# Defeating the Grey Goop



## au-artifax (Feb 18, 2014)

Au-artifax - 2, Grey Goop - 0

Well this snow in the northeast has given me enough time to ponder and plan my attack against the grey goop that likes to strike while trying to recover PMs from gold filled jewelry and e-scrap.

As I illuded to in another thread I had declared war against the unknown grey goop.

I had enough time on my hands to experiment and had success in two ways so I thought I would pass it on as a potential method others can use, and also open the door for any concerns I did not think of as far as additional thoughts and jeers perhaps for unforeseen hazards.

First attack:

After watching the grey goop multiply the more I tried to rid base metals from my recovery batch using nitric acid, and then trying to use water, HCl, h2so4, ammonia, more hno3, heated and cooled to various degrees, the thought occurred to me that possibly I didn't necessarily want to actually lose the grey goop; that maybe this grey goop was PMs that decided to go and get oxidized to a state where it became insoluable.
So I did a couple of rinses with distilled water after filtering the whole mess, put the material all together in a flask with 400ml distilled water, added an equal amount of corn syrup, boiled it for twenty minutes, let it cool, then filter and rinsed it again. At this point though the volume of grey goop had diminished by about 50%, which tells me that some of the material that was previously oxidized became soluable in the water after the oxygen molecules were taken on by the glucose.
And as far as there being any danger of nitrates combining with the glucose, I checked on that first and any reaction between the two would not have produced anything hazardous.

BUT, there was still this grey goop...insoluble before...but now?

So round two, after seeing if the rest would go away by dissolving in more DW, I tried a couple different things to no availe. So I thought if half of it went away when I went after the oxides, maybe the other jalf would go away if I went after any chlorides....and it worked...but witha surprise finish! What DID work though was this:
I again filtered and rinsed finally ending up with the batch in the same flask with again 400ml DL. To this I added 200 ml of ammonium hydroxide solution. Of course this resulted in a complete unfilterable (the grey suspension passed right through the filter) which I expected from dealing with ammonia washes. But it was what I had learned here on the forum that had me do the rest. I heated the solution just to advance the reaction that that ammonium hydroxide was doing, let it cool overnight, then I did a complete reversal of the pH and added 500ml of HCl (please don't ask me molarity questions...I just started learning about normality and molarity).
Upon heating this time though, the suspension cleared up and the grey goop was G. O. N. E. The solution was still a little cloudy but I noticed that what was clouding the solution partially was fine dust-like flakes of metal that was settling.
Now here's the surprise...,
I hung a piece of copper in the flask and right away it got all grey and fuzzy and was cementing like crazy. Seems there were values in the grey goop.

As of yet I think I should filter, rinse (remove all the chloride), then hit the whole batch again with nitric (not knowing if there is metallic silver or palladium). I kinda expect both silver and palladium, as the stuff that came off the copper seemed to look different than plain silver I had cemented before.

That's where I am with this. Comments and advice is of course always welcome. I learn so much from everyone here and everyone is so generous with what they know. Thanks, and hopefully I will be able to pull my own weight here someday as you all do.
Matt
Au-artifax


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## au-artifax (Feb 18, 2014)

Update:

I filtered everything and all my gold is sitting in a flask, (covered with grey "pricipitated" metal) bathed in plain DW waiting to be prcessed. Again, I wanted to wait for input before adding the nitric to isolate the gold. And the solution that filtered clear from my last procedure has a piece of copper hanging in it and is still dropping metals out of the solution like crazy.


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## Rick_J (Feb 18, 2014)

Hello, Matt.
Your "grey goop" might be what old time Arizona miners referred to a "ghost gold". Ghost gold reputedly would form as a by product of processing cyanide leaches. Your comment that they are insoluble concurs with reports of ghost gold being much less reactive than the crystalline metal. Rumor also has it that it does consist of Au and/or PGE's, but not oxidized. I have talked about this with a chemistry PhD who is expert in metal extraction processes. He has worked with ghost gold in the past, has refined them to high purity and is absolutely convinced that it is an allotropic form of Au and/or PGE's. It is interesting and noteworthy that, if this is indeed ghost gold, you have been able to drop it back into metal. It is supposedly very difficult to do so. Last week I sent inquiries to the Library of Congress and the Arizona Dept of Mines requesting they search their archives for more information on this substance. If I receive anything worthwhile back, I will post it on this thread.
Regards, Rick.


