# Refining of fingers from a single card



## g_axelsson (Apr 7, 2016)

In another thread I offered to refine the gold from voltage regulators free of charge, the payment should have been the rest of the boards. In the end I managed to talk him out of it as postage would have cost more than the gold recovered. But he still wanted me to verify that it was plated gold so he sent me one card.

The board consisted of the long side with gold on nickel plated on copper base metal fingers. On the card were various components, large grey transformers or inductors, small integrated circuits, ceramic capacitors and other surface mount components. On one side were two aluminum plates for cooling the switch transistors. There were a couple of small golden supports for the cooling plates.

Top side with foils, small IC:s and a lot of capacitors


Bottom side, with aluminum plates...


... and without, cooling paste partly wiped off. Notice the small rectangular metal blocks. Probably for connecting the cooling plate thermally with the circuit board.



After dismantling the interesting components I ended up with this :


* Circuit board 27,3 g
* Gold plated fingers 2,9 g
* MLCC 4.0 g
* Golden supports 1,0 g
* Aluminum 15,7 g
* Small IC:s 1,5 g
Total weight 52,4 g


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## g_axelsson (Apr 7, 2016)

I started by dissolving one of the golden supports in diluted nitric acid. At first it was slow to react but after a while it started to pick up the pace. Soon I could see tiny golden particles floating in the liquid. In the end it broke apart into microscopic parts proving the plating was really thin.

Dissolving


The remnants afterwards. mostly tiny bit of white mud.



Next up I just threw the fingers into the same liquid and the acid soon started to attack the copper beneath the gold plating. Soon the plating from a few fingers fell off while other remained stuck to the circuit board. It seems like the through plated via holes let the gold cling to the board. A glass rod fixed the problem.


Among the last things to go was the nickel plating under the gold. Some pieces remaining can be seen on this picture as white flakes.

White nickel plating remnants among the gold foils.



Nice foils, holding together well means thicker foils.


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## g_axelsson (Apr 7, 2016)

The liquid, the circuit board and the gold flakes were transferred into a beaker so I could easily remove the circuit boards and wash the foils a bit. Then it was transferred back into the measuring cylinder I used as a test tube. There is just a hint of blue copper nitrate after the wash but even with this little nitrates in solution it only took a few drops of hydrochloric acid to dissolve the foils completely.

Foils before adding HCl


Foils dissolved, no additional nitric used


Filtered gold chloride


Remnants in the filter


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## g_axelsson (Apr 7, 2016)

I added a bit of SMB to precipitate the gold. The solution first turned dark and then I could see some gold collecting on the bottom.

Precipitated gold


The gold powder was collected in a small cavity dug in a piece of carbon and some grains of borax on top to keep it from blowing away when melting. Then I melted it with a oxyacetylen torch.
The resulting button was cleaned in sulfuric acid to remove any borax and then photographed on top of a ruler to calculate the weight.

Resulting gold button on top of a mm ruler.



Comparison of my earlier buttons 52, 10 and 0,01 gram.



The resulting button is circa 1 mm in diameter. This gives a volume of 4/3*3.14*(0.5)^3 = 0.5 mm3 which gives about 10 milligram of gold.
With 2,9 g fingers giving 10 mg gold we have 1000/2.9*0.010 = 3.5 g/kg or 40 cents per card in gold (@1225 $/ounce). Now I do have losses on the way so the real content might be closer to 5 g/kilo of the fingers.

How about the rest of the card?

The 1.5 g of IC:s contains gold bond wires, about 1 - 2 grams per kilo, 1-3 mg per card, let's say about 10 cents of gold here.
And the 4 g of MLCC probably around 2% of palladium and 5% of silver
4*0,02 = 0,08 g of palladium, 8 times as much as the gold but at 541 $/ounce it's worth 8*541/1225 = 3,5 times as much, about $1,40 per card.
4*0,05 = 0,2 g of silver, 20 times as much as the gold but at $15 per ounce it's only worth about 10 cents.
Total precious metal value of one card : 0,40+0,10+1,40+0,10 = 2 dollars.

