosing more in the other steps.

Thanks, every beginner should learn something from this that will help them improve in their over all process.


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## Palladium

Merry Christmas Sam!


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## muhammad faisal

hello sam ...
I think this is the 9th or 10th time I have watched it also  but how can i get this complete video ? ? ? ? ?


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## Sungil JEON

Hello sam.
This is Sungil JEON, from KOREA. :lol:
Thank you for very good video.
I have a question.
Would you tell me the concentraion of the copper chloride(CuCl2) solution.
I'm following your experiment of video.
(I'm interested in gold recovery from wast home appliences)
I'll be glad to hear from you.
Thank you for reading, bye.

sincerely your fan Sungil JEON


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## butcher

Sungil JEON,

Welcome to the forum, all of your questions and many more will be revealed as you study the forum, to be successful at recovery and refining you will need to take the time to study, just trying things by watching some videos (even good ones) without doing your home work will lead to many problems and loss of your gold.

Sam in his video used a solution of CuCl2 from a previous batch for his starting etching solution, he could of made the CuCl2 from the copper that the memory foils had on them instead, the concentration of the CuCl2 solution is not important, as the leach works to dissolve copper its concentration is changing.

Spend some time studying the forum, you will be amazed at the many things you will learn, and this is the only way to learn (asking a question may get one answer, but studying any and all of the answers can be found, many you would never even dream to ask).

C.M. Hoke's book will cover the basic principle of recovery and refining (a must read).

A good place to begin is with:
The Guide to the forum.
The general reaction list.
Welcome to new members.
Found in the general chat section. 


In the safety section you can learn how to keep yourself and those around you safe.
A good place to begin in this section is the thread Dealing with waste.

Reading the flagged topics is also a good place to begin your study.

Web sites like Samuel-a's and Laser Steve's and a few other forum members are very helpful to supplement what you have been studying, they can give you helpful information and videos where you can see visually a few of the things we learn on the forum.


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## Sungil JEON

Thank you for your kind answer.
I'll do my best.
And if I have a question, I'll ask you. Thank you.  

p.s : English is not my mother tongue. 
What's the meaning of "Free HCl" ? NO HCl?
It's very hard to understand. Let me know this please...



butcher said:


> Sungil JEON,
> 
> Welcome to the forum, all of your questions and many more will be revealed as you study the forum, to be successful at recovery and refining you will need to take the time to study, just trying things by watching some videos (even good ones) without doing your home work will lead to many problems and loss of your gold.
> 
> Sam in his video used a solution of CuCl2 from a previous batch for his starting etching solution, he could of made the CuCl2 from the copper that the memory foils had on them instead, the concentration of the CuCl2 solution is not important, as the leach works to dissolve copper its concentration is changing.
> 
> Spend some time studying the forum, you will be amazed at the many things you will learn, and this is the only way to learn (asking a question may get one answer, but studying any and all of the answers can be found, many you would never even dream to ask).
> 
> C.M. Hoke's book will cover the basic principle of recovery and refining (a must read).
> 
> A good place to begin is with:
> The Guide to the forum.
> The general reaction list.
> Welcome to new members.
> Found in the general chat section.
> 
> 
> In the safety section you can learn how to keep yourself and those around you safe.
> A good place to begin in this section is the thread Dealing with waste.
> 
> Reading the flagged topics is also a good place to begin your study.
> 
> Web sites like Samuel-a's and Laser Steve's and a few other forum members are very helpful to supplement what you have been studying, they can give you helpful information and videos where you can see visually a few of the things we learn on the forum.


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## FrugalRefiner

Sungil JEON said:


> p.s : English is not my mother tongue.
> What's the meaning of "Free HCl" ? NO HCl?
> It's very hard to understand. Let me know this please...


"Free HCl" usually means a little extra in your solution. In other words, if it required 30 ml. of HCl to dissolve some material, and you had added 35 ml., you would have 5 ml. of free HCl in your solution. It means HCl that is still free to react with more material.

Dave


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## Sungil JEON

FrugalRefiner said:


> Sungil JEON said:
> 
> 
> 
> p.s : English is not my mother tongue.
> What's the meaning of "Free HCl" ? NO HCl?
> It's very hard to understand. Let me know this please...
> 
> 
> 
> "Free HCl" usually means a little extra in your solution. In other words, if it required 30 ml. of HCl to dissolve some material, and you had added 35 ml., you would have 5 ml. of free HCl in your solution. It means HCl that is still free to react with more material.
> 
> Dave
Click to expand...


Hello Dave.
I'm glad to hear an answer from you. Thank you.
But I still have a question.
Why "Free HCl" is important?
The other two conditions are understandable.(CuCl2 and air circulation)
But why "Free HCl"?
I don't have any idea yet. (Maybe my english is problem?)

But I'm happy to be here.
Probably I'll get many helps from all over the world.

Good luck!


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## samuel-a

Butcher thank you.
I couldn't have said it better!


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## Harold_V

samuel-a said:


> Hi all,
> 
> Just finished writing and uplading a new tutorial.
> I reckon it is quite basic for many members but could be helpful to the new guys.


Exceptionally well presented, Sam.

Harold


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## samuel-a

Thank you Harold!


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## Sungil JEON

Hello Dear!

I'm newbie(am I wright?") in this forum.
(Please, would you understand my poor english?)

Yesterday I just finished my first experiment.

But now I'm in trouble.
I've followed whole process from video.(Gold Fingers - How to Recover Gold from Electronic Scrap in youtube)
And now I have two results. 

<Process>
1. (HCl 800ml + H2O 650ml)+(CuCl2 20g + H2O 400ml) + Gold Finger 368g (with Air pumping, during 96hours)
2. Filtering(I got 3.4g Gold foil)
3. HCl(150ml) + H2O(150ml) + Gold foil(heated until 70℃)
then plus HNO3 5ml( then stayed 12 hours)
4. Plus more HNO3(10ml) : but no change
(then after 12 hours) plus HNO3(35ml) : but no change
5. Filtering → this is No. 1 solution

6. Filtered solid(from process 5) + HCl(100ml) + H2O(20ml) + heating(90℃) then plus HNO3(3ml) + more HNO3(3ml, after 15minutes) + more HNO3(10ml)
7. Filtering
8. Filtered solution + Ice cube + H2SO4(15ml) + agitating
9. Filtering → this is No. 2 solution

10. No. 1 solution + SMB 8g (white powder under flask)
11. No. 2 solution + SMB 8g (red colored particle)

, 

Final result is in attached picture. I don't have any idea what's wrong.
I'm seeking expert advice, please.

Thank you for reading this article.


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## butcher

Just a guess, you did not eliminate the free nitric acid, that may be gold trying to precipitate.


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## Sungil JEON

butcher said:


> Just a guess, you did not eliminate the free nitric acid, that may be gold trying to precipitate.



Hello butcher.

Thank you for your advice.

Then do I have to neutralize? with urea?


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## g_axelsson

Sungil JEON said:


> 2. Filtering(I got 3.4g Gold foil)
> 3. HCl(150ml) + H2O(150ml) + Gold foil(heated until 70℃)
> then plus HNO3 5ml( then stayed 12 hours)
> 4. Plus more HNO3(10ml) : but no change
> (then after 12 hours) plus HNO3(35ml) : but no change
> 5. Filtering → this is No. 1 solution


You used way too much acid. To dissolve the gold foils you need 3 ml HCl + 1 ml HNO3 per gram of gold according to theory. Follow these instructions next time.
A more practical way is just to add enough HCl to cover the foils as that will be more than enough, the extra HCl doesn't hurt the process.
Then add 1/2 - 2/3 of the needed nitric acid and watch the process. Depending on how much gases is reabsorbed by the liquid, temperature and so on, the nitric will dissolve more or less of your gold. After ten minutes add small amount of more nitric if it is needed, be patience as chemical reactions takes time.

When all gold is dissolved you shouldn't have that much excess nitric in your solution.
Excess nitric can be eliminated by Harolds "gold button" trick, denoxing by evaporation or by adding sulfamic acid. Use the green words together with denoxing in the search and you should find enough help. All this should have been covered in the introduction, did you read Lazersteves introduction to the forum and followed each link?

For your current situation, I agree with Butcher, you haven't denoxed your solution, there is still a lot of nitric acid and any precipitated gold is immediately dissolved again.

I don't see you mention testing? Do you have stannous chloride? Without it you might try to get gold from a solution that doesn't contain gold. Read up on testing for gold in solution with stannous chloride.

What I don't understand is step 3 and 4 where you claim no change? Do you still have your gold foils? They should have gone into solution at the first step. Are you sure you have nitric acid? Can you dissolve copper with your nitric acid? If you test your nitric acid with copper make it a small test, it reacts violently and emits toxic red fumes.

Be safe!

Göran


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## Sungil JEON

g_axelsson said:


> Sungil JEON said:
> 
> 
> 
> 2. Filtering(I got 3.4g Gold foil)
> 3. HCl(150ml) + H2O(150ml) + Gold foil(heated until 70℃)
> then plus HNO3 5ml( then stayed 12 hours)
> 4. Plus more HNO3(10ml) : but no change
> (then after 12 hours) plus HNO3(35ml) : but no change
> 5. Filtering → this is No. 1 solution
> 
> 
> 
> You used way too much acid. To dissolve the gold foils you need 3 ml HCl + 1 ml HNO3 per gram of gold according to theory. Follow these instructions next time.
> A more practical way is just to add enough HCl to cover the foils as that will be more than enough, the extra HCl doesn't hurt the process.
> Then add 1/2 - 2/3 of the needed nitric acid and watch the process. Depending on how much gases is reabsorbed by the liquid, temperature and so on, the nitric will dissolve more or less of your gold. After ten minutes add small amount of more nitric if it is needed, be patience as chemical reactions takes time.
> 
> When all gold is dissolved you shouldn't have that much excess nitric in your solution.
> Excess nitric can be eliminated by Harolds "gold button" trick, denoxing by evaporation or by adding sulfamic acid. Use the green words together with denoxing in the search and you should find enough help. All this should have been covered in the introduction, did you read Lazersteves introduction to the forum and followed each link?
> 
> For your current situation, I agree with Butcher, you haven't denoxed your solution, there is still a lot of nitric acid and any precipitated gold is immediately dissolved again.
> 
> I don't see you mention testing? Do you have stannous chloride? Without it you might try to get gold from a solution that doesn't contain gold. Read up on testing for gold in solution with stannous chloride.
> 
> What I don't understand is step 3 and 4 where you claim no change? Do you still have your gold foils? They should have gone into solution at the first step. Are you sure you have nitric acid? Can you dissolve copper with your nitric acid? If you test your nitric acid with copper make it a small test, it reacts violently and emits toxic red fumes.
> 
> Be safe!
> 
> Göran
Click to expand...


Thank you for your kind advice.
In fact I'm thoroughly confused.
I thought that I followed all steps like video.
So I looked forward to dissolve of gold foil.
But I can't see that. 
I'll follow your advice and I'll tell the result.
Thank you!


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## butcher

Sungil JEON,

Göran gave excellent advice.

You will constantly struggle and be confused if you try to learn refining by just following a few videos, it take study to understand them and to learn to recover and refine metals, the videos can be helpful to see some of the reactions, but without the study to know how to recover and refine they can almost be meaningless.

Research the problem you have now, and keep up with your study this is where you will learn, the videos are only a tiny bit of that learning process.

Personally I would forget about using urea (besides maybe a few prills for testing), it does not work that well and it can be dangerous. If you need a reagent to de-NOx a solution use sulfamic acid it is the answer, (it also is beneficial if lead is involved), although you will still be much better off using the nitric acid wisely, and do not use any more than needed to get the job done.

For foils or gold powders, HCl acid (hydrochloric acid) and sodium hypochlorite (bleach), or the HCl acid and 32% H2O2, I believe are better to use than aqua regia (HCl acid and nitric acid), it is much easier to deal with a little excess oxidizers, and for me it is also much cheaper to use.

Keep studying the more you learn the easier it gets and the less problems or confusion you will have, then the video's will make more sense, and can be a helpful guide.


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## samuel-a

Sungil JEON,

Hello and welcome to the forum. You seems to be on the right path to recover and refine gold.

My understanding of your problem (as Goran mentioned) is that you are adding Nitric acid but the gold foils just won't dissolve. If that's case, i would strongly recommand you to check the reagents you are working with. Make sure you really do use Hydrochloric acid, make sure you really do use Nitric acid, Make sure your SMB is indeed Sodium Metabisulfite, make sure your Stannous Chloride can really test gold.