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## au-artifax (Feb 18, 2014)

Rick_J said:


> Hello, Matt.
> Your "grey goop" might be what old time Arizona miners referred to a "ghost gold". Ghost gold reputedly would form as a by product of processing cyanide leaches. Your comment that they are insoluble concurs with reports of ghost gold being much less reactive than the crystalline metal. Rumor also has it that it does consist of Au and/or PGE's, but not oxidized. I have talked about this with a chemistry PhD who is expert in metal extraction processes. He has worked with ghost gold in the past, has refined them to high purity and is absolutely convinced that it is an allotropic form of Au and/or PGE's. It is interesting and noteworthy that, if this is indeed ghost gold, you have been able to drop it back into metal. It is supposedly very difficult to do so. Last week I sent inquiries to the Library of Congress and the Arizona Dept of Mines requesting they search their archives for more information on this substance. If I receive anything worthwhile back, I will post it on this thread.
> Regards, Rick.



Thank you Rick
I am attempting to attach pics to the forum but do not know how to quite yet. Give me a half hour and I will have it figured out. In the mean time though let me try to describe the metals that cemented out of the once grey goop/now solution.
The metals that cemented out of the solution has taken on two separate characteristics; upon jiggling the container the sediment separated into the familiar fine silver and also a second heavier patch of large black clumps that appeared like largely ground pepper. I could not get the camera to capture the sheen from the specs in the paper but they reflected yellow when I shone my flashlight on them. Anyways, these (pepper specs) were definitely heavier than the silver and were last to leave the settling flask as I filtered the substances. I had to use my spray bottle on solid stream to get them to wash out into the filter completely.

anyways, let me have a go at posting the pics, and thank you for the neat info. I will do some research also into your suggestion and we will see what happens. I should actually keep the cemented metals separate, dissolve them in AR (the grey goop I've encountered in the past had always been nonreactive in AR or AP), sncl test them, and if positive for anything try standard precipitation depending g on what the test shows. I will make sure I have a fresh batch of sncl ready. It may take a few days because of my day job of course.


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## au-artifax (Feb 18, 2014)

This is how the whole filter looked with all the cemented product together.






These are the pepper-speck clumps that cemented out of the solution.


There! I got the pic posting thing down.

Thanks for looking.

I am so tempted to just get lazy now and throw it back into the original batch. Curiosity though says no, me getting tired says yes..,grrr....patience Matt....patience!

PS: after the filtering was complete the bottom of the filter paper was loaded with the black pepper clumps. So there was more than just a little bit.I would say volume-wise there was only about 75-100 cc of the grey goop that finally went into solution. Half of the cemented substance went into the main batch I was processing before I decided to isolate the solution and continue cementing in a different container.


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## au-artifax (Feb 18, 2014)

PPS:

Like my funnel setup? It shows 0% of corrosion after two years of use. I cut plastic rain-gutter screen and inserted it in the funnel after heat-shaping it. It works awesome and the whole filter paper gets used, not just the tip at the bottom of the funnel.


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## Geo (Feb 19, 2014)

Are you working with electronics or concentrates? If you are working with electronics, I would say it's tin oxide. Any electrical connector that holds tension (springs, slot connector pins) are more than likely made of phosphor bronze. Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin while brass is copper and zinc. digesting these types of materials in either hcl (AP) or nitric acid will create tin oxide. AP will create tin oxide through two phases. tin metal to stannous chloride to tin oxide. nitric acid creates hydrated tin oxide in a single phase. tin metal to metastannic acid.


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## Loito (Feb 19, 2014)

Good morning,

au-artifax can you please add a picture from your starting material? I don´t know what you mean with "grey goop"? Thanks


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## au-artifax (Feb 19, 2014)

Geo, in this case I was working with gold filled jewelry. Also, note that the metals in question cemented out on copper, so I doubt there would be tin cementing out.