Looking at the above number we can easily see that the MLCC:s are the most valuable thing on the cards while the gold fingers are the easiest value to collect. The numbers are only my approximations and only the gold fingers have been refined.
10-15 mg per card is 0,2-0,3 g/kilo or 200-300g/ton. Taking the palladium in account, it is even more valuable so this is good material although a bit tricky to process.

Göran


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## Topher_osAUrus (Apr 7, 2016)

Excellent series of posts. Thank you for taking the time to put this on here for everyone. Much appreciated.


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## UncleBenBen (Apr 7, 2016)

Nice work Göran! I love to do small scale runs like that. My very first little bead was about that same size, but I lost it to my basement floor right after I got it melted.

One small critique: as a mod and long time member, you are a role model and mentor for all us new guys. So if for no other reason than posing for the camera...
Gloves, man. Put on some gloves!! :mrgreen: :lol: 

Yeah I know, another of my pitiful attempts at sarcasm. But even so, gloves! :lol:


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## solar_plasma (Apr 7, 2016)

Silver and gold bead measuring by Plattner 1830:

Two straight lines with a point of intersection and a gap of 0,9mm at 156mm length. The whole length is devided into 50 parts of 3,12mm (linear). Right row of numbers shows the weight in mg silver (for gold factor x2,136) equal to % in 100mg assayed ore, so you can measure down to 0,00003mg Ag or 0,00006408mg Au.

This was made of any hard material, glas, wood, something like that. The gold bead was put between those two straight lines and pulled with tweezers under a magnifier to the small end.

The flattening of the metal bead is already implemented by empirical means.

I can't tell how exact this is. But even rounded this is an accuracy I would never have assumed to be possible in 1830!


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## g_axelsson (Apr 8, 2016)

That's an ingenious way to measure diameter and indirect weight.

I would use three pieces of glass (two as a wedge sitting on top of a third flat surface) and something of known thickness, for example an uncirculated coins edge to make the wedge. Then letting gravity move the small button down until it got stuck.

Göran


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## g_axelsson (Apr 8, 2016)

I know it's bad in principle, but I don't use gloves when doing a small scale test as this. The amounts of acid and liquids are just ml and not enough to do any damage on my hands. Whenever I pick up something, a beaker with liquid or handling an acid bottle I wash my hands directly afterwards when I'm done.

When working with "production" sized batches outside my workshop I use gloves, but this was done on the balcony where I run small tests.

This summer I'm planning on building a real lab with a fume hood and take my refining to the next level. Making it possible to refine year round.

Göran


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## Anonymous (Apr 8, 2016)

Goran, you and Bjorn just have far too much patience and time on your hands :lol: :lol:


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## bmgold2 (Apr 8, 2016)

Thanks for posting this. I like the micro scale experiments. Seems like a great way to learn the process (or test a new one) without risking making a big mess. It's nice to see that even tiny amounts of gold can still be refined. Maybe not at a profit even if the scrap was free but educational and hobby refiner's don't have to count their own time.


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## UncleBenBen (Apr 8, 2016)

g_axelsson said:


> I know it's bad in principle, but I don't use gloves when doing a small scale test as this.



I'm guilty of it also. I was mainly just ribbing you a bit Göran. For me it's mainly not want to waste a cheap pair of gloves for 3 minutes of use. Especially since all I'm doing chemically for now is in test tubes, checking different pins, contacts and what not. Yet I suppose even the smallest exposures to this stuff can add up over time.



solar_plasma said:


> Silver and gold bead measuring by Plattner 1830:



Could a device like this be used to guage purity as well? Say you had gold beads of the same known weight and purity. If dropped into the 'wedge' they should stop at the same point every time. If there was a metal of less density than gold mixed in the bead, the bead would have to be larger to make that known weight and would stop higher up in the 'wedge'.

Or would there just be too many variables to account for? Like the roundness of the bead, or probably a dozen other things I'm not thinking of...


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## solar_plasma (Apr 8, 2016)

I believe it is just like you assume, too many variables. The proper way would be an assay by weighing, cupelling to eliminate base metals (at least when we talk concentrates), then AR to eliminate silver and other PMs and weighing the difference. Only read, not tried yet. If I understood the pro's correctly, there is not one general way to assay, it depends on the material to be assayed. Though this seems to be the basic way, since it is referred in every chapter I read about assaying at prominent place.