If you were indeed able to dissolve the gold foils, with hot HCl + Nitric, then i can guarantee 100% you did not followed the video presentation and the full tutorial on my website (you have read it, right?) as well as you thought. If that's the case, besides keep on reading here, i would encourage you to watch the video and read the tutorial again and compare with your lab notes.
The main point, you should not have used so much nitric (if it really is nitric).


I agree with butcher, the videos i make and upload (and other's too) are supposed to be complementary to the tutorials i write on my website, otherwise i wouldn't have invested so much time writing them. Point is, there's only so much one can stuff in a video. While in text, things tend to get much more detailed. On the other hand, there are things one can write about all day long, but an actual presentation of it is many many times more effective.
The above, is of course not a substitute to actually learn the basics, before (or while) reading Hoke book and the forum, one should gain some basic knowladge in chemistry, laboratory techniques and materials safety.

However and inspite the above, i really do feel (No bragging!) that my video presentation + tutorial on this subject is probably the most comprehensive anyone can find for free (and maybe even amongst the ones you have to pay for).

To summerize, i look forward seeing your gold button. :mrgreen:


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## Sungil JEON

butcher said:


> Sungil JEON,
> 
> Göran gave excellent advice.
> 
> You will constantly struggle and be confused if you try to learn refining by just following a few videos, it take study to understand them and to learn to recover and refine metals, the videos can be helpful to see some of the reactions, but without the study to know how to recover and refine they can almost be meaningless.
> 
> Research the problem you have now, and keep up with your study this is where you will learn, the videos are only a tiny bit of that learning process.
> 
> Personally I would forget about using urea (besides maybe a few prills for testing), it does not work that well and it can be dangerous. If you need a reagent to de-NOx a solution use sulfamic acid it is the answer, (it also is beneficial if lead is involved), although you will still be much better off using the nitric acid wisely, and do not use any more than needed to get the job done.
> 
> For foils or gold powders, HCl acid (hydrochloric acid) and sodium hypochlorite (bleach), or the HCl acid and 32% H2O2, I believe are better to use than aqua regia (HCl acid and nitric acid), it is much easier to deal with a little excess oxidizers, and for me it is also much cheaper to use.
> 
> Keep studying the more you learn the easier it gets and the less problems or confusion you will have, then the video's will make more sense, and can be a helpful guide.



Thank you for your advice!
Thank you very much!


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## Sungil JEON

samuel-a said:


> Sungil JEON,
> 
> Hello and welcome to the forum. You seems to be on the right path to recover and refine gold.
> 
> My understanding of your problem (as Goran mentioned) is that you are adding Nitric acid but the gold foils just won't dissolve. If that's case, i would strongly recommand you to check the reagents you are working with. Make sure you really do use Hydrochloric acid, make sure you really do use Nitric acid, Make sure your SMB is indeed Sodium Metabisulfite, make sure your Stannous Chloride can really test gold.
> 
> If you were indeed able to dissolve the gold foils, with hot HCl + Nitric, then i can guarantee 100% you did not followed the video presentation and the full tutorial on my website (you have read it, right?) as well as you thought. If that's the case, besides keep on reading here, i would encourage you to watch the video and read the tutorial again and compare with your lab notes.
> The main point, you should not have used so much nitric (if it really is nitric).
> 
> 
> I agree with butcher, the videos i make and upload (and other's too) are supposed to be complementary to the tutorials i write on my website, otherwise i wouldn't have invested so much time writing them. Point is, there's only so much one can stuff in a video. While in text, things tend to get much more detailed. On the other hand, there are things one can write about all day long, but an actual presentation of it is many many times more effective.
> The above, is of course not a substitute to actually learn the basics, before (or while) reading Hoke book and the forum, one should gain some basic knowladge in chemistry, laboratory techniques and materials safety.
> 
> However and inspite the above, i really do feel (No bragging!) that my video presentation + tutorial on this subject is probably the most comprehensive anyone can find for free (and maybe even amongst the ones you have to pay for).
> 
> To summerize, i look forward seeing your gold button. :mrgreen:



Thank you very much!
Frankly speaking I'm really confused.
I'm not familiar with this page.
(I don't know that I'm writing this message here.  )
Anyway I'll try and I'll let you know my results.
Thank you.


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## maynman1751

What percent (concentration) are your HCl and your HNO3? If your acids are of a weak concentration it will result in poor dissolution of your foils. It is preferred to have 30-32% HCl and 50-70% HNO3. If you don't have these it will take some adjusting to get the right combination.
You should do as advised and do some serious research and studying before venturing further. These procedures can be very confusing if you don't know the variables involved. It's not as simple as A+B=C. Do your homework and you will succeed. I studied this forum and read the suggested materials for nearly a year before doing anything other than the getting acquainted experiments.
Like Harold says: Read Hokes book and then read it again until you understand it!!!!!!


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## Sungil JEON

This is the last question.
(I just saw that this directory is not allowed to questions. sorry!)

Yesterday I did something.
I used Urea to to reduce too much nitric acid.
And the result is in photos.
....
What's this???


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## samuel-a

Please, test your solution with SnCl2 before you proceed.


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## niteliteone

Looks like the solution is a little too concentrated for what is in it.
Add a little water (h20) and a little heat, then stir. The crystals will dissolve back into solution.

Get rid of the Urea, it has NO good use in refining. :roll:


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## Pantherlikher

Hello Sungil JEON and welcome.

Can you understand english or are you using a translater, hopefully a good translater.

READ the answers given to you!

May I strongly tell you to do nothing? STOP what you are doing, put a lid on the containers.

Translate and read and learn what you are doing. Please?

Read here in the forum and learn what steps you need to learn before you hurt yourself.
Are you doing this inside your house?

This is very dangerous and you could get hurt or hurt someone else.
Learn what to do and why. 

B.S.


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## butcher

Urea + nitric acid can make a salt of urea nitrate, which can be dangerous if heated.

Urea can also decompose to ammonia or ammonium compounds, these can be dangerous with metals like gold.

At this point I would cement the values out of solution with copper.
study dealing with waste in the safety section, to treat the waste.

And then study before proceeding with recovery or refining, to get an understanding of the processes and dangers.


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## Sungil JEON

Hello dear.

Today I want to show you my 3rd results. And I would to listen all of your advice.

I'll show you my experiment steps.

1. I prepared PCB scrap (mainly cellular phone battery) : 211.3 g
2. (HCl 800ml + H2O 650ml) + (CuCl2 20g + H2O 400ml) + PCB scrap + Air pump
3. Gold Foil from step 2.
4. HCl 30ml + H2O 10ml + Gold foil(step 3) + heating 90℃
5. Step 4. + HNO3 3ml
6. after 15 minutes HNO3 2ml
7. after 15 minutes HNO3 2ml
8. after 15 minutes HNO3 1ml
9. Filtering step 8. 
10. Ice cube + step 9. + H2SO4 15ml
11. Filtering step 10.
12. add SMB 4g to step 11.(at 20℃)
13. Picture in here

Questeion> Is this a gold? I wanted to get precipitate. But I just got soft powder and this. I think that I follwed whole steps.

I want to say more things. but my english is too short. understand me please.
Thank you for reading.


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## g_axelsson

That looks like gold on the surface. Just knock it down by spraying it with some water from a spray bottle.

Göran


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## Clneal2003

g_axelsson said:


> Sungil JEON said:
> 
> 
> 
> 2. Filtering(I got 3.4g Gold foil)
> 3. HCl(150ml) + H2O(150ml) + Gold foil(heated until 70℃)
> then plus HNO3 5ml( then stayed 12 hours)
> 4. Plus more HNO3(10ml) : but no change
> (then after 12 hours) plus HNO3(35ml) : but no change
> 5. Filtering → this is No. 1 solution
> 
> 
> 
> You used way too much acid. To dissolve the gold foils you need 3 ml HCl + 1 ml HNO3 per gram of gold according to theory. Follow these instructions next time.
> A more practical way is just to add enough HCl to cover the foils as that will be more than enough, the extra HCl doesn't hurt the process.
> Then add 1/2 - 2/3 of the needed nitric acid and watch the process. Depending on how much gases is reabsorbed by the liquid, temperature and so on, the nitric will dissolve more or less of your gold. After ten minutes add small amount of more nitric if it is needed, be patience as chemical reactions takes time.
> 
> When all gold is dissolved you shouldn't have that much excess nitric in your solution.
> Excess nitric can be eliminated by Harolds "gold button" trick, denoxing by evaporation or by adding sulfamic acid. Use the green words together with denoxing in the search and you should find enough help. All this should have been covered in the introduction, did you read Lazersteves introduction to the forum and followed each link?
> 
> For your current situation, I agree with Butcher, you haven't denoxed your solution, there is still a lot of nitric acid and any precipitated gold is immediately dissolved again.
> 
> I don't see you mention testing? Do you have stannous chloride? Without it you might try to get gold from a solution that doesn't contain gold. Read up on testing for gold in solution with stannous chloride.
> 
> What I don't understand is step 3 and 4 where you claim no change? Do you still have your gold foils? They should have gone into solution at the first step. Are you sure you have nitric acid? Can you dissolve copper with your nitric acid? If you test your nitric acid with copper make it a small test, it reacts violently and emits toxic red fumes.
> 
> Be safe!
> 
> Göran
Click to expand...


I tried using an older button - I say button but it was really more of a BB ROLLING AROUND - in my AR tonight and the nitric came off perfectly. My question is about the condition of my used button. I dropped it in the AR with the silver chloride scum at the bottom and now my old button has little specks of silver chloride stuck to it. Should I have filtered the ar first to remove the scum before I added the old gold button? 

Thanks.


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## g_axelsson

You should be able to wipe the silver chloride off unless the silver came from your BB.

Göran


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## Clneal2003

Yeah it rubs off... But it's a very small BB and a pain in the butt to clean. I just locked it back up for time being. I wonder if Sunjil ever got his gold back out? His last post was February.


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## FrugalRefiner

Clneal2003 said:


> Yeah it rubs off... But it's a very small BB and a pain in the butt to clean.


You can dissolve the silver chloride off the BB with a little ammonia. Then remove your BB and add HCl to the ammonia to acidify it and reprecipitate your silver as silver chloride again.

Dave


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## purgatory

Hi,
How are you all doing?
Well, i'm new here and this is going to be 1st post reply/post.
I just saw Sam's video and appreciated a lot.
Actually I joined this forum tonigh, a way toooo late, as I have processed a 1st batch of 10 kilos of mixed Memory Sticks, which went pretty bad. I only recovered 2.3 grams of pure gold out of 10 kilos of Ram Sticks, forgot to weight gold fingers.
I used 60% nitric acid with de-ionized water to strip off the gold foils from fingers. I used 1:2 ratio, 1 part acid 2 parts de-ionized water.
All the gold foils were removed completely.
I washed them thoroughly with de-ionized water and put them in a beaker and covered the foils with hcl commercial grade and added few drops of nitric acid, the reaction begun and this aqua regia started to dissolve gold instantly, a few more drops of nitric acid were added to get the foils dissolved completely, all the foils were dissolved, I did not add no heat to the solution as the atmospheric temperature were nearly 40* C.
I filtered the solution containing gold with the filter paper, the colour of the solution was bright yellow and was crystal clear. 
I added some de-ionized water to dilute it a bit for the easy filteration.
I added some Urea which was 98% pure, there was a little reaction upon Urea addition but no brown or red fumes noticed, at that point I thought the nitic acid has been neutralized. Having this thought in my mind I proceeded to the addition of SMB.
I added a table spoon of Sodium Metabisulfite 98% pure (made in Germany) by Merck. 
There was a violant reaction upon it's addition, I thought may be its the nitric acid reacting with SMB, I added 2 more spoons of SMB.
After the 1st addition of SMB the colour of the solution changed to brown and the gold powder started to precipitate instantly, I left the solution over night and the next morning the colour of the solution was almost colourless and the gold was precipitated at the bottom of the beaker, I filtered te solution using filter paper and washed the gold powder well with de-ionized water then with hcl and at last again with de-ionized water and melted it along with the filter paper which I used at the end of filtering the gold powder after precipitation.
I dont know where I made mistake or a lot of mistakes.
It was 1st attempt to recover gold from e-waste.
Can anyone help me regarding my next attempt?
After my 1st experiment I started to read this forum for about a month or so and read a lot of post and replies from Sam, Buther, Geo and many more. 
I visited lazersteve's website and watched his videos.
I have been reading Hoke's book also.
I have around 50 lbs of more Mixed Ram sticks and around 8 lbs of ic chips from Ram Sticks.
Around 150 lbs of computer P4 and P3mother board.
1860 pieces of P4 processors.
2 pounds of mix ceramic processors.
Telecom boards containg a lot of square ics with gold arrow mark.
2 pounds of Monolithic capacitors.
Around 1lb of gold plated pins from different connectors.
6 lbs of mixed mobile motherboards.
I'm completely confused as I have invested around $2000/= over this scrap.

