# powder in the nitric / gold !??



## synthetiklone (Feb 16, 2008)

Hi, I have been using nitric to dissolve the base metals from pins, and once settled, i pour off the green solution, and am left with the gold amongst a gelatin like goop. When this lot is dried, the goop turns into an off-white fine powder, which is very light weight, in fact a draught into the beaker makes the particles rise up into the air.
There is about the same quantity of this powder as there is gold.
I want to get rid of it before the AR / AP process, if I get that far.
I cant find SMB anywhere here, so if I cant precipitate it from AR / AP, I was going to settle for just melting it as is. unfortunately. but would like to clean it up no matter what i choose to do.

cheers

SK


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## Absolutsecurity (Feb 17, 2008)

Are you using distilled or tap water?

IS THERE ANY PLASTIC IN WITH YOUR PINS?

Is the gel like substabce like cottage cheesy?

All I can figure is silver chloride but if your using distilled then I dont know.

The white silver chloride would turn grey in direct sunlight and could be dissolved with ammonia and then followed with hot water washes and HCL washes to leave just your gold behind.

Need more info as to what you are doing and what else in in there!

Maybe some pics are in order so everyone can see what you are dealing with and compare to like experiences they might be having also.


Glynn


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## Harold_V (Feb 17, 2008)

synthetiklone said:


> Hi, I have been using nitric to dissolve the base metals from pins, and once settled, i pour off the green solution, and am left with the gold amongst a gelatin like goop. When this lot is dried, the goop turns into an off-white fine powder, which is very light weight, in fact a draught into the beaker makes the particles rise up into the air.
> There is about the same quantity of this powder as there is gold.
> I want to get rid of it before the AR / AP process, if I get that far.
> I cant find SMB anywhere here, so if I cant precipitate it from AR / AP, I was going to settle for just melting it as is. unfortunately. but would like to clean it up no matter what i choose to do.
> ...



Funny. :? 

I talk about incineration and no one pays attention. 

When you're interested in talking about methods to exclude such unwanted substances, lets talk. No need for me to continue to waste my efforts until then.

Harold


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## Absolutsecurity (Feb 17, 2008)

Hi Harold,

I have been torching my stuff just as you suggested before and I have had nothing but good results (as you told me I would) I bought a air / acetelyne torch a few weeks back and the cost savings is great - 

THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!

Glynn


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## Harold_V (Feb 17, 2008)

Hearing of your success brings me great pleasure. It appears my time has not been totally wasted, and I thank you for that. 

Incineration solves almost all problems. It permits changing from one acid to another without fear of dissolving values, but most importantly, it eliminates the possibility of forming potentially explosive compounds when working with nitric.

When readers have had enough trouble with filtration and eliminating unwanted substances, perhaps they'll start listening. Who knows! Stranger things have happened, surely! 

Harold


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## Absolutsecurity (Feb 17, 2008)

It is like absolute rinsing - it prepares your subject for the next process absolutely sure that your not carrying anything over!

Its really clean and percise - no ifs ands or buts about it.

I first saw it in one of lazerSteves videos and didn't think anything about it and then you HAROLD kept hitting my head with it time and time again - untill I listened and haven't had anything but good results!

I swear by it - it is a method incorporated in the process now! I also started inquarting Harold - oh man how easy that makes stuff get going along!!!

Glynn


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## Anonymous (Feb 17, 2008)

Harold is it aright to incinerate plastic coved pins, fingers and fiber cpu's with out losing values. I used a tiger ( roofers ) torch once and everything burned so well the gold no longer looked like gold> having made two moves in the past year and a half never had a chance to process this material. Thanks


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## Absolutsecurity (Feb 17, 2008)

Your gold will change color because it is alloying with base metals - your target metals are still there you just have to get them!

Glynn


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## Anonymous (Feb 17, 2008)

Thanks Glynn I thought everything had gone up in smoke. You guys have my attention for incineration. Glad to hear my values are not lost.

Gill


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## Absolutsecurity (Feb 17, 2008)

Unless you saw a red cloud raise up from your melt - the gold should still be there - years ago I had some karat gold in a melting dish - no flux and didn't really know what I was doing - I was using an oxy/acetelyne torch with too small maybe a oo tip and actually saw red smoke come up from the semi molten pool of metal and it left a red haze on my dish along with some purple. 

I guess you don't learn without mistakes - that is unless you listen very well!!!

LoL!

Glynn


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## Harold_V (Feb 17, 2008)

gustavus said:


> Harold is it aright to incinerate plastic coved pins, fingers and fiber cpu's with out losing values. I used a tiger ( roofers ) torch once and everything burned so well the gold no longer looked like gold> having made two moves in the past year and a half never had a chance to process this material. Thanks


Regards connectors, if you can eliminate the plastic before incineration, do so. Reduce contaminants as best you can, then incinerate the remaining material

When you incinerate, process the ash as well as the solids. Some gold may shed from the plated items in the process---but it's not lost if you keep the ash. 