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## g_axelsson (Apr 8, 2016)

There is also a difference between different acids and concentrations. Some acids and especially the metals dissolved could build up over time while other doesn't.

Before I started with refining I was already working with hydrochloric acid for my rock collection. I was removing lime stone to bring out hidden crystals I regularly picked stones from a vat with acid as long as I had fresh water standing by. :shock: This is nothing I would recommend, just something I did. The only dissolved metals were calcium and magnesium, together with weak hydrochloric it's all substances we have in our bodies so no large dangers of building up over time.

My old chemistry teacher did it all the times, so I guess I learned my bad habits from him. He even showed us the color changes of his fingers in different acids or silver nitrate. The sulfuric acid dip was fast and then followed by a long wash under the water tap. He was old school, from a time before everything had to be so safe that kids today never learn to think about dangers... but that's another rant for another day.

But I would never put my hands in copper chloride etch, copper, nickel, lead and so on is nothing I want in my body.

I guess what my position is, if you don't know what you are doing, use protection. But if you know what you are doing and accept the risks it's your prerogative to be stupid and put you in harms way.

I'm going to build a lab out of town, 90 km away, so any refining session will include driving to and from the lab and I believe that is my biggest danger when refining. Every year there are a couple of cars running into moose along that road so it's easy to put a number on that danger.

"The refining is fine, but all the moose is annoying!" :mrgreen: 

Göran


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## jason_recliner (Apr 8, 2016)

I started to PM this to Göran but since it's now being discussed, I'd like to share with you all how I saw the light about 6 months ago.

I left a spotless beaker, containing fresh HCl / CuCl2, overnight. I merely picked it up the next morning to inspect it and put it back down. I guess HCl fumes are heavy and had condensed on the outside of the beaker, because just minutes later my index finger felt a "burning numbness" - if such an oxymoron is possible. So I washed under cool, then warmer, water and rubbed in some bicarb I keep handy, though in the kitchen. After washing out, there was a hole in my fingertip pad, just about 2mm wide and maybe a third as deep. But the whole fingertip had zero touch sensation for about a day. I wondered all that time whether I had either destroyed nerves or just poisoned them with copper, before it eventually came good.

I had been fortunate enough to learn a valuable lesson at a bargain price. Refine your fingers. Not your fingers.

Now I won't touch anything acid related without gloves. I mostly use a pair of fairly cheap thick nitrile gloves that look rather like the washing-up type. They're far thicker than the blue disposable nitrile type, are less likely to puncture, but the main point is I can put them on for 2 minutes and take them off again, over and over. Not only does it protect me, but it keeps my grubby paws off the gear.

I also will not deliberately put my gloved hand into acid as I see so many people doing. Just because I wear a seat belt and have air bags, doesn't mean I'm going to drive around into parked cars. In my opinion, if you get any significant amount of acid on your gloves, you're doing it wrong. Spoons, rods, tongs and the like are for putting in acid. Gloves are for accidents. Like goggles, they are for "that one time", though you've done it a thousand times before. They buy you time, but they're not impervious forever.


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## Anonymous (Apr 8, 2016)

Ive taken GSP's advice and used short sleeves to refine. I can immediately tell if anything has come onto my skin and it's better that way than having it in the clothing and staying in contact with your skin for a long period of time. Personal choice on gloves is disposal Nitrile.

As you say Jason they don't last forever and I probably use a good 20 per day at the least because I change them constantly. Having a bucket of clean water around is good because you can wash your gloves off in it throughout the day after handling anything. I watched a youtube video recently and cringed at the guy handling concentrated Nitric with a pair of standard material gardening gloves. I'm still cringing as I type that because he would have been better with no gloves at all IMHO. 

Nickvc and GSP and I believe 4metals have all alluded to using full gauntlets, and I think I am going to invest in a set. 

Jason I've never had what you experienced because I've only found HCl to be a problem when it's in a cut (boy that smarts) but I have had a similar experience with Nitric.