Please can anyone help me recovering gold from the above mentioned scrap?
I would like to restart from gold fingers as I will cut the gold fingers off from the Ram Sticks and would like to process the Ic chips from Rams after gold fingers.
Each and every reply from the respected members will be highly appreciated.
Thanks a lot.
Alvi


----------



## g_axelsson

Hi Alvi and welcome to the forum.

I can't find any major problems with your procedure, though I'm lacking a few steps that I usually include.
I can't comment on your result as I haven't made any yield measurements myself. Did you find any numbers on the forum? I know there are a couple of discussions about this.

- No testing, instead of believing you got all the gold when precipitating, test with stannous and then you know.
- No mentioning of a stock pot. I always put my barren solution after precipitating the gold into my stock pot. Smaller amounts of PGM will collect and any fine gold will have time to settle before I treat it as waste.
- Urea is usually not recommended, it has it's dangers and the excess nitric can be dealt with in a couple of other ways. (gold button, evaporation, minimizing usage, fighting it with a precipitant, sulfamic acid)
- Your washing procedure is lacking, read http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=325&p=2620#p2620
- Most people never filter off the gold powder, it is kept in the same vessel as it was precipitated in through the wash cycle and drying.
- SMB reacts with nitric or HCl by releasing SO2. If the liquid is saturated by SO2 gas it will just fizz and the SO2 . DO NOT BREATH THE GAS!

Hey! This guy seems to have read up on the processes, can we keep him? Please! 8) 

...ps, we want to see the resulting button in the gallery.

Göran


----------



## shaftsinkerawc

There's no mention of incineration between the Nitric use and the Hcl rinse!


----------



## maynman1751

g_axelsson said:


> Hi Alvi and welcome to the forum.
> 
> I can't find any major problems with your procedure, though I'm lacking a few steps that I usually include.
> I can't comment on your result as I haven't made any yield measurements myself. Did you find any numbers on the forum? I know there are a couple of discussions about this.
> 
> - No testing, instead of believing you got all the gold when precipitating, test with stannous and then you know.
> - No mentioning of a stock pot. I always put my barren solution after precipitating the gold into my stock pot. Smaller amounts of PGM will collect and any fine gold will have time to settle before I treat it as waste.
> - Urea is usually not recommended, it has it's dangers and the excess nitric can be dealt with in a couple of other ways. (gold button, evaporation, minimizing usage, fighting it with a precipitant, sulfamic acid)
> - Your washing procedure is lacking, read http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=325&p=2620#p2620
> - Most people never filter off the gold powder, it is kept in the same vessel as it was precipitated in through the wash cycle and drying.
> - SMB reacts with nitric or HCl by releasing SO2. If the liquid is saturated by SO2 gas it will just fizz and the SO2 . DO NOT BREATH THE GAS!
> 
> Hey! This guy seems to have read up on the processes, can we keep him? Please! 8)
> 
> ...ps, we want to see the resulting button in the gallery.
> 
> Göran



I have to agree with Goran except I would use the AP process to recover foils and save my nitric for dissolution, or better yet use HCl/Cl to dissolve foils. Just my thoughts on this subject.


----------



## maynman1751

shaftsinkerawc said:


> There's no mention of incineration between the Nitric use and the Hcl rinse!



I didn't see that he used an HCl rinse after nitric, which maybe he should have, to make sure that most of the base metals had been removed prior to dissolution. But you are indeed correct in your statement if he was going to do an HCl wash. If he had used the AP method, that I suggested, he wouldn't need incineration before the HCl boil wash! He can simply decant the wash and go to dissolution with HCl/Cl or HCl/HN03.


----------



## purgatory

Hi 
How are you all doing?

Well, thank you so much Goran and Maynman for welcoming me here at this very much informative and helpful forum, so nice of you.
Yes, you are right Goran, I did not test the solution after precipitation. I have noted down this mistake number 1.
I have saved the barren solution after precipitation of gold powder, I noticed that white colour precipitates are at the bottom but not dark colour powder present. What this white powder could be, probablly Urea Nitrate? I dont know.
I think 2nd mistake was using Urea to neutralize the nitric acid, as you have mentioned that Urea is not reccomended to neutralize the Nitric Acid, the white precipitated in the barren solution might be Urea Nitrate which I noticed today and this might be the reason behind not recommending Urea. I have figured my 2nd mistake.
3rd mistake was this that I surely did not wash the gold powder properly as per the topic you shared link about Harold's wash.
Yes you're righht Maynman, I did not rinse the foils with Hydochloric acid after stripping them off using Nitric acid. 4th mistake.
5th mistake was something like, While the last wash with de-ionized water, I poured all the gold powder onto the filter paper and melted this gold powder alongwith the filter paper.
I have noted down all of my mistakee and will have to be very much carefull in my upcoming attempt of recovering gold from the finger.
Thank you so much for your kind replies, I appreciate them all.
I need to learn more about this partcular aspect of recovering gold from e-scrap as the bulk quantity is available. 

Quick question about acid peroxide etching solution, is there any chance that the gold could be dissolved in this solution? Actually I could not find Hydrogen Peroxided which is 3%, the only Hydrogen Peroxide Available is 6%, I'm afraid using this 6% H2O2. Please help in this regard.

Thank you so much
Alvi


----------



## shaftsinkerawc

> point I thought the nitic acid has been neutralized. Having this thought in my mind I proceeded to the addition of SMB.
> I added a table spoon of Sodium Metabisulfite 98% pure (made in Germany) by Merck.
> There was a violant reaction upon it's addition, I thought may be its the nitric acid reacting with SMB, I added 2 more spoons of SMB.
> After the 1st addition of SMB the colour of the solution changed to brown and the gold powder started to precipitate instantly, I left the solution over night and the next morning the colour of the solution was almost colourless and the gold was precipitated at the bottom of the beaker, I filtered te solution using filter paper and washed the gold powder well with de-ionized water then with hcl



Does the Urea used and the dropping with DMG negate the need to incinerate before the Hcl wash?


----------



## FrugalRefiner

purgatory said:


> Quick question about acid peroxide etching solution, is there any chance that the gold could be dissolved in this solution? Actually I could not find Hydrogen Peroxided which is 3%, the only Hydrogen Peroxide Available is 6%, I'm afraid using this 6% H2O2. Please help in this regard.


Alvi,

Yes, hydrochloric acid and peroxide can definitely dissolve gold. Hydrochloric acid by itself cannot dissolve gold, but when you add hydrogen peroxide, the H2O2 provides oxygen which can oxidize the gold. The oxidized gold can then combine with the chlorine from the HCl to become auric chloride. 

You only need a small amount of H2O2 to get the reaction started. I started my first batch of AP with just a capful of peroxide. The peroxide oxidizes a bit of copper, which combines with the chlorine to create CuCl2. Once there's a bit of CuCl2 in solution, it will dissolve more copper, which becomes more CuCl2. Once you've started a batch, all you have to do is add air to keep the reaction going.

There's actually a little more to the process, but that's the basic idea. Lasersteve has an excellent document on his website with a lot more details about this process.

Dave


----------



## maynman1751

> Does the Urea used and the dropping with *DMG *negate the need to incinerate before the Hcl wash?



Perhaps you meant dropping with SMB! Because he recovered the foils with nitric, he would need to incinerate before an HCl wash. Otherwise it would create a mild AR and dissolve some of the foils. However, after dropping the gold with SMB, the powders should be washed with HCl. That is just part of the correct washing procedure. You should always follow Harold's washing directions that you can find with a search here on the forum. Also, as was directed, DON"T use urea!!!!! Use sulfamic acid or just use the correct amount of nitric to do the job or you can use a gold bead to use up the excess nitric.


----------



## shaftsinkerawc

Thanks, my eyes and mind were going in different directions.


----------



## purgatory

Thank you Dave for the info, I appreciate it.


----------



## Geo

purgatory said:


> Quick question about acid peroxide etching solution, is there any chance that the gold could be dissolved in this solution? Actually I could not find Hydrogen Peroxided which is 3%, the only Hydrogen Peroxide Available is 6%, I'm afraid using this 6% H2O2. Please help in this regard.



Yes, the hydrogen peroxide and hcl will dissolve gold. There is another way to start your copper(II) chloride etching solution. You will need copper oxide which is the bright green corrosion that forms on bare copper. Copper oxide is easily made by exposing finely divided copper metal (like copper filings) to the atmosphere. Use a coarse file to cut as much copper dust from a heavy piece of clean, bare copper, like tubing. A few grams should do but you can make as much as you need for later. Place the copper dust in a dish and add just enough hcl to wet it. Leave exposed to the air for a couple of days. When you are ready to start you AP process, instead of adding H2O2, add the copper oxide that you have ready. Add until the solution turns green.


----------



## g_axelsson

purgatory said:


> Yes you're righht Maynman, I did not rinse the foils with Hydrochloric acid after stripping them off using Nitric acid. 4th mistake.


I don't think there is a need to do a HCl wash of the foils in most cases, you would risk dissolving some gold unless you do a thorough incineration.
The only time I would consider incineration and washing the foils in HCl before dissolving them is if I had a lot of metastannic acid that would trap gold chloride and make it hard to filter.

The choice of dissolving gold foils in AR, HCl+Cl or HCl + peroxide is personal. I use all three methods depending on different factors but usually if you have HNO3 available it is the easiest and fastest method as long as you don't use too much. HCl+Cl is more forgiving for overdosing and for the newbie it avoids the problem with too much nitric acid.

Drawbacks with HCl + Cl is that it adds NaCl to the solution and that can't be evaporated. Both HNO3 and H2O2 excess can easily be evaporated, giving a cleaner auric chloride solution.

Göran


----------



## purgatory

Hi 
How are you all doing?

Goran, I have noted down all the important factors which must be followed doing recovery process.
I have cut off the fingers from different boards which are heavily gold plated, I was kinda carefull in cutting them off properly, this time I will take pictures on every step I will perform and post them here. I shoukd rather post my plan before attempting as I do not want to make anymore mistakes this time, hopefully I will perform better while paying close attentions on all the respected members advises and the info which I gathered from this forum.

The only thing which is still bothering me to make copper chloride etching solution, I enquired about copper salts with which this can be made easily are damn expensive and I do not want to have them as the overall cost of refining will exceed the amount of recovery, And the process which Steve mentioned in his website is kinda time consuming, I simply do not want to take a risk of getting the gold foils stripped from the fingers using hcl and peroxide as there is a chance of dissolving the gold as my working temperature these days is almost 40 degree centigrade and the 2nd problem I'm facing is that I can not find H2O2 3%. The only one available is 6%. I'm afraid to get gold dissolved.
Would that be fine if I use Nitric Acid to strip them off with a ratio of 1:2 acid:water? 
Any negative impact on the yield using this method?
Do you guys think de-ionized water could be a problem in my previous attempt to strip gold off from 10 kilos Ram Sticks in which i only recovered 2 grams of gold? I never checked its conductivity though, I found out that the best de-ionized water is of zero conductivity, is that right? I do not know the water I use is of zero conductivity.
Or I just simply use tap water as distilled water is not available here. The only distilled water which is available is of the same cost as (Nitric Acid 60%) cost which is $7/litre, strange is'nt it?
I'm kind of undeceisive this time. 
Please help.

Alvi


----------



## Geo

In smaller batches, ferric chloride works several times faster than copper chloride with out the need for added oxygen.


----------



## maynman1751

> I don't think there is a need to do a HCl wash of the foils in most cases, you would risk dissolving some gold unless you do a thorough incineration.


Goran, I was suggesting the HCl hot wash *after AP* to help remove any left over copper and such. It has always been directed here on the forum to do a HCl boil of the foils. I neglected to express that point explicitly and that is my fault. I wouldn't do it after nitric. I believe that nitric would probably do a better job of removing most base metals versus AP. I myself, wouldn't use nitric on foils. To each his own!