As far as the grey goop, I don't have a pic of it. It looks just like any pic I've seen on this forum with a mystery grey sediment that wouldn't dissolve for others. I didn't bother taking a pic also because I noticed this material has been produced by quite a few members without anyone really having any success changing it's state.

I can and will recreate the whole process next time I do a batch recovery on gold filled jewelry or e-waist recovery. I will make sure I take pics. Note that this grey goop did not show any reaction to sncl testing, suggesting there possibly was allotropic metals in the GG.


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## Geo (Feb 19, 2014)

Gold filled scrap can contain a substantial amount of tin.


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## Palladium (Feb 19, 2014)

Are those coffee filters your using and how long did you leave it in nitric the first time?


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## au-artifax (Feb 19, 2014)

To reply to geo and palladium:

Geo, thank you for your input. Although I stressed using nitric to remove base metals, I usually hit my batches of mixed raw materials first with HCl to go after tin, ferrous metals, and any stainless that sneaks by. As always a thurough boiling rinse in DW comes before switching over to nitric so I can remove stuff like copper, silver and palladium. (I went after the palladium but am pretty sure any there got locked up into the grey goop). In fact I am pretty sure there was palladium in the batch, and it would jave showed up when adding the HCl to the Ammonia given enough time. 

Any tin that may have created some of the grey goop, if there was any, went away after the glucose step and became soluable. As for before, being very very familiar with the yellow filter-clogging tin, none was produced and it would have clogged my filters the first time I filtered the whole batch coming out of the nitric. Note also there is no yellow at the top edges of the filter which is where the tin usually shows up first.
To risk using the statement too much, yes, "there's more than one way to skin a cat" ( or peel an apple... for the ASPCA buffs), so If you had or have a solution to converting or dealing with this common grey sediment I am all ears. 

Palladium, yes they are coffee filters. I prefer them because they are quick and inexpensive, even though I have to re-run some things through more than once to capture all the solids. I know they can cloud solutions when filtering solutions with nitric, but never have I seen them produce grey mud or "goop" as I call it. The goop started before the filtering processes.

As far as the treatment with nitric itself, I used 50% diluted again by 50% distilled water, and heated to 80-85°C until the solution would dissolve no more. Each batch of spent solution produced a measurable amount of AgCl that I am stockpiling. Of course the last treatment produced the least amount of AgCl, and inversely the most grey goop/slime/mud.

I hope I answered all your questions.


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## Palladium (Feb 19, 2014)

Let me say what i see wrong here is the best way to explain it i guess. Gold filled should be run in a 50-50 nitric treatment first to remove anything that will dissolve. The only thing that should really be left after that process is stainless, aluminum, and gold. Wash that with water and then on to ar. Any aluminum will react vigorously when you add the hcl and will let you know that you need to do a better job of segregating. Any stainless will dissolve in ar slowly. This will be controlled by how much nitric you add to the ar solution. High nitric will take longer to dissolve the stainless. You want the solution of ar to consume all the nitric early on before all the gold dissolves causing a shortage of nitric and resulting in a solution high in chlorides. The stainless will start to dissolve because without an excess oxidizer the metals will start to cement out causing the stainless to dissolve in the process. You add a little nitric and repeat the process over and over in small steps like that until the stainless dissolves. If you leave gold filled in nitric and heat it to long what happens is after the base metal dissolves that the gold layer is attached to it starts to dissolve the gold layer which is karated. This break down in the foil thickness results in gold that is very finely divided and will turn the same purple as silver chloride but is gold in a metallic state and not a salt. Theirs a thin line between what is enough time in the nitric and what is not. If you heat it slowly over a longer period of time you will have less processing issues than if you tried to do it to quick. I use medium heat and keep in just below a simmer boil for a 24 hour period. This will eliminate any silver chlorides from showing up in the ar process and causing problems also. Second thing is your filters. Coffee filters run anywhere from 5 microns up to 25 microns and are not uniform in how they are made so one side off the same filter could be 5 microns and the other could be 25 micron. That purple gold will travel through a 5 micron filter easily and you need to either go down to a 1 micron filter or filter through a 5 micron until it packs the filter and starts filtering the fine particulate out. I use bounty paper towels and a colander for noodles to filter the foils once they come out of nitric. It will catch the fine gold as well as the foils. Incinerate that and then process with straight ar.