Jon


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## Topher_osAUrus (Apr 8, 2016)

spaceships said:


> Ive taken GSP's advice and used short sleeves to refine. I can immediately tell if anything has come onto my skin and it's better that way than having it in the clothing and staying in contact with your skin for a long period of time. Personal choice on gloves is disposal Nitrile.
> 
> As you say Jason they don't last forever and I probably use a good 20 per day at the least because I change them constantly. Having a bucket of clean water around is good because you can wash your gloves off in it throughout the day after handling anything. I watched a youtube video recently and cringed at the guy handling concentrated Nitric with a pair of standard material gardening gloves. I'm still cringing as I type that because he would have been better with no gloves at all IMHO.
> 
> ...




Pretty sure that nitrile plus hno3 dont mix well... I think, if nitric is concentrated enough, the will burst into flames

So i have read... And watched on the interwebs... ...but, this is the internet...where everyone speaks french(its an american commercial..were idiots..), and there are hot young singles in YOUR area


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## FrugalRefiner (Apr 8, 2016)

spaceships said:


> I watched a youtube video recently and cringed at the guy handling concentrated Nitric with a pair of standard material gardening gloves. I'm still cringing as I type that because he would have been better with no gloves at all IMHO.


That's how I learned to work with acids when I was in high school - no gloves. That was back in the 1970s, and we just didn't know better, but we did learn to be very careful since we didn't have that "safety net" to give us a false sense of security. We referred to nitric acid as "creeping" acid. Even when we put nitric in a beaker, and there was absolutely no liquid on the outside, if you picked the beaker up a while later and didn't wash your hands promptly, you end up with yellow fingers.



Topher_osAUrus said:


> Pretty sure that nitrile plus hno3 dont mix well... I think, if nitric is concentrated enough, the will burst into flames


Only if it's fuming red or white. The 68 - 70% we usually use will not cause your hands to burst into flames.

Dave


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## nickvc (Apr 9, 2016)

The full length gauntlets are a must if your doing serious commercial refining, they are easy to put on and take off and are extremely durable, they even allow you to move, carefully and only short distances, beakers containing hot solutions. The one thing to avoid is handling sharp materials wearing them as they do puncture but as I said easy to remove them.


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## 4metals (Apr 9, 2016)

Solar said:


> I can't tell how exact this is. But even rounded this is an accuracy I would never have assumed to be possible in 1830!



With a bead that small measuring the diameter is at best a guestimate, even if you can accurately determine the diameter. Action mining sold an assay kit for ore and to avoid the high price the kit would be if it required an analytical balance, they used a comparator and a chart to measure the bead. Then they gave you a chart of color to estimate purity. Given all of the assumptions, weight based on diameter, and percent gold based on color, it is at best a wildly speculative method to determine gold content. Neat technique to determine diameter of a perfect sphere, but little else. 

I think refining such small quantities of gold leaves room for error, and usually the error is in the refiner's favor. I would think having digested the foils in acid, an AA analysis would give gold concentration which could be applied to the dilution factor. This will eliminate any losses due to melting and gathering all of the gold into a single bead, which in these micro quantities is difficult at best. This is how it is done professionally to obtain useful data on value per specific piece. This data is catalogued and only spoken about in select inner circles within any refining company. However knowing the actual recovered value of a specific circuit is valuable information.


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## Anonymous (Apr 9, 2016)

4metals said:


> *I would think having digested the foils in acid, an AA analysis would give gold concentration which could be applied to the dilution factor.* This will eliminate any losses due to melting and gathering all of the gold into a single bead, which in these micro quantities is difficult at best. This is how it is done professionally to obtain useful data on value per specific piece. This data is catalogued and only spoken about in select inner circles within any refining company. However knowing the actual recovered value of a specific circuit is valuable information.



Darn. I was going to type that 4metals. I didn't completely understand the method that Bjorn was talking about so I wasn't totally sure if I was correct, therefore I passed up the opportunity. Glad to know my hunch was correct though!

Jon


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## g_axelsson (Apr 9, 2016)

What you are saying is that it was wrong to scrap these machines?