----------



## maynman1751

purgatory said:


> Hi
> How are you all doing?
> 
> Goran, I have noted down all the important factors which must be followed doing recovery process.
> I have cut off the fingers from different boards which are heavily gold plated, I was kinda carefull in cutting them off properly, this time I will take pictures on every step I will perform and post them here. I shoukd rather post my plan before attempting as I do not want to make anymore mistakes this time, hopefully I will perform better while paying close attentions on all the respected members advises and the info which I gathered from this forum.
> 
> The only thing which is still bothering me to make copper chloride etching solution, I enquired about copper salts with which this can be made easily are damn expensive and I do not want to have them as the overall cost of refining will exceed the amount of recovery, And the process which Steve mentioned in his website is kinda time consuming, I simply do not want to take a risk of getting the gold foils stripped from the fingers using hcl and peroxide as there is a chance of dissolving the gold as my working temperature these days is almost 40 degree centigrade and the 2nd problem I'm facing is that I can not find H2O2 3%. The only one available is 6%. I'm afraid to get gold dissolved.
> Would that be fine if I use Nitric Acid to strip them off with a ratio of 1:2 acid:water?
> Any negative impact on the yield using this method?
> Do you guys think de-ionized water could be a problem in my previous attempt to strip gold off from 10 kilos Ram Sticks in which i only recovered 2 grams of gold? I never checked its conductivity though, I found out that the best de-ionized water is of zero conductivity, is that right? I do not know the water I use is of zero conductivity.
> Or I just simply use tap water as distilled water is not available here. The only distilled water which is available is of the same cost as (Nitric Acid 60%) cost which is $7/litre, strange is'nt it?
> I'm kind of undeceisive this time.
> Please help.
> 
> Alvi



Alvi, simply follow the video at the beginning of this thread and you can't go wrong. Sam knows his stuff. If you are afraid of dissolving some gold, make your copper chloride with just copper, Hcl and some peroxide. Then add it to your reaction as shown on the video. Your de-ionized water is fine......no problems there. Also go to Sam's web site and watch his other videos at Gold n Scrap.


----------



## g_axelsson

maynman1751 said:


> I don't think there is a need to do a HCl wash of the foils in most cases, you would risk dissolving some gold unless you do a thorough incineration.
> 
> 
> 
> Goran, I was suggesting the HCl hot wash *after AP* to help remove any left over copper and such. It has always been directed here on the forum to do a HCl boil of the foils. I neglected to express that point explicitly and that is my fault. I wouldn't do it after nitric. I believe that nitric would probably do a better job of removing most base metals versus AP. I myself, wouldn't use nitric on foils. To each his own!
Click to expand...

But earlier you wrote


maynman1751 said:


> shaftsinkerawc said:
> 
> 
> 
> There's no mention of incineration between the Nitric use and the Hcl rinse!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I didn't see that he used an HCl rinse after nitric, which maybe he should have, to make sure that most of the base metals had been removed prior to dissolution. But you are indeed correct in your statement if he was going to do an HCl wash. If he had used the AP method, that I suggested, he wouldn't need incineration before the HCl boil wash! He can simply decant the wash and go to dissolution with HCl/Cl or HCl/HN03.
Click to expand...

Anyhow, I feel it isn't necessarily to wash the foils in HCl prior to dissolving them. With SMB you can precipitate gold from quite dirty solutions and the following wash of the gold powder takes care of most of the drag down. A HCl boil can't affect any metals alloyed in the foils (1 % chromium for hard gold plating). As copper doesn't dissolve in HCl any copper left will survive that step and any metals more reactive than copper is easily dissolved in copper chloride solution.
In my experience, if you let the copper chloride do it's work it's enough to wash the foils in water. If you get a milky solution when adding water then there is some CuCl (insoluble in pure water) left and you could add some HCl until it clears up. The visual clues are quite clear so it is easy to "only use enought". This step should be done with minimal amount of water so you don't need to add too much HCl to dissolve the CuCl.
If the process has been driven to it's point and the copper chloride solution is emerald green then the copper chloride consists of mostly water soluble CuCl2 (750 g/liter @ 20 C) and it will be easily removed with water washes.

I usually don't care if there are some copper chloride left with the foils and when I'm done with the gold drop I'm left with a slightly bluish tinted barren solution. That's copper II chloride, the copper I chloride from the previous step but oxidized by the AR.

A minor part of copper chloride among the foils will not harm the result. For example red gold carat jewellery is suggested for direct dissolving in AR and is perfectly fine to precipitate gold from.

As you all can see, there are more than one way to run the common processes. Small variations depending on your situation. As long as you have a good grasp of what's happening and can interpret the clues correct and plan ahead you will be fine.

Maynman, what is the color of your HCl boil? It should give some hints of what metals you remove in that step.

Alvi, if your peroxide is too strong, just mix it with water to get the concentration you want. You can actually start without any peroxide at all, but it will take a week or two until the process is up and running. There will always be some minute copper oxide in the beginning and that will build up the copper concentration. The more copper in solution the faster the etch will work and add more copper to the solution until the oxygen is the limiting factor.

Göran


----------



## maynman1751

Goran, I submit to your experience and knowledge. I respect what you say. I was simply giving the advice that has been given to me. Thank you for your appraisal.


----------



## g_axelsson

maynman, we all learn from each other by discussing these topics. For example I had to think a lot of why it would benefit to boil the foils in HCl. The only reason I could find was first to remove aluminum or some steel that would resist nitric acid.
Then when we drifted in on the copper chloride process I had to think hard until it hit me that any leftover CuCl wouldn't dissolve in a water wash only. Depending on how far you push the process you end up with various amounts of CuCl, so for someone maybe the HCl wash is necessary, and boiling it will speed up the dissolving process.

By thinking about the details I have learned some more and gained a deeper understanding of the process. I thank you for that and hope we both and others too have learned something in this thread.

8) 

... this is the scientific process, do question all the steps and rules and if it stands up to scrutiny it is good. If not, we learn something new and that's also good.

If you see something I say without motivation and you don't know why, put me to the test. If I'm wrong then I want to be corrected.

Sometimes the forum has a way of propagating ideas that is unnecessary or wrong, by questioning them we develop more nuanced methods over time.

Göran


----------



## Geo

Actually, the hcl rinse, hot or not, is to remove any left over copper oxide from the foils before the dissolution.


----------



## maynman1751

> If you see something I say without motivation and you don't know why, put me to the test. If I'm wrong then I want to be corrected.



Goran;
I really don't feel qualified or experienced enough to question someone, like you, who has much more knowledge and time involved in this forum. I've learned a lot reading your posts and respect your judgement. I wouldn't question you anymore than I would Harold, Butcher, GSP, Geo or any other veteran of this subject. I do, on occasion, give advice on subjects that I am comfortable with and am always open for correction. I'm here to learn from the best and not to question their experience. I guess it's just a matter of respect!


----------



## purgatory

Hi
How are you all doing?

Well, thank you so much Goran, Geo and Maynman for the suggestions, I highly appreciate them all.

Goran, I have noted down your suggestion regarding diluting the H2O2 concentration, one more point has been cleared in your post that I will not need to boil the foils in HCL after getting then stripped off. Thank you so much Goran for your kind help, i am not undeceisice anymore the way I was last night, actually I have invested a lot of money over e-scrap, which was the reason behind my frustration. I will start the new session within a day or two and will post my feed back regarding it and your suggestions will be needed, I hope you will not mind. Thank you Goran one more time.

Maynman, Thank you for your clarificatiin regarding de-ionizes water. I appreciate it and will surely watch Sam's video also, so nice of you.

Geo, I want to run a batch of almost 10 to 12 lbs of golf fingers from the memory Ram Sticks and other boarda also.

Take good care of yourselves
Have a good night

Alvi


----------



## Harold_V

g_axelsson said:


> maynman, we all learn from each other by discussing these topics. For example I had to think a lot of why it would benefit to boil the foils in HCl. The only reason I could find was first to remove aluminum or some steel that would resist nitric acid.
> Then when we drifted in on the copper chloride process I had to think hard until it hit me that any leftover CuCl wouldn't dissolve in a water wash only. Depending on how far you push the process you end up with various amounts of CuCl, so for someone maybe the HCl wash is necessary, and boiling it will speed up the dissolving process.
> 
> By thinking about the details I have learned some more and gained a deeper understanding of the process. I thank you for that and hope we both and others too have learned something in this thread.


Frankly, if I was involved in processing these products by the methods being discussed, not only would I do a prewash in heated HCl, I'd also incinerate first. There's great benefit doing both. 

One of the things I discovered after having problems with filtration is that a prewash with HCl and a rinse with (tap) water will generally dissolve and remove contaminants that restrict filtration. It does little to control oils, which tend to float gold, so incineration is very desirable as well, with the added benefit of reducing the volume of solids, some of which may actually absorb and retain values (activated carbon, for example). The added work is often rewarded with higher quality and shorter filtering time. I found both of them indispensable. 

Harold


----------



## Anonymous

Harold.

Why would you incinerate recovered foils from IT equipment please? I can see absolutely no benefit from this after having processed an awful lot of them. 

I understand the HCl washes and water washes and completely support you on this however the incineration I find incredibly hard to understand or agree with. 

Regards

Jon


----------



## Geo

From what I understand, since lead was removed as solder and replaced with tin, the tin carries over from one process to another. Since some use nitric acid to remove base metal and the base metal contains tin, you get metastannic acid (hydrated tin oxide). If you remove base metal with copper(II) chloride, the tin is oxidized to just tin oxide. Either way, incineration helps to reduce the tin oxide to elemental tin which can be removed in a hcl bath.


----------



## Anonymous

Well I've never had that problem Geo.

It's theoretically possible I agree but I've never needed to incinerate escrap foils, and I've done an awful lot of them. So respectfully I think it's overkill and potentially a way to lose some of the gold if the incineration process isn't clinical.


----------



## rickbb

It all depends on how clean your gold plated e-scrap is to start with.

If I'm doing just trimmed fingers then I do not prewash in hot HCL beforehand. 

But if I have whole cell phone boards that have gold plating everywhere and trimming it out is just not practical, I do a very prolonged hot HCL bath and rinsing. This gets rid of all that tin/antimony solder left over from depopulating. 

Some people just dump in everything, cell phone boards, trimmed fingers, pins, broken CPU chips. In those cases a pre-soak in HCL and incineration would be greatly helpful.


----------



## Geo

When I first joined the forum, there was much more emphasis on achieving four 9's when refining. 99.95 is still hard to do when working with electronics. The importance of removing tin is two fold. first, it will report in your final melt. Tin will follow gold through all the processes to the end (much like silver) unless it's removed correctly. Secondly, just like tin in hcl makes stannous chloride, tin in our refining solutions will make stannous chloride causing precious metals to form a colloid. If there is not enough oxidizer in solution to overcome the tin, a colloid will form. Unless you know what all the different colors a gold colloid can make, you may mistake that red-blue-purple color as something else and misplace your gold.


----------



## Harold_V

spaceships said:


> Harold.
> 
> Why would you incinerate recovered foils from IT equipment please? I can see absolutely no benefit from this after having processed an awful lot of them.
> 
> I understand the HCl washes and water washes and completely support you on this however the incineration I find incredibly hard to understand or agree with.
> 
> Regards
> 
> Jon


What little escrap I processed I did with nitric acid. The purpose of incineration I have already outlined. It serves a very useful function, both in improving quality and in ease of filtration. You may, or may not, benefit by those two functions (incineration and a prewash with HCl), but I'd be totally surprised if you didn't see a difference in the outcome. 

If you have not tried, you have no clue, just as I have no clue about what you experience. All I can say is that if you have any difficulty in filtration (if you can't gravity filter, you're having trouble), you would be well advised to use both of these procedures. Each has the potential to be an "a-ha" moment. 

I've noticed a general attitude on this board about not incinerating, which I find rather strange. The cleanest of objects often benefit. 

Harold


----------



## 4metals

I agree with Harold as to applying a general across the board incineration step. It will never hurt and skipping it may very well hurt. 

I think there may be a resistance to incineration because some may feel that to incinerate one needs a high temperature chamber and an afterburner. While that is true for large quantities of sweeps and electronics, often a torch and a metal pan in an exhaust hood will serve. 

I think it would be helpful for some of our members to show us their incineration hardware. It may make it easier for everyone to understand the process does not always have to involve high tech equipment and controls.


----------



## Anonymous

4metals my understanding of incinerating foils would be primarily to remove grease and oils. Correct me if I'm wrong but given that the majority of IT scrap comes from an environment where people are not wearing it close to their skin, and in many cases in an air controlled environment where does the grease come from? 