As Glynn suggested, the gold will often migrate into the base metals, so the pieces may not look like they're gold, but it's pretty hard to lose it completely. Nickel is supposed to prevent the migration, which it does, although it may not do so at elevated temperatures. Perhaps Lou or Irons could comment on that. 

Gold vaporizes at an extremely high temperature, which you're unlikely to achieve via a torch fired by propane and air. You likely could do so with an oxy/acet torch, but it is well beyond the melting point of platinum, which is a dazzling white heat-----something you'd be unlikely to achieve on base metals. If you didn't melt your material with the roofing torch, you surely didn't vaporize any gold. 

One of the best things you can do when processing material that has a lot of contamination is to incinerate again, after it has been run in nitric, then process it in HCl before dissolving the values. My particular method was to allow the nitrate solution to settle well, then decant. Rinse with tap water at least once, allow to settle once again, then get all of the solids in a filter, after decanting the majority of the rinse water. Once free of solution, incinerate the material, filter and all. The incineration process will permit going from nitric to HCl without the fear of losing values by prematurely dissolving them. 

Once incinerated, the solids should then be washed in HCl and tap water. Bring the beaker to a boil and allow it to work for a few minutes, then add water and allow the contents to settle well. Decant and rinse until the rinse water comes out clear. Once you've reached that point, you can dissolve the values without concern for creating solutions that won't filter well. This process is particularly good when processing gold filled items that contain soft solder. Considering the material has been rinsed well, there is no need to remove it from the beaker-----simply start dissolving the values with the solvent of your choice, and handle the resulting solution by your preferred method. I evaporated to kill excess nitric, diluted the resulting chloride solution with tap water, then filtered and precipitated with SO2. 

It's almost impossible to rinse all the values from the solids that remain. They should be dried, incinerated, and placed in storage for future processing with a furnace. Some of the solids, assuming you process silver, will be silver chloride, which will serve to act as a collector for greater values. 

Saving your waste materials in this fashion can be a wonderful savings plan for your retirement day. Trust me----- I know! :wink: 

I've made mention on many occasions that I did all my incineration in a filtered fireproof hood. That's important if you do not want to lose values to dusting and vapors from dissolving and evaporating. 

Harold


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## Harold_V (Feb 17, 2008)

Absolutsecurity said:


> I also started inquarting Harold - oh man how easy that makes stuff get going along!!!
> 
> Glynn


That was one of the most difficult lessons I learned. I went out of my way for an extended period of time trying to circumvent inquartation. 

I was really ashamed of myself when I finally resorted to doing so. Hoke had mentioned that it was a very good (almost necessary----but not quite) operation for parting gold-----but I had an attitude that I didn't want to get so involved. Spun my wheels for a long time before I finally caved in. What I had spent a few weeks trying to avoid turned out to be one of the easiest of processes that I used. 

I constantly admonish readers to buy Hoke's book. It is, hands down, the best possible source of information for those that would like to process precious metals successfully. Buy it! Read it! Do as it says! ** 

Some of the processes may not be the most glamorous of methods, but they offer one guarantee. They will carry you through refining in such a way that the metals that result will make you proud to proclaim you processed them. Not all methods, some very hare-brained, can make that guarantee. 

**Don't use gasoline for incineration. That was a terrible recommendation from Hoke. 

Harold


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## Lou (Feb 17, 2008)

I agree with Harold on incinerating values before dissolving. You can get rid of the grease and oxidize a lot of base metals (whose oxides dissolve quickly, saving you time).

I think incinerating is a step that should be incorporated as part of our refining routine. It's a little extra step that removes a bunch of organic crap saving time, and making our jobs a little easier.
While incineration is definitely required with some things (i.e. bench sweepings, anything greased, certain computer components), I don't see it hurting when applying it to other scraps (like jewelery--make shot of it, three birds, one stone--you incinerate, lower gold content, and increase surface area!).


Lou


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## Froggy (Feb 17, 2008)

If I wasnt so tied up with cats, i would love to mess with gold.... I looked at all the pictures on one thread the other day of a guy using computer parts and acids, looked really simple and fun, especially when he started torching the bead on the brick, Soooo pretty .. i love gold, but I have to deal with what I have alot of, and thats converters, hope to be messing with gold soon as a fun hobby....


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## Anonymous (Feb 17, 2008)

Froggy the secrets out! cats are worth a small fortune, you may have to mortgage the house to buy your inventory. I think you'll loose your shirt.