Göran


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## Grelko (Apr 9, 2016)

FrugalRefiner said:


> Only if it's fuming red or white. The 68 - 70% we usually use will not cause your hands to burst into flames.
> 
> Dave



Could someone go into more detail about this please? Unless you are talking about highly concentrated "fuming" Nitric giving off white fumes, or instead, red fumes when dissolving metals, I'm not sure what this is.

I haven't used nitric yet and would like to know as much as I can about it, before I use it someday.


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## FrugalRefiner (Apr 9, 2016)

Grelko said:


> FrugalRefiner said:
> 
> 
> > Only if it's fuming red or white. The 68 - 70% we usually use will not cause your hands to burst into flames.
> ...


I'm not a chemist, so I may be corrected, but most "concentrated" nitric acid is somewhere around 68 to 70%. That is the azeotrope for nitric acid, i.e., the point at which normal distillation at standard temperature and pressure will not make it any more concentrated. If you open a bottle of this, you will often see some white fumes coming off of it. If you pour some onto some silver or copper, you'll see some red fumes (NOx) coming off of it. But it's still just "concentrated" nitric acid.

Nitric acid can be made more concentrated in ways I will not describe here. It involves removing more of the water than would be possible through normal distillation. When you get down to just a couple percent water, you have what is known as red fuming nitric acid (RFNA). It's a good rocket propellant, but it has no use in recovery and refining. It increases the flammability of just about everything, hence the impressive youtube videos of nitrile gloves bursting into flames.

White fuming nitric acid (WFNA) is an even more "concentrated" form, where the "break down" components of RFNA are minimized.

Again, I'm not a chemist, so that may not be an accurate representation, but in principle, what we work with in refining is not red fuming or white fuming nitric acid, even though it may give off red or white fume. It will not cause your gloves to burst into flames.

Dave


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## jason_recliner (Apr 9, 2016)

So I take it then that red fuming nitric acid releases the same NO2 fumes that 50:50 diluted nitric does when used in AR.

:idea: :idea: :idea: 
I also do not use nitric acid yet. When I do find it, or make it from the sufuric I also can't get, it will be quite expensive for me one way or another.

So if one were to collect these reaction fumes and scrub them through water, a certain amount of the NO2 could be recycled as dilute nitric acid or nitrous acid. On the off chance I understand this, peroxide would help it become more nitric than nitrous?

Edit: Sorry for the hijack. This is getting off topic.


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## solar_plasma (Apr 10, 2016)

4metals


> to determine diameter of a perfect sphere, but little else.



Plattners method doesn't measure any perfect shape, the flattening of the shape versus weight is found empircally. Otherwise it would not be any advantage to just measure the diameter by other means. Surely it cannot be compared to any expensive modern lab weight, I am pretty sure it is as good as or better than anything under 100 or 200 - given the assayer did a good job purifying his bead.

If it wouldn't be exact enough, those professionals in 1830 would have use larger probes like 1g instead of 100mg of ore. Anything else would not make sense. Soft science approach, my home terrain 8) :lol: Not save, but very probable.

Though, I have only one source I can't be sure, if the numbers are correct, even the method as such should be original.


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## Topher_osAUrus (Apr 10, 2016)

jason_recliner said:


> So I take it then that red fuming nitric acid releases the same NO2 fumes that 50:50 diluted nitric does when used in AR.
> 
> :idea: :idea: :idea:
> I also do not use nitric acid yet. When I do find it, or make it from the sufuric I also can't get, it will be quite expensive for me one way or another.
> ...



Wfna and rfna are both above the azeotrope of 68%, which you dont need to worry about making unless you distill your azeotrope nitric again..

*i believe* that white is msde under vacuum, with absence of light, red is just red (again, i think..) because of the excess NO2 coloring the acid. On another forum, i read that if your distilled nitric is brownish (more than just a little yellow) keeping it out of direct light for a day or 2 will in turn, allow the unwanted gas to escape and clarify the HNO3.. Its been awhile since ive read that, so i will try to find it again and relay the pertinent information and the link


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## FrugalRefiner (Apr 10, 2016)

Topher_osAUrus said:


> Wfna and rfna are both above the azeotrope of 68%, which you dont need to worry about making unless you distill your azeotrope nitric again.