I understand and believe the necessity for this part of the process when it's jewellry, but given the fact that the AP part of the recovery process reveals the sides of the foils that have never been in touch with the air, how would incineration improve the refining process?

If I'm missing something fundamental then please feel free to show me the error of my ways.

Kind regards

Jon


----------



## Anonymous

Harold_V said:


> spaceships said:
> 
> 
> 
> Harold.
> 
> Why would you incinerate recovered foils from IT equipment please? I can see absolutely no benefit from this after having processed an awful lot of them.
> 
> I understand the HCl washes and water washes and completely support you on this however the incineration I find incredibly hard to understand or agree with.
> 
> Regards
> 
> Jon
> 
> 
> 
> What little escrap I processed I did with nitric acid. The purpose of incineration I have already outlined. It serves a very useful function, both in improving quality and in ease of filtration. You may, or may not, benefit by those two functions (incineration and a prewash with HCl), but I'd be totally surprised if you didn't see a difference in the outcome.
> 
> If you have not tried, you have no clue, just as I have no clue about what you experience. All I can say is that if you have any difficulty in filtration (if you can't gravity filter, you're having trouble), you would be well advised to use both of these procedures. Each has the potential to be an "a-ha" moment.
> 
> I've noticed a general attitude on this board about not incinerating, which I find rather strange. The cleanest of objects often benefit.
> 
> Harold
Click to expand...


Ok Harold good point. Sounds like it's worth an experiment. I've got a good sized batch to process in just over 2 weeks so I'll try an experiment. Like you I do use Nitric to recover so what I'll do is take 50% of the batch and process as normal and 50% and incinerate prior to refining. 

I know that we do disagree on a number of things but you'll probably also accept that I'm enough of a straight arrow to admit it if your additional step works better. Does that work for you Sir?

Jon


----------



## Barren Realms 007

spaceships said:


> Harold_V said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> spaceships said:
> 
> 
> 
> Harold.
> 
> Why would you incinerate recovered foils from IT equipment please? I can see absolutely no benefit from this after having processed an awful lot of them.
> 
> I understand the HCl washes and water washes and completely support you on this however the incineration I find incredibly hard to understand or agree with.
> 
> Regards
> 
> Jon
> 
> 
> 
> What little escrap I processed I did with nitric acid. The purpose of incineration I have already outlined. It serves a very useful function, both in improving quality and in ease of filtration. You may, or may not, benefit by those two functions (incineration and a prewash with HCl), but I'd be totally surprised if you didn't see a difference in the outcome.
> 
> If you have not tried, you have no clue, just as I have no clue about what you experience. All I can say is that if you have any difficulty in filtration (if you can't gravity filter, you're having trouble), you would be well advised to use both of these procedures. Each has the potential to be an "a-ha" moment.
> 
> I've noticed a general attitude on this board about not incinerating, which I find rather strange. The cleanest of objects often benefit.
> 
> Harold
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Ok Harold good point. Sounds like it's worth an experiment. I've got a good sized batch to process in just over 2 weeks so I'll try an experiment. Like you I do use Nitric to recover so what I'll do is take 50% of the batch and process as normal and 50% and incinerate prior to refining.
> 
> I know that we do disagree on a number of things but you'll probably also accept that I'm enough of a straight arrow to admit it if your additional step works better. Does that work for you Sir?
> 
> Jon
Click to expand...


After you incinerate you should do a couple of washes in hot HCL for a while and a couple of water washes then finish processing the first go round.


----------



## 4metals

Funny thing about scrap is you never know where it has been. If you have a lot that had a lot of solder and you treated with nitric, a quick torching and Hydrochloric Acid treatment before Aqua Regia can save you the dreaded drip. 

Another way to look at it is why you are refining and your time schedule. Maybe if you get a dripping filter you can turn around and go back in the house to watch another movie but if you do it for a living and have a finite area to ptocess in it can really matter. I know Harold had his own refinery and didn't want to kill a day watching a filter drip. Time is money. When I had a refinery it was frustrating to go in the back and see 3 guys standing around while filters go drip drip drip. For that reason I made procedures that covered all bases. Could a good operator skip a few steps when he knows the material? Sure. But it has been my experience to have general rules that are followed for different families of scrap will save more time in the long run. 

But from a learning perspective you should split the lot.


----------



## Harold_V

spaceships said:


> I know that we do disagree on a number of things but you'll probably also accept that I'm enough of a straight arrow to admit it if your additional step works better. Does that work for you Sir?
> 
> Jon


As I no longer have a dog in this race, sure, I have nothing to lose. I know what worked for me, and it came only from having bad experiences. I had no one to turn to. 

Give it a go. If you're using nitric, as you suggest, and you get even a trace of solder involved in your processing, you stand to benefit greatly. The incineration will remove substances that absorb fluids, and the HCl wash will remove substances that make filtration difficult. 

Gather all of your gold, after stripping, which should be heated in a fry pan, from below. It need not be dry, as the heating will quickly dry the material. When the pan is hot enough, you'll see that substances are being burned off. How can that not help?

Raise the temperature of the pan by playing a torch on the bottom. Make sure the pan is an old stainless type---do not use cast iron, nor should you use a pan with plating on the exterior (copper or aluminum). You should heat the pan until you have achieved the temperature that ignites carbon. Once that hot, play a small stream of oxygen on the contents of the pan. Any carbon that remains will glow brilliantly. No glow---the job is done. Wash in (heated) HCl, then rinse with tap water. Do not filter, simply siphon off the solution, and repeat the rinse if necessary. A couple rinses are often enough. If you wish to hasten settling, rinse with hot water instead of cold water. 

Do not remove the contents from the beaker. After the final rinse, leave behind a little rinse water, so you don't siphon off any of the values, then add the solvent of your choice to dissolve the values. 

I applied this process when I ran gold filled, in particular, eye glass frames, which I ran by the thousands. The difference in filtration was astounding. 

Harold


----------



## g_axelsson

I apologize, I forgot about incineration. That is a tool I seldom use as I don't have a suitable place and equipment to perform incineration where I do my other processing.
Consequently I do have problem with slow filtration but as I'm only a hobby refiner I can work in my own pace.

If... correction, when I have a proper lab, incineration will be one of my basic tools of refining.

Göran


----------



## solar_plasma

When this discussion started, I would not have believed, there will come anything interesting for me. Now, it has been developed to something that sounds like a discussion between Sokrates and Platon. Thank you all very much!

Too, I haven't incinerated, if I saw that I most probably could jump over this step (no tin or other metals, that cause problems, no carbon, no shifting from HCl to HNO3 and vice versa), - in a school lab I feel often I haven't the time for a proper incineration and I can only incinerate small amounts at a time.

But now I have understood, why the filters sometimes only drip and other times filter that fast they almost not seem to be present.


----------



## purgatory

Hi everyone
How are you all doing?

Harold, I'm glad that I processed those fingers in Nitric Acid and posted the process here to findout my mistake. After that post so many productive points I came to know about this process, I have noted down all the necessary steps for my upcoming recovery of gold from gold plated circuit boards, which are heavily gold plated on the front side of it and compleletely gold plated from the back side of it, I will post pictures and I hope the similar process could be used to get this gold stripped from these telecom circuit boards, I really need to know the price of these boards and offcourse the yield also so that I would not make a mistake in buying it at the right price.

Quick question, in my previous experiment/recovery process, I used Nitric Acid to strip the gold from Memory Ram gold fingers, can I use Nitric Acid to strip the gold plating from Telecom Circuit Boards?
Few boards I found out that they all are completely gold plated on the backside on top of pure copper plate, is that possible? Offcourse these are not Telecom Boards but they are quite old boards. Should I use Sulfuric Acid cell to deplate the gold from these copper boards/plates/sheets after depopulating them?
I'm so curious to learn about recovery and refining of precious metals, I have been reading Hoke's Book also and hopefully complete it within a short while.
I was so depressed before joining this forum, but I'm glad I joined it as I'm learning a lot on daily basis. Hopefully with in near future I will master recovery process atleast from circuit boards.
Thank you everyone for supporting me in my way of learning journey, I appreciate it. So nice of you all.

Alvi


----------



## Geo

purgatory said:


> Quick question, in my previous experiment/recovery process, I used Nitric Acid to strip the gold from Memory Ram gold fingers, can I use Nitric Acid to strip the gold plating from Telecom Circuit Boards?



Do they have solder on them at all? In any amount? If you use nitric acid as a copper leach in the presence of tin, be sure you know how to deal with metastannic acid first.


----------



## purgatory

Hi Everyone
How are you all doing?

Geo.... Yes these boards do have little solder on them, one side which is completely gold plated has no solder but on the other side where the SMD (surface mounted devices) are soldered with solder offcourse.
No Geo, I'm aware of metastannic acid, I have read many posts where it is advised to be carefull when dealing with metastannic acid. But I did not deal with it earlier, could you please elaborate a bit of it like which step I will have to be carefull in in terms of metastannic acid? The only bit I know is like it explodes when dry, Hoke's book chapter dealing with mixed scrap jewlery (gold plated, gold filled and other jewlery where solder is involved), that was the reason may be Hoke instructed not to dry it whille rinsing, she instructed to keep some water on top of the powder.

Could you please elaborate a bit more like which step or steps I must be very carefull in terms of metastannic acid?

Let me post few pictures of these boards.

Alvi


----------



## purgatory

This is one board, it"s weight is 158 grams, dimentions are 9 inches by 7.5 inches.
Can I please know the price of this board, the guy has in bulk.

It weighs 98.5 gram. dimentions are 7 inches by 2.9 inches.

It weighs 42.5 grams. Dimmentions are 7 inches by 2.9 inches

Can you please suggest me at which price i should buy these boards at in order to recover gold? 

This would be a great help in buying these beautifull boards.

Thank you 

Alvi


----------



## purgatory

Geo said:


> From what I understand, since lead was removed as solder and replaced with tin, the tin carries over from one process to another. Since some use nitric acid to remove base metal and the base metal contains tin, you get metastannic acid (hydrated tin oxide). If you remove base metal with copper(II) chloride, the tin is oxidized to just tin oxide. Either way, incineration helps to reduce the tin oxide to elemental tin which can be removed in a hcl bath.




Hoke's Acquaintance Tests: 
Obtain from your supply house small samples of pure tin and pure lead. A pennyweight of each will be enough. Do not use metals of whose purity you have doubts. The metals may be in pellets, foil, grains, or any other convenient form.
First take a bit of tin about the size of the head of a pin and cover it with a few drops of hydrochloric acid, plus a couple of drops of water. Heat to boiling and watch the results. Now do the same thing with a little lead; use a clean test tube or beaker for each test.
(Note that hot hydrochloric acid dissolves tin promptly). It is slower in its action on lead. Now, let the lead-hydrochloric acid mixture cool. . . Note that a heavy precipitate of white crystals appears. This is lead chloride. Add some water to make up for evaporation, then alternately heat and cool the mixture, observing that considerable lead chloride will be held in solution by a little hot water, only to crystallize out when it cools.

You will note that the tin chloride, formed when the tin is acted on by hot hydrochloric acid, is not so markedly affected by heat.
Because of the above facts, we use hot hydrochloric acid to dis- solve solder (tin plus lead) in cases where the hot acid can reach the solder. So, if your old jewelry shows lumps of soft solder, boil it in hydrochloric acid until the solder loosens and can be scraped off. But if the solder is inside the article, the hot acid will not reach it.

From this point of view, I understood that if these telecome circuit boards containing tin and lead solder should be treated with hot concentrated hcl as a pretreatment and rinsed thoroughly, tin from the solders will be dissolved. Correct me if I'm wrong please. And after this I can treat them with nitric acid to strip the plated gold from these boards, please correct me if I understood in a wrong way.

Actually I have seen the result using nitric acid, it strips the gold plating with in minutes, this is the only reason why I'm so keen in using nitric acid as a cooper leach to strip plating.

Please correct me if I understood the process in a wrong manner.
Thank you

Alvi


----------



## purgatory

Harold_V said:


> Frankly, if I was involved in processing these products by the methods being discussed, not only would I do a prewash in heated HCl, I'd also incinerate first. There's great benefit doing both.
> 
> One of the things I discovered after having problems with filtration is that a prewash with HCl and a rinse with (tap) water will generally dissolve and remove contaminants that restrict filtration.  It does little to control oils, which tend to float gold, so incineration is very desirable as well, with the added benefit of reducing the volume of solids, some of which may actually absorb and retain values (activated carbon, for example). The added work is often rewarded with higher quality and shorter filtering time. I found both of them indispensable.
> 
> Harold



Harold, your post clarifies my doubts in my last post, I'm glad I understood Hoke and Geo in a possitive manner.
Even if I missunderstood please clarify me, I want to move further anad attain possitive results while having all the points in my mind which I have learnt from this forum and from Hoke's book.

