# Electrolysis



## lmschers (Sep 24, 2010)

If I Dissolve the platinum from a catalytic converter with aqua regia,
I have a large mess on my hands.
The problem is that I have to crush the converter and deal with a mess of finely crushed ceramics.
Could I just use some kind of gold pan, "blue bucket", or sifter?
It would take a lot of time and continual washing... it should work right?

With aqua regia I have dissolved 2 converters.
The first cooked for a long time and then i lost some of the dark orange liquid because I added water.
After that I accidentally dissolved a copper rod in the solution because I thought I could electrolyze out the platinum.
I must have had the current backwards...
I also think that i need to have platinum metal for an electrode to do this. 
I was using carbon and copper electrodes.
I added salt, table salt i think...
Then I reversed the current, sucked up the copper and made a copper salt. 
It looked like turquoise powder sitting at the bottom of the water.
( but that's a different experiment)

THE SECOND CONVERTER:
I crushed the whole converter with a mortar and pestle. 
I poured AR all over it and dissolved the platinum.
It was a green mess that bubbled furiously.
I let it sit for hours.
I filtered the resulting mess in a funnel with a paper filter.
There was a layer of bone white ceramics
and there was a gray runny sludge on top of it.
Some orange liquid came through the filter, 
(but I don't think all of the platinum was in there.)
The whole mess wouldn't filter,
and there was a lot of sludge still.
So I separated it.
The white ceramics and a thin layer of fine cement.
The top half was a bunch of orange liquid.
I added ammonium chloride to the orange liquid and I got a clay like residue in water.
I centerfuged this 
and a white streak resulted in the test tube,
under the clay and water.
(two test tubes broke, the corks popped out while they were spinning)
I scaped out the white streak and cooked it
and got a really crappy looking rust
but the white streak burned onto the test tube wall.

I turned my attention to the gray cementy goo.
I put it in AR for a third test.
I got orange dark liquid on top again
I siphoned some of that off so I would not dilute the mixture.
I tested the liquid by cooking it down.
I cooked it once and got a precipitate.
The precipitate was really pretty and shiny and would float up and down in chunks while the brown liquid bubbled.
I felt like I was loosing some platinum because it might have not dissolved completely. 
I stirred it with a magnet (creating a vortex)
And the pretty shiny chunks dissipated
I cooked it again and got dust.
still working....


Can magnet stirrers speed up the reaction? I tried that and it just made everything dissappear.
(How long does it take for the nitrogen to just wear out and evaporate from the solution?)

So From what I've read, I need to cook the catalytic converter/aqua regia mess, filter it through a stainless steel screen,
avoid adding more water and instead cook it while adding more chlorine and some ammonium chloride?


________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Would it make you happy to have glow in the dark pee?


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## qst42know (Sep 25, 2010)

Save yourself some trouble. Buy lazersteve's video and read Hoke.

You're not going to get anywhere if you don't have a plan and stick to it.


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## lmschers (Sep 27, 2010)

Thank you for the suggestion. I have watched lazersteve's video. 
I'm still not sure how to get that precipitate into a metal though...

I would love to read Hoke, but I'm in Thailand and it would be virtually impossible to get a copy here.
Can someone explain some of it to me?
Who was Hoke and what is the book regarding?

I googled "hoke" and the only close match was a civil war officer who focused on mining after the war.


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## qst42know (Sep 27, 2010)

Any post by palladium has the link to Hoke book in the signature line. And I am certain Steve can mail a copy of his video to you.

From the different things you describe you don't have a plan. You won't meet with much success unless you stick to an established method. You are wasting your time and resources using parts and pieces of different processes.

No one accidentally bakes a cake you need the recipe.


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## lmschers (Sep 28, 2010)

Well, actually my plan is to dissolve a catalytic converter with AR and then reconstitute the metal, be it platinum, rhodium, or whatever. It looks like I'm going to have to try a few times and record it all so I can remember it.

I crushed a catalytic converter.
Dissolved the resulting dust in aqua regia,
and let the mess settle.
There was gray sludge and dark orange liquid the next day.
(It was green while it was bubbling and dissolving...)
I sucked up the orange liquid and added hydrochloric acid and ammonium nitrate salt to it.
Then I heated it. 
A brown layer rose up (the nitrogen in the nitric acid i assume) and disappeared.
Now i have a clear pretty yellow solution with some metal dust on the bottom.
That metal looks like rust though, and on top of the solution is a dust of tiny crystals.
They are iridescent.

I wonder... if I already had platinum, could I just electrolyze the platinum out of the solution at some time?

I also can't find any links by Palladium, so could someone post a link?


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## Barren Realms 007 (Sep 28, 2010)

lmschers said:


> Well, actually my plan is to dissolve a catalytic converter with AR and then reconstitute the metal, be it platinum, rhodium, or whatever. It looks like I'm going to have to try a few times and record it all so I can remember it.
> 
> I crushed a catalytic converter.
> Dissolved the resulting dust in aqua regia,
> ...



Search thru his post's

http://www.goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/search.php?author_id=1666&sr=posts


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## lmschers (Dec 9, 2010)

I am learning how to use the forum... I hadn't noticed all the replies to my other posts.

I read Hoke, and I want Steve's videos but I'm in Thailand and it's really problematic for me to get something sent to me where I am.

I Took the Hoke approach of boiling in sodium hydroxide, then nitric, and then AR.
I still can't get a precipitate.
I also read Wichers and Gilchrist.

I just don't have the ammounts right, I think.
How much Pt should be in one good cat converter?
half a gram?


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