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## au-artifax (Feb 19, 2014)

Well I use HCl before nitric. HCl is cheaper, can even catch and dissolve stainless, and it doesn't leave clingy aluminum chloride residue "iffin Ize done midst sum" (in my best "dummer than lint phraseology).

I am not even at the first refine yet so of course I am not going to toss in the AR yet. I am still collecting everything. Why dissolve base metals in nitric that you can dissolve in cheap and much more readily available HCl? Note in the following pics the layers of PMs in my flask... the top two layers came mostly out of the cementation of the reprocessed grey goop. I will be doing another nitric treatment before going after the gold in the bottom.

Also is a pic just taken of more PMs that cemented over night from the solution. There were also some recognizable minute crystalized gold particles mixed in.

As for the filters, I guess me and hundreds of other folks just rely on our senses at whatever moment we are living in and hope not to lose too much value.

After all this thread/topic was started with the objective to pass on a way to reclaim some values unseen and passed by in some cases. Now let's hear it from those out there that never lose or never lost values in their processing. 

IMHO


Well here are the pics....

Day two and more cemented product testing + for gold and a little palladium. Yesterday's had some silver too.





This pic shows what I have collected from this batch in a 2lt flask. Notice the layering.






This pic shows the clear layering effect. Yes they are all PMs and the solution clear where once it had a thick layer of grey gooh and cloudy unfilterable solution. Whatever might have gotten through the filter was either reclaimed or just plain worthless.


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## Westerngs (Feb 19, 2014)

I tend to agree with Palladium that you had tin oxide and silver chloride which trapped some gold in it upon filtering. 

First off, no amount of rinsing will remove traces of HCl, the only way to do that is by incinerating the material prior to the nitric treatment, so you created some silver chloride. Secondly, I know from first hand experience, that tin present in material being dissolved in nitric will cause some gold to break up into very small particles which will then filter out with the tin oxide. The tin oxide then has to be treated for gold recovery.

Secondly, I believe Rick_J may have been talking with good old Dr. Poe. As an assayer, I have run across many claims of "this ore will cannot be assayed correctly via conventional fire assay methods and the values can only be correctly assayed via our own special method". There is no such thing, and there is no such thing as "ghost gold", unless you consider gold lost in filtration "ghost gold". This has been proven many times and can be found in accepted literature and assay manuals.

I would recommend that if you continue to treat the material with HCl first, to incinerate the material prior to continuing with nitric acid treatments. I believe the HCl first step to be a mistake however, unless there is some sort of tin bearing metal brazed onto the gold filled material. Most tin that is contained in gold filled is there as an alloy with the gold filled and would not be attacked by the HCl treatment.


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## au-artifax (Feb 19, 2014)

I will gladly accept any shipments of grey goop the forum members come across and cannot convert to values. You guys seem to be missing the point. I am suggesting a way to reclaim values, not how to be perfect supermen and never end up with a botched batch.

Nobody has even discussed the recovery, just tin tin tin. Oh... And filters. For example, I discussed the temp I used with nitric 75-80°C, (light below boil simmer) then palladium throws the same thing in as if I never said I did the same thing. Did I really ruffle that many feathers coming up with a viable method for recovering PMs that people were losing? What gives? Also in the same breath I hear HCl won't touch tin alloyed in the gold, then that it WILL and leave your gold too fine to filter. 

AgCl? The ammonia didn't dissolve any of the GG. SnO2? The glucose would have sucked up the weakly bonded oxygen from the tin right away and left tin behind for the HCl to go after when I added HCl to the ammonium hydroxide wash. 

And if it matters, yes I DO believe gold may take on a different crystalline structure in certain environmental conditions whether natural or man made. Carbon for example, how many different allotropes does it have?