Alvi


----------



## Geo

purgatory said:


> Geo said:
> 
> 
> 
> From what I understand, since lead was removed as solder and replaced with tin, the tin carries over from one process to another. Since some use nitric acid to remove base metal and the base metal contains tin, you get metastannic acid (hydrated tin oxide). If you remove base metal with copper(II) chloride, the tin is oxidized to just tin oxide. Either way, incineration helps to reduce the tin oxide to elemental tin which can be removed in a hcl bath.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> From this point of view, I understood that if these telecome circuit boards containing tin and lead solder should be treated with hot concentrated hcl as a pretreatment and rinsed thoroughly, tin from the solders will be dissolved. Correct me if I'm wrong please. And after this I can treat them with nitric acid to strip the plated gold from these boards, please correct me if I understood in a wrong way.
> 
> Actually I have seen the result using nitric acid, it strips the gold plating with in minutes, this is the only reason why I'm so keen in using nitric acid as a cooper leach to strip plating.
> 
> Please correct me if I understood the process in a wrong manner.
> Thank you
> 
> Alvi
Click to expand...


I was talking about foils AFTER they were recovered from the (boards,pins,fingers,etc.) and not before. Be careful with the process as you described it. If you pretreat the boards with hcl before you move to nitric acid, the solution will form a weak AR solution and dissolve some of the gold because you can't rinse acids off with just water rinses. It is possible to pretreat the boards with hcl if you neutralize the hcl before moving to nitric acid. Perhaps treat with hot hcl wash to remove solder and then pass the boards through a dilute sodium hydroxide bath and rinse well with with water and then dissolve the copper underlay with nitric acid.


----------



## solar_plasma

You would save yourself a lot problems, if you would clean the boards from any components by heat, then dissolve any tin solder in HCl and at last process them in CuCl2 to get the foils. If you want to know why, read more. Everyone who has spent a long time educating himself will master the stannic acid problem, but why do you want to make it harder to start than necessary?


----------



## solar_plasma

Even if you neutralize the HCl, you could still have traces of chlorides, which again would form poor man's AR and dissolve gold, like Geo already mentioned.


----------



## purgatory

Hi
How are you all doing?

Geo, you are right, I will have to neutralize hcl, your suggestion to let boards go through the Sodium Hydroxide bath will neutraliz the remaining hcl from the boards, noted down... Thank you Geo.

Solar Plasma, my plan was the same, like to depopulate the boards with my burner and cuttiing them into small pieces like gold fingers from the boards, treat (only those pieces which contain solder) with hcl to get rid of tin and as Geo suggested will let them run through the Sodium Hydroxide bath to neutralize the hcl which would be sticking with the board pieces after hcl treatment, that way all the board pieces would be very much cleaned for the further stripping process.
Basically I'm just afraid of metastannic acid, thats all. 
On the other hand once I stripped the gold from mobile fone cards with hcl and hydrogen peroxide, That process took one week to finish and at the end of the stripping process i was left with alot of white colout powder which was copper chloride I presume, then I had to put some water and hcl to get it again dissolved, it was kind of a mess for me to deal with, with nitric acid I could save myself from these kind of problems. The plated gold could be stripped off with in minutes.
Maymann and Harold suggested to incinerate the foils after nitric acid treatment to get rid of any nitric and offcourse board's green colour left overs. 
This is my plan and if you think I'm putting myself into a more lenthier process, kindly correct me with details, I would be so much glad to learn more and more.

Thank you Geo and Solar Plasma

Alvi


----------



## purgatory

Dont you think they would be chlorides of sodium? If I would neutralize the hcl with sodium hydroxide the only salt could be form is sodium chloride? And this is very much soluble in water.


----------



## solar_plasma

purgatory said:


> Dont you think they would be chlorides of sodium? If I would neutralize the hcl with sodium hydroxide the only salt could be form is sodium chloride? And this is very much soluble in water.



If I _think_ anything, I will say: _I think_. Ofcourse it will be Na+ and Cl- and if dried, NaCl. Maybe you can wash it completely off. Can you be sure? No.

HCl and HNO3 are very soluble, too. Maybe Hoke didn't know that, so she incinerated, while she just could have washed the acids quickly away. No. I think she incinerated, because it is the only way to be sure all choride, nitrate, hydronium ions, HCl gas and NOx or what else troublemakers there may be left are gone.


----------



## Harold_V

purgatory said:


> Maymann and Harold suggested to incinerate the foils after nitric acid treatment to get rid of any nitric and offcourse board's green colour left overs.
> This is my plan and if you think I'm putting myself into a more lenthier process, kindly correct me with details, I would be so much glad to learn more and more.


It is my opinion that you understand perfectly that which I tried to explain. Any incineration should come *after* the values have been recovered* (but before dissolution for final refining) where escrap is concerned*, as that limits the volume of contaminants that produce toxic gasses upon incineration. 

The benefits of incineration and the HCl wash will become instantly obvious, especially if you have processed similar material without these procedures. 

Harold


----------



## Geo

I believe that a dilute sodium hydroxide solution will be enough to neutralize the acid that would be a problem. If we want the absolute, then it would not be enough. I also feel that we must understand and accept that there will be loses in each process. As we gain knowledge and experience, the losses get less and less. If there are time restraints, it would be the fastest way to process the boards. Any losses will be recovered in the waste stream later. I can't find a good reason that that it will not work.


----------



## Barren Realms 007

Another way you can approach this is after you depopulate the board is run through sodium hydroxide to remove the solder mask and the solder and then either AP or Poor Mans AR. But you need to be familiar with the process rather than just jump into using it.


----------



## maynman1751

Be VERY CAREFUL with sodium hydroxide, especially if it is heated. It will very rapidly 'digest' your skin and blind you if you get it in your eyes. Wear all of your protective gear when working with this very dangerous chemical.


----------



## Claudie

Mis read the post, comment not related so I deleted it.


----------



## solar_plasma

maynman1751 said:


> Be VERY CAREFUL with sodium hydroxide, especially if it is heated. It will very rapidly 'digest' your skin and blind you if you get it in your eyes. Wear all of your protective gear when working with this very dangerous chemical.



Very right, have all skin covered, especially your face or even a tiny splash will cause a permanent scar within some seconds. I've made this mistake only to use safety goggles once when I was making soap. I am lucky it only has been a tiny splash.


----------



## cyrus899

Hi good day I am new on this forum , want to know what are chemicals do I need for refining gold on board of cellphone , as the moment I have HCL, HNO3, and AGUA REGIA. I am interested to know and willing to learn. Hope you will help me guys...


----------



## FrugalRefiner

Welcome to the forum cyrus!

Everything you need to know to recover and refine precious metals can be found here on the forum. It takes a lot of study but it's incredibly rewarding!

The first rule is to be safe in everything you do. Before you jump into any of the processes you see discussed here, be sure you understand the potential hazards and do everything you can to minimize the risks. Read EVERYTHING in the Safety section of the forum, especially the Dealing with Waste topic. No amount of precious metal is worth jeopardizing your health or the health of those around you. 

Follow the Guided Tour created by LazerSteve. It will provide an introduction to the forum and numerous valuable links including the General Reactions List. Be sure to follow the link to his web site as he has many outstanding videos, a collection of great reference documents, and he sells a lot of the supplies needed to get started including detailed instructional DVDs. Samuel-a also has a lot of videos, guides and tutorials at his web site Gold-N-Scrap.

Download C. M. Hoke's book. You'll find links to both screen readable and printer friendly versions in my signature line below. You'll see her book mentioned repeatedly here on the forum for good reason. It is probably the best book ever written for the beginner who wants to learn refining. It is written in layman's terms and will provide a solid foundation that will help you understand everything you read here on the forum. You'll also find a tremendous amount of information in the two Forum Handbooks compiled by aflacglobal, Forum Handbook Vol 1 and Forum Handbook Vol 2.

bmgold2 has also been putting together a useful set of links for beginners. You'll find a few links there that are duplicates of the ones I'm providing, but he has also taken the time to link to many other very good threads on specific topics of interest. His thread is here: New Member Answers.

Once you understand the basics you can start to try some small scale experiments. If there's something you don't understand or you get stuck, there will be someone here to help you.

Best of luck,
Dave


----------



## cyrus899

FrugalRefiner said:


> Welcome to the forum cyrus!
> 
> Everything you need to know to recover and refine precious metals can be found here on the forum. It takes a lot of study but it's incredibly rewarding!
> 
> The first rule is to be safe in everything you do. Before you jump into any of the processes you see discussed here, be sure you understand the potential hazards and do everything you can to minimize the risks. Read EVERYTHING in the Safety section of the forum, especially the Dealing with Waste topic. No amount of precious metal is worth jeopardizing your health or the health of those around you.
> 
> Follow the Guided Tour created by LazerSteve. It will provide an introduction to the forum and numerous valuable links including the General Reactions List. Be sure to follow the link to his web site as he has many outstanding videos, a collection of great reference documents, and he sells a lot of the supplies needed to get started including detailed instructional DVDs. Samuel-a also has a lot of videos, guides and tutorials at his web site Gold-N-Scrap.
> 
> Download C. M. Hoke's book. You'll find links to both screen readable and printer friendly versions in my signature line below. You'll see her book mentioned repeatedly here on the forum for good reason. It is probably the best book ever written for the beginner who wants to learn refining. It is written in layman's terms and will provide a solid foundation that will help you understand everything you read here on the forum. You'll also find a tremendous amount of information in the two Forum Handbooks compiled by aflacglobal, Forum Handbook Vol 1 and Forum Handbook Vol 2.
> 
> bmgold2 has also been putting together a useful set of links for beginners. You'll find a few links there that are duplicates of the ones I'm providing, but he has also taken the time to link to many other very good threads on specific topics of interest. His thread is here: New Member Answers.
> 
> Once you understand the basics you can start to try some small scale experiments. If there's something you don't understand or you get stuck, there will be someone here to help you.
> 
> Best of luck,
> Dave



thanks all the information that you it will help me a lot. I already downloaded the C.M. Hooke and started reading it and still looking some videos.


----------



## Claudie

Please practice safety. Many new comers don't understand the importance of safety, and just how dangerous some of these chemicals are. NEVER work inside your home with anything. Know what the chemicals are and how they work BEFORE you use them. Sometimes you don't get a second chance. :|


----------



## purgatory

Hi Everyone
How are you all doing?

Cyrus, wellcome to the forum, wish you best of luck.

Quick question.... Respected members, can you please guide me a bit more, I need to ask like, can I use stainless Steel pan to incinerate the foils which would be recovered using Nitric? After incineration do I need to rinse these foils with water prior to boil in hcl?

I'm all prepared to process the above mentioned gold plated boards, I will run a small batch of about 500 grams of these boards. I have cut them to small pieces like gold fingers, cleaned from dirt, ready to be treated.

I will start this process by tomorrow.
Will post the details with probablly pictures.

Thank you for your supposrt and guidance.

Alvi


----------



## cyrus899

purgatory said:


> Hi Everyone
> How are you all doing?
> 
> Cyrus, wellcome to the forum, wish you best of luck.
> 
> Quick question.... Respected members, can you please guide me a bit more, I need to ask like, can I use stainless Steel pan to incinerate the foils which would be recovered using Nitric? After incineration do I need to rinse these foils with water prior to boil in hcl?
> 
> I'm all prepared to process the above mentioned gold plated boards, I will run a small batch of about 500 grams of these boards. I have cut them to small pieces like gold fingers, cleaned from dirt, ready to be treated.
> 
> I will start this process by tomorrow.
> Will post the details with probablly pictures.
> 
> Thank you for your supposrt and guidance.
> 
> Alvi



wow! can't wait the result hope you will post pictures.. good luck..


----------



## jason_recliner

purgatory said:


> Quick question.... Respected members, can you please guide me a bit more, I need to ask like, can I use stainless Steel pan to incinerate the foils which would be recovered using Nitric? After incineration do I need to rinse these foils with water prior to boil in hcl?


Stainless steel is perfect. Make sure the foils are heated up to a dull red.
The standard process is to boil in HCl, then water. Repeat these two until it comes off perfectly clean.
Your question of washing in water first: I can't see water would wash much off before the HCl has done its thing, but it will not hurt.