It doesn't matter how many times you distill it, it will not go higher than the azeotrope. That's essentially the definition of azeotrope - a mixture whose proportions cannot be altered by simple distillation.

Dave


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## Topher_osAUrus (Apr 10, 2016)

FrugalRefiner said:


> Topher_osAUrus said:
> 
> 
> > Wfna and rfna are both above the azeotrope of 68%, which you dont need to worry about making unless you distill your azeotrope nitric again.
> ...


http://www.science 
That is where i resd of the double distill (if you are msking it from scratch) and also
http//oooo
On page 2 or 3 of that one it talks about it as well.
It just needs something very hygroscopic to break the azeotrope's 30%(ish) water.

If this is false information, i would surely like to know. So i can remove them from my notes/bookmarks.
 Discussion of making reagents for, or of making explosives, is breaking the forum rules.
Fuming nitric acid is not only dangerous, but has no use in recovery or refining.
I disabled the links. Do not post links to places which discuss making explosives.
Butcher

-topher


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## FrugalRefiner (Apr 10, 2016)

Topher_osAUrus said:


> FrugalRefiner said:
> 
> 
> > Topher_osAUrus said:
> ...


We're talking about two different things. Note that in my definition, I say "cannot be altered by simple distillation". That means simply taking the distillate and redistilling it. When you make nitric, the first distillation will produce something less than the azeotropic level. Repeated distillation will continue to concentrate the distillate toward the azeotrope.

The method described on the science madness thread involves adding sulfuric acid to nitric acid that is already near the azeotrope. That is no longer simple distillation of nitric acid. It's not false information, but it's not simple distillation. I didn't follow the other link far enough to find their process.

There is no need for fuming acids in what we do, and they are unnecessarily dangerous, so we don't encourage anyone to make them.

Dave


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## Topher_osAUrus (Apr 10, 2016)

Ah Dave, i am totally with you now.

Sorry for the miscommunication. For i overlooked thr word "simple" in there.

Thanks for the clarity


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## jason_recliner (Apr 10, 2016)

In my case, I was wondering about recovering the nasties escaping from AR and recycling them for cost reasons.
I can see now how that might also be pushing "making reagents" boundaries, so I apologise.


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## butcher (Apr 10, 2016)

jason_recliner,
I do not see anything you should be apologizing for.

Recovering gases from a solution of nitric acid and metals where NOx gases are formed, or where these solutions or nitrate metal salts are heated, where HCl is not used.
Will be different than recycling gasses from aqua regia, or heating a solution, or nitrate and chloride mixture of salts, where we have gases of both acids.

NOx gases can be recovered to form nitric acid, Nitric oxide (NO) gas is basically insoluble in water, and will need oxygen to convert it to the soluble nitrogen dioxide (NO2) gas, this reaction can be done different ways, using H2O2 with water in your receiving flask you are bubbling the gases through (inefficient), or by mixing oxygen in a spray mist of water in scrubbing system where the gases are held long enough to make a complete conversion much more contact time and more efficient...

With aqua regia, or heating of a mixture of nitrate and chloride salts, we would have both HCl and NOx gases, although HCl is more volatile than HNO3 and will distill off (pretty much) first. But there really is not that much separations of the gases so this is not a good method of separation.

In instances where you may only have a tiny bit of HCl (contamination) in nitric acid.
Discarding the first portion of the run (mostly HCl) from the distillation process can be somewhat helpful. Any little remaining HCl contamination in the nitric acid, can be removed with the use of silver nitrate additions to remove the HCl, as an insoluble silver chloride precipitant.




Remembering aqua regia is active as soon as it is mixed, where the volatile gases of nitrosyl chloride and chlorine are formed, which are the primary reason it oxidizes gold, or dissolves gold.

These gases will not stay in a stored container, and if the container is closed the pressure build up will burst the container.
We do not premix aqua regia and use it later. Storing it in a closed container is foolish and dangerous.

You can recycle some of the aqua regia by collecting gases from a heated vessel of aqua regia. If making gold chloride from dissolving gold in aqua regia.