Isn't this chemistry thing all based on things we cannot see? So who do you know that can prove there is no such thing as different structures of PM crystals? Is there nothing left to discover or has mankind won the game and learned all there is to know?

C'mon guys!
Is there a scientist in the house? And by "scientist" I mean someone hell-bent on "discovery".


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## Palladium (Feb 19, 2014)

Continue with doing things outside of the procedures that work and you will continue to have problems. Hcl first is your problem. What i just gave you above is the road map to gold filled. With the "god knows how much" gold filled i've ran it's not like i haven't figured it out. But hey! It's not my gold.


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## Westerngs (Feb 19, 2014)

Yes, we just have no interest in re-inventing the wheel.


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## Palladium (Feb 19, 2014)

au-artifax said:


> For example, I discussed the temp I used with nitric 75-80°C, (light below boil simmer) then palladium throws the same thing in as if I never said I did the same thing.



God forbid i explain it so someone who is not you will come along later and understand the value in it and not mess up their gold and refuse to listen to unsound logic. How dare i !!!! My bad! Let me leave you with this thread.


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## au-artifax (Feb 19, 2014)

Westerngs said:


> Yes, we just have no interest in re-inventing the wheel.



The wheel started off being made of stone...
Then reinvented using wood...
Then reinvented with metal hoops...
Then reinvented using natural rubber on wood spooked rims...
Then reinvented with natural rubber on metal rims...
Then reinvented with tubes...
Then reinvented with synthetic rubber...
Then reinvented to different types of synthetic rubbers...
Then reinvented to nylon....and all different kinds of wheels....and the quest to reinvent the wheel continues to this day.

Who keeps reinventing things? Innovators, engineers and scientists! I was hoping to have this topic advance to other fresh ideas, but nope. I am disappointed, and would never presume I was an expert because I knew Hoke better than the next guy. That's not being good, that's just being a copy-cat. What you know should be a starting point, not an end.


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## au-artifax (Feb 19, 2014)

Palladium said:


> au-artifax said:
> 
> 
> > For example, I discussed the temp I used with nitric 75-80°C, (light below boil simmer) then palladium throws the same thing in as if I never said I did the same thing.
> ...



But you didn't say it for the benefit of others. You said it as a way to say I was doing it wrong, even though I had done it your way. Otherwise you wouldn't even have mentioned it because I already had. You would have had a better reception had you suggested ways I could go about things from the point I was at to prove or disprove my theories than to just bomb the heck out of my procedures. Resume's of a person's vast experience is not an indication of prowess either, especially if they have shut the door for innovation and change. S'long....to whatever hidden agenda just reared it's ugly head.


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## Palladium (Feb 19, 2014)

You didn't do it my way !!!! I never said use hcl. You used hcl first and then after you were told that was wrong you stuck to your guns and said well i got this. 



> Well I use HCl before nitric. HCl is cheaper, can even catch and dissolve stainless, and it doesn't leave clingy aluminum chloride residue "iffin Ize done midst sum" (in my best "dummer than lint phraseology).



So no you not listening and you just seem combative to anybody who's telling you different. If you want tried and true procedures then this is the place and we can help, but this reinventing the wheel is just a waste of time to anybody replying to this post where you are " Following directions" as you say.


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## butcher (Feb 19, 2014)

I tried for several days to understand what was going on in this thread, re read it again today, and I am just as confused as the first time I tried to understand it.

I have a couple of jars of gray powders, one lead, and one tin, both are fairly pure powders of these metals I have separated, I Know they do not contain values, my plan is to make lead oxide with the lead at some later date.


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## Palladium (Feb 19, 2014)

It is confusing. And i understand what he is saying about i need help with the mess i have now. That's understandable! The reply i made to this thread were meant to point out what you did wrong so next time you would know not to do that and the proper procedure to use to avoid a mess like this. Fixing the problem now makes no sense if you don't know how and why you got there in the first place so as to not do it again.


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## butcher (Feb 19, 2014)

Palladium I read your post above and understood it well, it made a lot of sense.