----------



## MarcoP

Maybe off topic but I believe its somewhat related. Could I recycle copper cemented using scrap steel from stock pot, let it oxidize in air and use it to make copper(II) chloride?


----------



## MarcoP

Warning: the above picture represents the last incineration where all chlorides were already burned away.
When chlorides are present it must be done under a fume hood or, such as my case, outside while wearing protective gears.









Torch will be used when all water is boiled away, still outside.


----------



## butcher

Copper metal powder can oxidize more easily than a chunk of solid copper, a solid copper pipe may oxidize on its surface, with exposure to air, in an acidic or caustic and damp location the corrosion is hastened in the more corrosive environment. The solid copper oxidizes on its surface. Where the finer powders have much more surface area, and with the thin powders the corrosion will take more of the coppers percentage up as corrosion, leaving you with less of the copper metal un-corroded, or in a state of elemental copper.

With copper powders from your cementing process you can have salts of acids, these can increase the rate of oxidation of the copper when dried or exposed to air, oxygen and other gases in the air. It is hard to wash off all of these salts, storing this copper under water or even under some of the slightly acidic solution of the acid solution there were cemented from, can help to keep the copper metal powders bright and shining and keep them from exposure to air.

Copper exposed to air, will form several different types of oxidation of the copper metal. Cupric oxide, cuprous oxide, copper carbonate, copper hydroxide...
Some of this oxidation of copper is not dissolved that easily back into an acid, for that reason I store my copper powders under the solution they were cemented from, or use them to form other forms of copper salts, crystals, that I may have a use for, and even these are best stored in a state where air does not have a chance to oxidize them (some types of copper salts (crystals) will oxidize easier than others).

For example it is hard to take the green copper carbonate (copper powder exposed to air) and make it back into copper II chloride, the copper carbonate does not like to dissolve into the acid easily.

You can also roast the copper to black copper oxide, driving off the salts of the previous acid, and store them in an air tight container.


----------



## purgatory

Hi Everyone
How are you all doing today?

Well, my first step has been completed successfully, please have a look.
500 grams of the above mentioned boards, and please have a look at the foils quantity, wowwww

Alvi


----------



## purgatory

Ooppssss 
How can I fix the picture.....


----------



## FrugalRefiner

purgatory said:


> Ooppssss
> How can I fix the picture.....


You can use a program like irfanview (it's free!) to rotate the image, then save it. Then you can go to your post and click the edit button. Once you're in editing mode, you can delete the first image and upload the new one. 

Anytime you edit a post, you should add a note at the bottom of your post explaining why you edited it and what you changed. Editing a post with the intention of changing the tone or intent of the post is against forum rules, but editing to fix errors is OK as long as you explain what you did.

Dave


----------



## purgatory

Jason Recliner..... Thank you for you suggestion, I appreciate it.

Can I know please like how long the incineration process should be run for?

Dave, I have got it, thank you, actually using this Ipad is quite difficult for me, I will surely check the itunes store for the program you mentioned.

Alvi


----------



## purgatory

Hi Everyone,
How are you all doing?

I did incinetation for about one and half hours in a stainless steel pan after recovering gold plating using nitric acid which is shown in the picture above.

1- After incinetation I boiled in hcl for about half an hour, did stannius chloride test for gold and there was no sign of gold in the solution.
2- After hcl bath I boiled the foils in de-ionized water for half an hour.
3- After decanting the water, I dissolved these foils in Aqua Regia made with Nitric Acid and Hydrochloric Acid.
4- performed stannous chloride test which I made today and you can see the result in a pictured attached.
5- Neutralized with Sulfamic Acid 99% pure, but there was no reaction upon it's addition. Then I moved further to..,,
6- Precipitae gold using Sodium Metabisulfite. 
7- The beaker was getting chilled/cooled upon SMB's addition, is this normal?
There was a bubbling reaction, I was expecting 2 grams of gold, thats why I added 2 grams of SMB, there was a colour change in the solution but no precipitation occur, I thought I should be adding more SMB, I added 2 grams more but again there was no precipitation.
Can you please suggest me what to do now?
If the test shown the presence of gold in the solution then why it did not precipitate upon SMB's addition?
If there was no reaction/brown fumes upon addition of Sulfamic Acid, does it means the nitirc acid was completely utilized?
When I last added one gram of SMB, it reacted, it might still react if I put some more SMB, I do not understand what's going on.
Please help me in this regard.

Please note: I forgot to mention one bit (which is pint number 7) of reaction thats why edditing.

Alvi


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## jason_recliner

Your first photo here is not incineration. Or it that just your HCl boiling? 
See MarcoP's photo of foils in a stainless steel pan on a hotplate with additional torching. The foils need to get red hot. A few minutes is enough. 

What were the amounts and strengths of HCl and nitric acids that you used to make your aqua regia?
I'm thinking that if you're having trouble precipitating gold with SMB, you might still have free nitric. That will redissolve the gold before it gets a chance to fully drop.


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## g_axelsson

You have a large volume of gold chloride for only 2 grams of gold, how much HCl and HNO3 did you add?

Göran


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## Geo

purgatory, what you are describing is a classic mistake made by many. Stannous chloride test is positive but no gold will precipitate. Two grams of gold is a small amount in such a volume of solution. Evaporate the solution as you have it now without doing anything else to one third of what you have now. This will do a couple of things. As you have already added sulfamic acid, it will cause the reaction to drive off the excess nitric acid. I did not see where you heated the solution. The only time you will get a reaction with sulfamic acid is when the nitric acid content is very high. Even a couple of ml's of nitric acid will prevent the gold from precipitating. A heated solution will be more reactive. And too, gold is easier to drop from a more concentrated solution. Easier because it takes less reagents for a smaller amount of liquid and the drop is quicker.

Heat the solution when you are using sulfamic acid to rid a solution of free nitric acid. Be careful as a heated solution will give a more vigorous reaction.


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## Anonymous

Why would there still be free Nitric in a solution if enough Sulfamic has been added ? It's more likely that not enough has been used to take the free Nitric out of the equation.

I agree with warming the solution Geo however I'm not sure of the benefit of reducing the volume by 2/3.

edit: This is a reason why I always use crystalline sulfamic without dissolving it in water first and adding the liquid. 

Jon


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## Geo

It.s just good practice to precipitate from a concentrated solution. You could precipitate two grams from a gallon of solution and there's no requirement to precipitate from a concentrated solution, but it is easier for the person dealing with it. I'm not repeating this from others. When I first started dissolving gold and precipitating, I was precipitating from what now seems enormous amounts of solution. I have since come to understand better. Waiting days for a couple of grams of finely divided gold powder to settle from so much liquid is unnecessary.


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## purgatory

Hi Everyone,
How are you all doing?

Well, I have been a bit impatient, as I was expecting the instant precipitaion but the solution was not concentrated enough to get the gold precipitated upon the addition of SMB, I found the gold powder at the bottom of the beaker when I saw it now after almost 12 hours,

Jason Recliner, it is not the photo of incineration, the comment section of that photo states hcl bath. There was no reaction upon addition of Sulfamic Acid, please tell me that is that not a sign of a completely neutralized nitirc acid?

Goran, I added 35 ml of hcl 30% and 4 ml of nitric acid 60%. Additional water was added upon rinsing the filter and the beaker, I have consumed a lot of water in rinsing them I presume. Or what else I did wrong to increase the solution?

Geo, thank you for your kind suggestions, I really appreciate your suggestions at it's elite level, you are right Geo, I did not heat the solution when I was adding Sulfamic Acid, thank you for clarifying it, I have learnt one more step that I should heat the solution while addition of Sulfamic Acid, but why there was no reaction when I added Sulfamic Acid? Was that a sign of a completely neutralized nitric?

Jon, It was my false assumption to assume that may be the nitric was not been neutralized upon Sulfamic Acid's addition, Imdid not add more as there was no reaction, I'm learning the details of te whole process, all of the senior members of this forum have been so kind to give their suggestions in order to get me on the right tract of this chemical process. I'm thankfull to all of them. I did not dissolve the Sulfamic Acid in water either. But my mistake was to use more than enough water to rinse the filter and the beaker when I was filtering gold chloride solution, that was why the solution exceeded the required amount of it.

I checked the remaining solution with stannous chloride after when I saw the gold was precipitated, I am going to take a picture and post it here to show you guys, the colour is sligtly yellow tinted but transparent and the gold powder (which I'm boiling in hcl after water rinse) is of dark infact very dark colour after precipitation. Let's see which colour it would come up in after this wash which Harold suggested us to wash the gold powder.

Thank you everyone for your very much informative suggestions, I appreciate them all, so nice of you all.

Alvi


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## purgatory

Geo, you're absolutely right, your last post justifies this late precipitation in my case, well said Geo. this is what the experience is all about which you have while dealing with scrap in countless numbers of processes, I have seen couple of your videos at youtube, I like your very straight forward instructions, unfortunately I cant see no more videos at youtube, because there is a dispute in between youtube and my service provider. I do not know how long it will take to resolve the issues, or I will have to change the service I think.


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## Anonymous

HI Alvi

Thanks for the replies, I'm glad the guys have been able to help.

Geo, there are differing schools of thought on the concentration of the solution before dropping the gold. I understand your way of doing it and the reasoning behind it- I prefer to do it the way that GSP does it which is diluted.


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## Geo

This is something that I have learned on my own. You can neutralize free nitric acid to a point that you can precipitate gold at ambient temperatures, but upon heating, the precipitated gold will re-dissolve into solution. There are factors that govern chemical reactions, concentration, atmospheric pressure, heat (energy) just to name a few. A chemical reaction between reagents requires one, some or all of these factors and it changes with each factor introduced. Where the gold can precipitate from a solution at ambient temperatures, the same solution will dissolve gold if heated. The same is in effect for many of the reactions we want. When you dissolve sulfamic acid into liquid, it cools the liquid as energy is absorbed. When you heat the solution in the presence of other reagents, the energy is released in the form of heat which is why you should be careful adding sulfamic acid to a heated solution to avoid a boil over. If it does not work the first time you use it or even the second or third, it doesn't mean that the process doesn't work, it's just that you are either doing it incorrectly or there's nothing there to react with it. Since the test is positive and the addition of SMB fizzes and no gold drops, that's an indication of free nitric. Since we know that sulfamic acid converts nitric acid to nitrous oxide and sulfuric acid, there's no reason it wont work. This is one of the little things that you can play with (within reason) and not mess up the final product. By heating and additions of sulfamic acid and then a small quantity of SMB, you can repeat this over and over until you get it right.


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## purgatory

Jon, you're wellcome, pleasure is all mine.
Well, there is very strange thing happened when I was boiling the precipitated gold in hcl and water according to Harold suggests, you guys will not beleive that all the gold was dissolved in it and I checked it with stannous chloride, it showed gold in the solution, I have taken pictures and going to post, aftaer stannous chloride test, I again repeated te whole process like adding Sulfamic Acid while heating the solution and there was no reaction then I added SMB and I cant explain what I felt after seeing the precipitation of gold in the form of solid gold in it's real colour, please have a look and explain what is going on here, I do not understand.


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## Geo

You can't rinse acid from solids with just water. Look at my post above this one. The residual nitric acid in the powders was enough to put the powder back into solution. If you are following Harold's directions, you forgot to heat the powder to a dull red heat. Next time, heat the powders after they are dry and then do the washes and rinses.


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## purgatory

This was the stannous test, please have a look.
Let me explain, after I recovered precipitated gold, I boiled it wit water and rinsed.
Then I boiled it in hcl and water what Harold suggests, for a long period of time.
I realized that the solution's colour has changed to the same yellow colour when I dissolved gold in Aqua Regia. There was no gold powder which I stated it with and was dissolved in hcl and water boil. (I think, there is a problem in my de-ionized water, I'm not sure).
I repeated the neutralization process with Sulfamic Acid and there was no reaction upon it's addition, I moved further to precipitate gold with SMB, and see this is what happened, gold precipitated in it's own real shiny golden colour in the form of minutes flakes/foils.
I dont know what is going on, please have a look and advise,
Thank you

Alvi


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## purgatory

Geo you're talking about the precipitated gold powder?
Do I need to even heat this precipitated gold to a dull red?

Please note: I wrongly typed water instead of gold, that is why eddited.


