# Precipitating Gold With Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) - VIDEO



## kadriver (Oct 16, 2015)

Here is part 3 of 3 where I use vitamin C to precipitate the pure gold.

Many thanks to deltaH and aga from sciencemadness.org - this video would not have been possible for me to make without their help!

https://youtu.be/CAhh6p4E6-I

kadriver


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## Grelko (Oct 16, 2015)

These videos are very interesting. Makes me wonder if you could use other things like lemon juice etc. 

Not having to use strong acids like HCL is probably a bit cheaper also "not including time". 

Did you happen to find out the purity of that bead yet? Also, when adding the bleach, does it still make the highly toxic fumes like HCL/CL would? I noticed you were using a fume hood, but what about others that don't have 1 set up yet? (It still wouldn't be wise to do this in your house though)


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## solar_plasma (Oct 16, 2015)

In some experiments ascorbic acid is also used to reduce silver. Therefore I would assume it is not very selective.


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## kadriver (Oct 16, 2015)

Grelko said:


> These videos are very interesting. Makes me wonder if you could use other things like lemon juice etc.
> 
> Not having to use strong acids like HCL is probably a bit cheaper also "not including time".
> 
> Did you happen to find out the purity of that bead yet? Also, when adding the bleach, does it still make the highly toxic fumes like HCL/CL would? I noticed you were using a fume hood, but what about others that don't have 1 set up yet? (It still wouldn't be wise to do this in your house though)



The reason I raised the pH to about 5 before adding bleach was to minimize chlorine gas production (according to the person who gave me the procedure)

But I don't know if the gas was minimized or not since it was in the "fume cupboard".

There will be some more experiments later to check if the gas is present and in what quantities.

kadriver


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## kadriver (Oct 16, 2015)

solar_plasma said:


> In some experiments ascorbic acid is also used to reduce silver. Therefore I would assume it is not very selective.



Correct, it will reduce copper also. The gold will definitely need to be refined further to ensure that it is pure. I threw it in with my next batch of karat scrap where it will get refined to high purity.

kadriver


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## JHS (Oct 16, 2015)

Interesting.My question is,can the solution be reused after filtering?


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## Lou (Oct 16, 2015)

yes.


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## Anonymous (Oct 16, 2015)

I like the Ascorbic acid idea, is it good for dirty drops from AR?


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## kadriver (Oct 16, 2015)

spaceships said:


> I like the Ascorbic acid idea, is it good for dirty drops from AR?




I don't think it would be good for that.

There are you tube videos that show vitamin C precipitating copper and silver. It probably does other metals as well.

So these other metals would precipitate with the gold, contaminating it.


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## g_axelsson (Oct 16, 2015)

Ascorbic acid precipitating copper from a copper sulfate solution.
http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=2654

Palladium and silver is also mentioned in the google search, but I never checked those links.

Göran


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## solar_plasma (Oct 17, 2015)

I am thinking about following two questions, maybe someone has some more links or infos at hand:

What other metals will ascorbic acid reduce? Is it able to quantitatively precitate those metals? 


Could be interesting experiments to show redox processes at least and maybe even a way to treat some kinds of waste...


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## Lou (Oct 18, 2015)

Yes.

Quant on Pd/Ag/Cu and Au on boiling


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## solar_plasma (Oct 18, 2015)

I would love to have something that isn't extremely toxic, that would reduce nickel, iron and cobalt quantitatively to metal powder. This would make things a lot easier for me.


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## maninwhite300 (Nov 30, 2015)

i believe a silver plate can precipitating gold ............


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## Lou (Nov 30, 2015)

Sure it can, but that would be even worse than using ascorbic acid. More importantly, the cementation reaction would be greatly slowed down by the formation of an intractable silver chloride layer on the surface of your silver plate.

That said, DON"T USE SILVER TO CEMENT GOLD EVER.


Thank you.


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