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## Froggy (Feb 17, 2008)

I have afew tricks up my sleeve, I always have an angle. I dont have a problem with a cheap steady supply, I have aproblem with finding the method that will produce most amount of recovery in them, a problem that will be resolved soon I hope.... Gold , its just plain georgeous though.....


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## graemeingermany (Feb 18, 2008)

Hi go to any wine making shop...Brewers Den etc ask for it by name it comes in tablet form...my other hobby is wine making, it's used for sterlisation


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## synthetiklone (Feb 21, 2008)

thanks for information and advice.

I pre-sorted all my raw materials, and clipped all the plastics, and extra rubbish before disolving remainder in nitric. Thats why I was shocked to find the white powder in the mix.. AFTER filtering.. 

I am also working with platinum (hopefully) hard drive platters, and did the same process using a coffee filter.. same result, the white powder is coming from the filter! doh.. As when I dont filter, and syphon off, I get no contaniments. Horaay. Next step is to heat a bit up and see if it burns off. (I originally thought it might have been some ceramic particles from somewhere, but couldn't understand from where they came).

Now that I have also discovered many processes of what NOT to do, I can carry on with my 3x PC's stripdown and analysis.

PS: dont put gold flakes/dust in petrie dish, near or inside an electrostatic ziplok bag, they become somewhat airborne, doing their utmost to avoid recapture!

PPS: When peering through thy magnifying looking glass, inspecting ones small treasures and contaniments, refrain from breathing in close proximity to said small treasures, lest one find them once again, airborne!

And on my platinum discoveries..

I am probably following in lazersteves footsteps, but here is my process which looks promising (until the platinum test, when I figure how to get some stannous materials together.. somehow.. somewhere, someway..)

As i've described elsewhere, I cut up the platters into strips, use cheap sodium hydroxide to dissolve the aluminium. I then tried nitric, which works the same as follows, but I was running out of nitric so I mixed up an aqua regia solution, WITH 50% water (don't ask me why, as I've no idea why I made 50%). I left overnight with slow progress noted 24hrs later. So I placed all in a 250ml beaker and heated until warm, and saw small vapours rise from surface. This began a chain reaction, in which the mixture started swirling about, and turned a bright translucent lime green colour. The reaction sustained itself for some 30 minutes, the beaker sides being pleasantly warm to the touch, not too hot. When it settled somewhat, there is left a fine glittering swirl of microscopic silvery specks in solution. Thusfar, I have left it for the night to settle down, and one might hope because it is aqua-regia, that was is left is platinum. However, I am no expert scientist, nor chemist, and am only following others guidance and information in this area, so I may be completely off track 

Thanks, and regards to all,

SK


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## synthetiklone (Feb 22, 2008)

Hello graemeingermany,

Thanks for the info for finding SMB, I'll try the homebrew shop in the Hutt

Just saw your subject quotes "a fellow kiwi" - yes, I'm in Wellington, NZ.
A tough place to be when it comes to finding chems, I paid NZ$15 for 100mls of 68% nitric, I think it is expensive, but I'm happy just to have some. I also have some potassium nitrate, which I think I can make nitric from, using the same process as the sodium nitrate. I think I have to distill it from the sulphuric though.

Would anyone know what the green liquid contains?, and how I would precipitate whatever it is out? From reading here, I think it might be nickel, but will be doing some more research. I only have 200mls of it, but it would be a good experiment to try. I still havent found where to get stannous from yet, but when I do, I'm hoping the shiny dust settled at the bottom is platinum. No more will dissolve in the aqua-regia anyway.

Regards

SK


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## synthetiklone (Feb 25, 2008)

Another helpful hint I can share is as follows.

For those who are cutting the (pentium) CPU pins off (like I do, as I've not yet mastered AR/AP process), I used a sharp chisel to slice off as much pin as I could, then I found that nitric would be incredibly slow to dissolve. I tried ferric chloride, and it works marvelously, especially when warm & agitated now and then. Now I gather that there is some iron in these here pins, as (and this is the helpful hint) you can use a strong neodymium magnet (from a hard drive, I have some 10mm thick from ancient drives) and you can use the magnet to stir them around from the bottom of the beaker. The pins all stand end on end, and allow the ferric chloride to get into nooks. When everything but the gold has dissolved, the magnet no longer has any attraction, you cant drag any pins around, or up the side of the beaker, and you know the process is finished.
Also magnetic is the gold plated cover plate under the CPU, (both sides, get it off by heating the whole CPU, and the solder melts) the ferric chloride strips these down too. Cut the plates into smaller strips. I found the coating quite considerable on the plates.

Also, remember (as you probably already know) that inside there is small gold wires, (all 386 / 486 SX & DX & DX2) and surface plated gold on and in the ceramic. (pentiums and DX4's seem to have silver wires). There is also a large gold plated area under the (silver?) solder material under the silicon chip.

SK


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