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## g_axelsson

purgatory said:


> Goran, I added 35 ml of hcl 30% and 4 ml of nitric acid 60%. Additional water was added upon rinsing the filter and the beaker, I have consumed a lot of water in rinsing them I presume. Or what else I did wrong to increase the solution?


Hi Alvi,

the reason I asked was to know if you had used the classical proportions of 3:1 to 4:1 HCl:HNO3 of aqua regia. You have a lot of excess HCl but that doesn't hurt the process and you didn't add extremely much nitric acid, although you probably only used up half of it or less.
I have no experience of sulfamic use but I remember that there is a certain amount of sulfamic to neutralize a ml of nitric. It is easy to calculate the maximum amount that you would need and never add more than that. That will keep you from making a big mess. Many people just adds more chemicals if it doesn't react as they were expecting.

Nice to hear you got your gold out... now you're hooked! :mrgreen: 

... oh, just read it redissolved again. That's strange. I leave it to the other guys, you're in good hands and I'm sure you will find your gold again.

Göran


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## purgatory

Goran, it's good to have your humurous post, it made me feel good though. You know Goran, I'm surprised to see the gold precipitated 2nd time in the shiny golden colour, It was re-dissolved and then precipitated in this form, do you have any idea what is this all about?

Alvi


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## g_axelsson

For me almost every drop is unique and it's always a bit of magic. Sometimes it drops in a strange way without any explanation. Just enjoy it. 8) 

(In other words, I don't know! :shock: )

Göran


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## Geo

In this instance, where you knew you had free nitric in solution, the precipitated gold was contaminated with residual nitric acid. You can boil the powder in a water rinse and still not remove the nitric acid contamination. Like I said before, you can not rinse acid from anything using just water. Powder will hold more of this nitric acid contamination than one solid piece. From wiki :Coprecipitation. There are three main mechanisms of coprecipitation: inclusion, occlusion, and adsorption.[3] An inclusion occurs when the impurity occupies a lattice site in the crystal structure of the carrier, resulting in a crystallographic defect; this can happen when the ionic radius and charge of the impurity are similar to those of the carrier. An adsorbate is an impurity that is weakly bound (adsorbed) to the surface of the precipitate. An occlusion occurs when an adsorbed impurity gets physically trapped inside the crystal as it grows.

So, the nitric acid is absorbed into the precipitated gold powder. A good roasting would have removed this nitric acid contamination.


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## purgatory

Goran, likewise.... For me each and every step of this quest is unique and interesting because at the end I'm gaining productive knowledge, you know about productive knowledge, let me share something with you, see when I was staying in between mountains in the middle of the jungle in order to search the alchemical secrets, I got along with a lot of people who were finding the same treasure which 98 percent so called alchemist search for, they all spoke about making gold and talk so much about the different processes, all of them were false in terms of making gold what I presume, because in the most manuscripts things and processes and particularly MATTER is described in a very occult way which can never be understood by any ordinary alchemist, because they cant get procudtive knowledge from any manuscripts which was the reason Jabir Bin Hayyan or so called Geber back in 6th century wrote everything in an occult way, many so called alchemist read and have tried Geber's, Hermes and many other's processes but failed. Now let's talk about productive knowledge on the basis of alchemy, in terms of making medicines not the Philosopher's Stone but Elixir, there are so much to be learnt in terms of making medicines for different diseases which is quite possible, why one has to proceed further when he has made an Elixir which can be ingected orally, why they ruin their made Elixir for their further alchemical procedures, upto an Elixir which is eatable I have seen with my eyes and have seen patient recovered from an innitial level blood cancer with in only 10 to 15 days, see where the productivity is..... Awesome. It's atleast visible what you can see and observe phsycally, making gold is something no one has seen with in the present age but this quest will be running till the end. 
There are few aspects of human wellness I'm working on in terms or medicine, let's see how long it's gonna take to reach onto my destination.
This chemistry is based 100 percent on alchemy which I call a productive alchemy in the shape and form of chemistry, chemists learned alchemists's ways to make and refine chemicals for general uses other than making gold and see they have been succeeded and still earning huge amount of money on daily basis selling their chemicals, do they need to make gold? NO!!!!!! They do not need to, why because they have gathered all the valuable knowledge from the old manuscripts and worked only upto that level which is productive. This is the reason this chemistry has been succeeded in my opinion.

Please I'm sorry if I have offended anyone who is a chemist of alchemist or alchemist to be. I respect everyone whoever is in a reaserch of anything. My point is to search for something which is procuctive snd can be seen and observed phsycally.
Please accept my appology accordingly.
Goran tonight I dont know how I felt when I struck into this little mess and that period of time just came into my mind i liked the way you post.


Geo, I have got your point, I will surely be cery much carefull next time. Roasting or incineration is a must, tonight is not at all a waste for me, I have learned and seen productive truths behind this science/process of Metal Purgation.

So nice of you Geo, Goran and everyone else, thank you.

Please Note: I eddited this post accidently, when I re-read your post Harold, it stated (need not be) and I miss read it as (need to be), kindly accpet my apologies in this regard.

Alvi


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## Geo

purgatory, on the forum, alchemy is a forbidden subject. It is in the same realm as magic and sorcery and we do not discuss it. It's the little things like this that makes this such a great place to learn in. We often times have new members who want to discuss it and normally, a moderator will inform them that it's a forbidden topic because it promotes misinformation. We try to be men (and women) of science and the occult has no place here.


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## purgatory

Geo, my opinion is the same about alchemy.
I have accepted my mistake to even write about it here. 
Kindly suggest me should I delete that post or how should I undo it?


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## Geo

Please do not delete post. If you really want it gone, send a PM to one of the moderators. Every time it's posted on the forum, it shows up with google search. We try to limit the amount of misinformation on the forum.


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## purgatory

Alright Geo, thank you so much for guiding me, so nice of you.

Alvi


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## Harold_V

The post need not be edited, as there has been constructive discussion in regards to why we don't discuss alchemy on this forum. Because there's a never ending supply of new readers, such exposure can serve a purpose. 

Those who come here with alchemy on their minds are not treated too kindly if they don't drop the subject. You, good sir, are a perfect gentleman, so we have no issues with your comments. 

Harold


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## g_axelsson

Purgatory, this forum is based on science, alchemy may be a part of early chemistry but in those days we didn't have the knowledge of atoms and elements and people tried to make sense of the processes they observed.

That some people still talk as alchemy is something true only shows their lack of knowledge about modern science. For example, today we know how to create new elements with nuclear synthesis, we can adjust energy levels to create the new transuranium elements never seen before in nature. This is not alchemy, it is based on sound science like nuclear and quantum physics.
In chemistry we can build atoms and read DNA. With delicate instruments we can even move atoms and adjust the form of electron clouds in matter.

This is science and that is what this forum is based on. To start pushing "modern" alchemy is a sure way to get banned, we don't see lightly on misinformation here and modern alchemy is nothing but misinformation and keeping people in the dark.

With the vast knowledge of matter and chemistry we have today there are no place or need for alchemy any longer. Alchemy is only interesting from a historical point of view from a time when the Sun circled the Earth and everyone could see with their own eyes that the Earth was flat.

When I wrote "For me almost every drop is unique and it's always a bit of magic. Sometimes it drops in a strange way without any explanation. Just enjoy it."
I meant that I can't control every aspect of the environment the reduction of gold is done in. Therefore I don't know exactly how the gold will precipitate from time to time. But I don't need to, I know enough of what is happening, the chemical reduction, testing, how to avoid problems and so on, the end product is always pure gold even if the road to it isn't always the same.
... and that every time I drop my gold I get a big smile on my face. 8) 

Göran


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## Harold_V

g_axelsson said:


> ... and that every time I drop my gold I get a big smile on my face. 8)


There's something "magical" about precipitation. I enjoyed observing that process just as much the last time it was performed as I did the first time. Countless big smiles were certainly part of my experiences, too. 

Harold


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## cyrus899

Question, after collecting gold foil do I need to incinerate the substance, and is there any certain temperature needed :?:


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## Geo

There are reasons for incineration and each reason is reliant on the material at hand. You would incinerate watch bands to remove oil and organics, you would incinerate bench sweeps to remove carbon and organics. We normally incinerate foils to help reduce tin oxide and remove previously used acids. If you recover foils using copper(II) chloride and want to use a nitric acid bath to remove troublesome materials, you would incinerate the foils after the CuCl2 treatment and before the HNO3 treatment. The temperature needed will vary for the desired effect. If you want to remove residual acid and help convert tin oxide, the temperature of an electric burner (about 400°F) will do. The type of carbon you want to remove will determine the temperature needed to reduce it to carbon dioxide ranging from a couple hundred degrees to near 1,000 degrees.


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## cyrus899

Thanks Geo for the information but you twisted my brain... :lol:


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## purgatory

g_axelsson said:


> When I wrote "For me almost every drop is unique and it's always a bit of magic. Sometimes it drops in a strange way without any explanation. Just enjoy it."
> 
> ... and that every time I drop my gold I get a big smile on my face. 8)
> 
> Göran



You're right Goran, even I enjoyd it the 2nd time gold precipitated in a strange manner, I was like smiling that atleast it has been precipitated.

I washed it thorougly but could not melt it today, I will post it's picture by tomorrow and see what that button will come up like.

Alvi


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## Wingedcloud

Hello all,

I've been following samuel-a webpage on gold recovery for some time and finally, after much study and video watching, I decided to recover some gold from foils myself.
Got all reagents right, got the correct equipment to work.
I had around...2 lbs of gold fingers to start with, so began by processing them all, with the etching solution, following all the steps presented on samuel tutorial. (The foils I ended up with are shown in the picture)

I then proceded with dissolving my foils using the method on the tutorial. However, instead of using SMB to precipitate the gold, I used copperas (or ferrous sulphate), as SMB is not easy to find in my country (I'm from Portugal, btw  ). 

I ended up precipitating about 1 gram of gold powder, and I think i should be getting a little bit more, considering the total quantity of fingers I started with.
My HCl + HNO3 solution is still very gold yellow. Maybe I need to add more copperas to it to drop more gold?

Hope some1 can help. I'm here to clarify anything about my process so you can help me.

Thanks in advance.

Winged


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## FrugalRefiner

Winged, it's easy to check your solution to see if there is still gold in solution. You need to test it with stannous chloride solution. There is a good description of testing in Hoke's book (she calls it testing solution A). You'll find links to it in my signature line below. You can also search the forum for stannous chloride. You'll find a lot of information on making it and using it. If you're going to refine, you absolutely have to have it.

Dave


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## Wingedcloud

FrugalRefiner said:


> Winged, it's easy to check your solution to see if there is still gold in solution. You need to test it with stannous chloride solution. There is a good description of testing in Hoke's book (she calls it testing solution A). You'll find links to it in my signature line below. You can also search the forum for stannous chloride. You'll find a lot of information on making it and using it. If you're going to refine, you absolutely have to have it.
> 
> Dave



Thanks for you reply.

I thought of stannous chloride already. I currently have no way of making it and i feel sad about it


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## FrugalRefiner

Wingedcloud said:


> I thought of stannous chloride already. I currently have no way of making it and i feel sad about it


There are many ways to skin the cat. I'm assuming you can get HCl, so the only other thing you need is tin. Some members use various solders for the purpose, the favorite being a 96% tin, 4% antimony variety. But most solder will contain tin and will probably work. Another common source is tin fishing sinkers. Lead is being eliminated and tin is a common replacement. Pewter is another possibility. It's primarily tin. 

You can also use copperas to test. I believe Hoke described that method as well, and I know it's been discussed on the forum, especially when testing a solution that may also contain platinum group metals.

You must find a way to test, otherwise you are flying blind, never sure where your gold is.

Dave


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## Wingedcloud

FrugalRefiner said:


> Wingedcloud said:
> 
> 
> 
> I thought of stannous chloride already. I currently have no way of making it and i feel sad about it
> 
> 
> 
> There are many ways to skin the cat. I'm assuming you can get HCl, so the only other thing you need is tin. Some members use various solders for the purpose, the favorite being a 96% tin, 4% antimony variety. But most solder will contain tin and will probably work. Another common source is tin fishing sinkers. Lead is being eliminated and tin is a common replacement. Pewter is another possibility. It's primarily tin.
> 
> You can also use copperas to test. I believe Hoke described that method as well, and I know it's been discussed on the forum, especially when testing a solution that may also contain platinum group metals.
> 
> You must find a way to test, otherwise you are flying blind, never sure where your gold is.
> 
> Dave
Click to expand...


I'll definetly try one of the options you gave me. Thanks so much !


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