What I had trouble understanding was all of the different acids and and what it was he was trying to do with those gray powders, I could not make any sense of any of it.


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## Palladium (Feb 19, 2014)

I would have run the ar from the gold filled and filtered that off. Then take the filter with and residues and incinerate. From there you could use nitric to test for silver or pd in the nitric. Then you could have added hcl and run a sample in ar and tested for gold. That would have given you answers. If it's purple after that i would say silver chloride


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## Palladium (Feb 19, 2014)

I think that's going to be my next video series.

Gold filled "Down and dirty". :mrgreen:


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## Geo (Feb 19, 2014)

Palladium said:


> I would have run the ar from the gold filled and filtered that off. Then take the filter with and residues and incinerate. From there you could use nitric to test for silver or pd in the nitric. Then you could have added hcl and run a sample in ar and tested for gold. That would have given you answers. If it's purple after that i would say silver chloride



Well SURE, if you wanted to do it the right way but whats the fun in that?


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## Palladium (Feb 19, 2014)

We all have to learn somewhere so i can't blame the guy for not knowing, that all part of the learning process, but it does get discouraging when they don't listen to advice. 
I'm not upset because all i can do is give advice. If you follow it fine. If they don't fine also.


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## g_axelsson (Feb 20, 2014)

au-artifax said:


> AgCl? The ammonia didn't dissolve any of the GG. SnO2? The glucose would have sucked up the weakly bonded oxygen from the tin right away and left tin behind for the HCl to go after when I added HCl to the ammonium hydroxide wash.
> 
> And if it matters, yes I DO believe gold may take on a different crystalline structure in certain environmental conditions whether natural or man made. Carbon for example, how many different allotropes does it have?


You may believe in Santa Claus, but it doesn't make it more true. Gold doesn't have any allotropes as far as I know. Neither silver, palladium, platinum, iridium... or any precious metals.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotropy#Metals



> Isn't this chemistry thing all based on things we cannot see? So who do you know that can prove there is no such thing as different structures of PM crystals? Is there nothing left to discover or has mankind won the game and learned all there is to know?


That is just stupid to say, chemists have measured reactions on the time scale of femto seconds ( 10-15 s ) for over twenty years (example). Atomic force microscopes have been pushing around atoms and measuring the electron cloud around atoms for over a decade.
The latest generation of electron microscopes have resolution of below 0.1 nm (a gold atom is 0.29 nm) and can study fast processes with femto seconds resolution. :shock: 

Even I have an electron microscope, a 30 year old JEOL 100 CX TEM, and I have taken a picture of the crystal structure of gold via electron diffraction. Since it is 30 years old I don't have the same resolution of modern TEM:s, only 1.4Å. I can see molecules but not individual atoms.
X-ray diffraction have been used for revealing the crystal structure of materials for 100 years now.



> C'mon guys!
> Is there a scientist in the house? And by "scientist" I mean someone hell-bent on "discovery".


Science is built on knowledge and sound theories, not ignorance and dreams.

I'm not a fully fledged scientist but would like to look at myself as having a scientific mind. Science is built on a solid ground of proven and tested facts. A corner stone in the scientific process is peer review, any scientific work is scrutinized and checked from every possible angle and any weaknesses are revealed. If a work (article) can stand up to that level of scrutiny then it is accepted, but if there are weaknesses in it then it is never seen.
What I have seen in this thread is a lot of unsubstantiated statements and purely wrong statements.
- Metastannic acid (the gelatinous white goo that we get when mixing nitric with tin bearing materal) isn't an oxide, it is a hydroxide.
- Describe how glucose is "sucking up the weakly bonded oxygen from the tin"
- No precious metal allotropes are known
- Carbon have a whole lot of different allotropes but what does that have to do with gold or other precious metals?

Do you think I'm treating you harshly? I'm just trying to treat you in a scientific way, the way I've seen responses to badly written articles in scientific magazines. Editors and peer review could be quite frank when pointing out wrongs.

