# Refining Alaskan Placer Gold Part2 5.8 Grams - VIDEO



## kadriver (Oct 30, 2017)

In this video I use aqua regia to refine the remaining 5.8 grams of placer gold from the first video

https://youtu.be/5DUaBAJ_pIs

I've got another 25 grams of Alaskan Fines coming and I plan to use bleach and HCl WITH NO HEAT.

Geo pointed it out to me that the chlorine is driven off by the heat.

So ill do it in the cold! Watch for the video.

kadriver


----------



## jonn (Oct 30, 2017)

Beautiful work as always Kadriver


----------



## Topher_osAUrus (Oct 30, 2017)

Without a little heat the reaction is going to take forever and a day with HCl and bleach.


----------



## g_axelsson (Oct 30, 2017)

These videos are a good argument why HCl and bleach is not recommended for carat gold. :lol: 

It was interesting to see that some gold flakes were purple while other were golden, looks like the purple ones were covered in silver chloride.
Next time you could try to convert it to silver oxide with lye and dissolve it in nitric acid. Then cementing on copper would show you how much silver you got with the gold.

Thanks for sharing!

Göran


----------



## kadriver (Oct 31, 2017)

A viewer who lives in Canada says that it works best in the cold, Geo backs him up. So I'm going to experiment with some different temps and see if I can get all the gold to go into solution.


----------



## 4metals (Nov 1, 2017)

That makes sense, although I never use bleach, I do use sodium chlorate in HCl on atomized alloy and the reaction is carried out cold. In fact I add crushed ice to keep it cool. That keeps the chlorine in solution longer so it can do its job.


----------



## Topher_osAUrus (Nov 1, 2017)

Since reaction rates double every ten degree C increase, I'm sure there has to be a sweet spot where the gas can stay in solution, and the gold can get dissolved before the year 2020.

Whenever I used bleach, I just put the hotplate on low and got on with it, its painfully slow otherwise.


----------



## kadriver (Nov 2, 2017)

4metals said:


> That makes sense, although I never use bleach, I do use sodium chlorate in HCl on atomized alloy and the reaction is carried out cold. In fact I add crushed ice to keep it cool. That keeps the chlorine in solution longer so it can do its job.



Sodium chlorate - do you add it straight away in granular form or did you make a solution and add it wet?

I just received 25 more grams of placer fines (extra small pieces) today. I'm thinking of dividing it up three ways, about 8 grams per pile.

Then put HCl and bleach in one with heat on low

HCl and bleach in the second pile with the solution cooled in ice

And the third in ice with HCl and sodium chlorate as per 4metals.

Time the whole experiment and see which one dissolves the most over a twelve hour period, or until one goes into solution completely, which ever happens first.

I'll video the experiment and post it here.

Thanks for all the suggestions.

kadtiver


----------



## 4metals (Nov 3, 2017)

I add sodium chlorate as a powder with agitation and ice. But I am dealing with lots in the 1000+ ounce range and diluting it would generate too much waste. I have never used sodium chlorate diluted in water.


----------



## kadriver (Nov 5, 2017)

4metals said:


> I add sodium chlorate as a powder with agitation and ice. But I am dealing with lots in the 1000+ ounce range and diluting it would generate too much waste. I have never used sodium chlorate diluted in water.



The powder straight in with ice, got it, thank you.


----------



## cuchugold (Nov 5, 2017)

4metals said:


> I add sodium chlorate as a powder with agitation and ice. But I am dealing with lots in the 1000+ ounce range and diluting it would generate too much waste. I have never used sodium chlorate diluted in water.


Good stuff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichloroisocyanuric_acid. It dilutes / reacts with 30% HCL, and gold, yielding chlorine, and HAuCl4.  
Might work better in a pressure vessel, perhaps. Chlorates are a becoming "controlled substances", in many parts. They use the above in swimming pools, dissolved in water gives free chlorine slowly.

Once a refiner, always a refiner. :wink:


----------



## nickvc (Nov 5, 2017)

I have to say that with larger pieces of solid gold I’d simply go for AR or poor mans simply due to the time savings, with foils and very fine particles I can see the benefit of Hcl and bleach or substitute it makes recovery much easier but as I said I feel it will not work well with larger particles or nuggets.


----------



## Iggy-poo (Nov 5, 2017)

Even with 20 mesh fines of Nome AK Beach placer Gold, I've found that HCL/Bleach takes like forever at room temperature. Like nick said, unless you can't find Nitrates to make AR, find an alternative.

Inquarting really helps, by increasing the surface area of the Gold and will speed things up.


----------



## kadriver (Nov 6, 2017)

nickvc said:


> I have to say that with larger pieces of solid gold I’d simply go for AR or poor mans simply due to the time savings, with foils and very fine particles I can see the benefit of Hcl and bleach or substitute it makes recovery much easier but as I said I feel it will not work well with larger particles or nuggets.



There are some folks, prospectors, looking for an alternative to AR to refine their placer gold. As per 4metals I used sodium chlorate and HCl to dissolve the placer gold. The reaction was done in an ice bath to keep the temperature low so the chlorine would stay in solution and dissolve the placer gold.

It worked like a charm. As a comparator, I used bleach and HCl also, both experiments right next to each other at the same time. The sodium chlorate and HCl worked so well that I gave up on the bleach and added sodium chlorate to the bleach experiment. The sodium chlorate worked so much faster than the bleach and HCl.

There was so much residual chlorine in solution that I had a hard time getting the gold to precipitate. I must have used 10 spoons of SMB before all the chlorine was driven off so I could precipitate less than 10 grams of pure gold. The temp of the chloroauric acid solution got up over 140 degrees F and I had to let it cool down.

I guess that it would be a good idea to boil the solution before dropping the gold to drive off the chlorine.

I made a video of the dual experiment. The video is about 80% complete. I'll have it ready to post by Monday evening. Thanks to 4metals for that wonderful tip. If I was stuck with just bleach and HCl I'd still be over there and only about half way through!


----------



## cuchugold (Nov 6, 2017)

When you consider that bleach is about 5% chemical and 95% water, and chlorate is 100% chemical, these results are to be expected.


----------



## kadriver (Nov 6, 2017)

I hadn't considered that, but now I've come to expect it.

kadriver


----------