You will have to remember some of the chlorides are left behind as gold chloride, so you may need to add some reagent HCl to the newly formed batch. (some of the nitric will also be lost, or converted to other gases)...

Also this newly formed batch of aqua regia, would have to be reused to dissolve more gold, fairly soon after it is formed.
Before it loses its effective gases. Or its effectiveness. Basically you cannot store it. or use it later to dissolve gold. although it would still be a strong acid.


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## jason_recliner (Apr 11, 2016)

Thank you Butcher, for your kind reply.
As usual, I'm going to have to read it several times to take it all in. Some is second nature, some is "hmm, ok", and some means heavy duty study.
It was just an idea, and is probably further from my skillset than I thought.


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## Topher_osAUrus (Apr 11, 2016)

butcher said:


> ...using H2O2 with water in your receiving flask you are bubbling the gases through (inefficient), or by mixing oxygen in a spray mist of water in scrubbing system where the gases are held long enough to make a complete conversion much more contact time and more efficient...



Thread hijack, (..again. ...sorry)

Reading the spray mist comment gave me an idea butcher. I attached a picture of whats going on in my mind, for both of the ideas that your comment spawned. Would these be feasible? Applicable?

Should i start a new thread for this?

Sorry about the.chicken scratch and cruddy drawing, i was in a rush. Before i was given this idea by you, i was going to start putting pieces of polypropylene in my H2O/H2O2 mix to keep the gasses bubbling in there longer for more time to convert


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## solar_plasma (Apr 11, 2016)

Which cheap pump would resist the acid?

I have not tried it, but I imagine, it would make more sense to use an aquarium air stone for the gasses, which I would send with a slight overpressure generated by an aquarium air pump through the system. Further I would agitate the solution by a magnet stirrer in order to let the gas bubbles stay longer in contact with the water.


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## Barren Realms 007 (Apr 11, 2016)

solar_plasma said:


> Which cheap pump would resist the acid?
> 
> I have not tried it, but I imagine, it would make more sense to use an aquarium air stone for the gasses, which I would send with a slight overpressure generated by an aquarium air pump through the system. Further I would agitate the solution by a magnet stirrer in order to let the gas bubbles stay longer in contact with the water.



If you mean vacuum pump you can look on ebay and find and HVAC vacuum pump to use that seem to hold up fairly well. I use my freon recovery system pump for a couple of years and it never damaged the system from what I can tell and it still runs fine. Just change the oil on a regular basis.


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## Anonymous (Apr 11, 2016)

Funny you should say that frank. I use an HVAC too and change the oil every weekend. Much better than the expensive Cole Palmer diaphram pump I had.


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## Topher_osAUrus (Apr 11, 2016)

The aquarium pump im going to try to use to circulate H2O and peroxide will probably only survive one still session (5$...thats worthy of using it as a dispensible test to see if this idea holds water [no pun intended])

The vac pump i use is...well, its my wifes old breast pump she used when working snd rearing our two kiddos.. So far, its lasted through a dozen distill sessions....so, thats a win.


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## upcyclist (Apr 12, 2016)

She knows not to use it if you have more kids, right?


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## Topher_osAUrus (Apr 12, 2016)

upcyclist said:


> She knows not to use it if you have more kids, right?



Lol, we have 2 kids now, so she has 2, well 3 since a coworker gave her the one her daughter didnt use.

As soon as she gave me the oksy, i disassembled it and manufactured my own shell for it so it doesnt resemble it at all.

But, yeah, she knows once something from the house comes to the lab, it will never be used again for anything in the house.. Even with corningware dishes...while they can be cleaned to perfection, its still a peace of mind thing for me...cant do it...wont do it


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## upcyclist (Apr 13, 2016)

Topher_osAUrus said:


> But, yeah, she knows once something from the house comes to the lab, it will never be used again for anything in the house.. Even with corningware dishes...while they can be cleaned to perfection, its still a peace of mind thing for me...cant do it...wont do it


Hehe, I figured, I was just joking. I'm the same way--both my mom & girfriend's mom do a lot of canning, so the mason jars that have been used for sample/work storage are in one place, the ones that haven't been used yet are in another.


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