I have run into a lot of "grey goop" several times. Every time I have concluded that it is mostly metastannic acid, silver chloride, lead sulphate, lead chloride and probably some other chemicals in a mix. I don't care that much as everything I catch in a filter will be incinerated and leached again before I discards it. Probably it also contained some gold and palladium but the bulk makes it too hard and not worth going after small traces on a batch level.

Göran


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## Rick_J (Feb 20, 2014)

I asked a friend who is much more knowledgeable than I about the grey goop. He posted me back the below, thinking it was tin oxide from the solder.

**Anyway, I tried processing e-scrap over the last couple of years and found it to be harder than I was expecting. The first thing I would ask this guy is, did he remove ALL of the solder from what he processed. If not then his grey goop sounds like tin oxide to me. It can cause the problems he is seeing, and it can be a cause of ghost gold if it is in an ore, as you are suggesting. Here is a web site that talks about using Na2SO4 to solve this problem as well as the very common problem of PGM sulfides in ore, which is the other major cause of ghost gold in ore: http://www.ejmpep.com/jeffrey_and_anderson.pdf**

While not doing any scrap recovery, I personally try to use ACS chemicals in my lab to avoid issues with contaminants.


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## Geo (Feb 20, 2014)

heh, yea thats kind of what i said. solder is used in jewelry and even more so in repairs. you really never know what you are putting in the mix when dealing with gold filled.

you can defeat tin oxide but you must know how to deal with it first.


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## au-artifax (Mar 22, 2014)

Pquote="g_axelsson"]


au-artifax said:


> AgCl? The ammonia didn't dissolve any of the GG. SnO2? The glucose would have sucked up the weakly bonded oxygen from the tin right away and left tin behind for the HCl to go after when I added HCl to the ammonium hydroxide wash.
> 
> And if it matters, yes I DO believe gold may take on a different crystalline structure in certain environmental conditions whether natural or man made. Carbon for example, how many different allotropes does it have?


You may believe in Santa Claus, but it doesn't make it more true. Gold doesn't have any allotropes as far as I know. Neither silver, palladium, platinum, iridium... or any precious metals.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotropy#Metals



> Isn't this chemistry thing all based on things we cannot see? So who do you know that can prove there is no such thing as different structures of PM crystals? Is there nothing left to discover or has mankind won the game and learned all there is to know?


That is just stupid to say, chemists have measured reactions on the time scale of femto seconds ( 10-15 s ) for over twenty years (example). Atomic force microscopes have been pushing around atoms and measuring the electron cloud around atoms for over a decade.
The latest generation of electron microscopes have resolution of below 0.1 nm (a gold atom is 0.29 nm) and can study fast processes with femto seconds resolution. :shock: 

Even I have an electron microscope, a 30 year old JEOL 100 CX TEM, and I have taken a picture of the crystal structure of gold via electron diffraction. Since it is 30 years old I don't have the same resolution of modern TEM:s, only 1.4Å. I can see molecules but not individual atoms.
X-ray diffraction have been used for revealing the crystal structure of materials for 100 years now.



> C'mon guys!
> Is there a scientist in the house? And by "scientist" I mean someone hell-bent on "discovery".


Science is built on knowledge and sound theories, not ignorance and dreams.

I'm not a fully fledged scientist but would like to look at myself as having a scientific mind. Science is built on a solid ground of proven and tested facts. A corner stone in the scientific process is peer review, any scientific work is scrutinized and checked from every possible angle and any weaknesses are revealed. If a work (article) can stand up to that level of scrutiny then it is accepted, but if there are weaknesses in it then it is never seen.
What I have seen in this thread is a lot of unsubstantiated statements and purely wrong statements.
- Metastannic acid (the gelatinous white goo that we get when mixing nitric with tin bearing materal) isn't an oxide, it is a hydroxide.
- Describe how glucose is "sucking up the weakly bonded oxygen from the tin"
- No precious metal allotropes are known
- Carbon have a whole lot of different allotropes but what does that have to do with gold or other precious metals?

Do you think I'm treating you harshly? I'm just trying to treat you in a scientific way, the way I've seen responses to badly written articles in scientific magazines. Editors and peer review could be quite frank when pointing out wrongs.

I have run into a lot of "grey goop" several times. Every time I have concluded that it is mostly metastannic acid, silver chloride, lead sulphate, lead chloride and probably some other chemicals in a mix. I don't care that much as everything I catch in a filter will be incinerated and leached again before I discards it. Probably it also contained some gold and palladium but the bulk makes it too hard and not worth going after small traces on a batch level.

Göran[/quote]

Sounds a lot like the criticism most notable scientists have received at one time or another. I guess the human race has discovered everything there is to discover then. No need for that silly old space exploration thing, or exploring in general. It's all been done, time to turn out the lights and call it a day right?! 
If not, maybe you can enlighten everyone as to how new isotopes can be synthesized, but not allotropes. Why are so many scientists focused on man made elements if there is nothing left to discover? Please spare me any speeches about conforming. Speculation and dreaming has and will forever be an important part of science. Perhaps looking away from your calculator and computer and looking at the night sky might give you a hint about how much we really know of the universe. I for one cannot look at the vastness of space and say something does not exist. To say something doesn't is a little arrogant in my honest opinion.


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## butcher (Mar 22, 2014)

au-artifax,
I have not followed this thread closely and have just scanned over it, but it sounds to me you are missing the whole point, why waste your time trying to make the wheel round, it is already round.

It is great to discover and find out new things, but it is also easier to learn the science already discovered before trying to reinvent the wheel. and when you do it is also easier to find that new discovery, and you will not miss it, while trying to reinvent the already round wheel.


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## necromancer (Mar 22, 2014)

au-artifax said:


> Pquote="g_axelsson"]
> 
> 
> au-artifax said:
> ...



Sounds a lot like the criticism most notable scientists have received at one time or another. I guess the human race has discovered everything there is to discover then. No need for that silly old space exploration thing, or exploring in general. It's all been done, time to turn out the lights and call it a day right?! 
If not, maybe you can enlighten everyone as to how new isotopes can be synthesized, but not allotropes. Why are so many scientists focused on man made elements if there is nothing left to discover? Please spare me any speeches about conforming. Speculation and dreaming has and will forever be an important part of science. Perhaps looking away from your calculator and computer and looking at the night sky might give you a hint about how much we really know of the universe. I for one cannot look at the vastness of space and say something does not exist. To say something doesn't is a little arrogant in my honest opinion.[/quote]
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au-artifax.

if you truly believe you have this new discovery down to a science & you can do what you claim i would like to suggest you have it patented A.S.A.P.
make sure get a international patent.

because now that it is out on the internet anyone can pick up your original idea and make billions & billions of dollars with it.

i understand that we don't understand what you are trying to explain to us because we are all stuck in a "copy box" take your new discovery and run with it.

so.......

monday afternoon when you get back from the patent office please let us know the patent number so we can read it in its full detail
i would think we can all better understand it when its in all of its glory & no one is going to take your fame & fortune away.

Dave C.


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## g_axelsson (Mar 22, 2014)

au-artifax said:


> Sounds a lot like the criticism most notable scientists have received at one time or another. I guess the human race has discovered everything there is to discover then. No need for that silly old space exploration thing, or exploring in general. It's all been done, time to turn out the lights and call it a day right?!
> If not, maybe you can enlighten everyone as to how new isotopes can be synthesized, but not allotropes. Why are so many scientists focused on man made elements if there is nothing left to discover? Please spare me any speeches about conforming. Speculation and dreaming has and will forever be an important part of science. Perhaps looking away from your calculator and computer and looking at the night sky might give you a hint about how much we really know of the universe. I for one cannot look at the vastness of space and say something does not exist. To say something doesn't is a little arrogant in my honest opinion.


au-artifax, you are accusing the wrong person to think all is discovered. But when it comes to classical physics and the base sciences we have most of it figured out. I dated a girl a year ago and she was researching quantum loop gravity, that is where one of the frontier of science lies today. We don't know yet how to combine quantum physics and gravity but that doesn't mean that Newtons laws is wrong.
Maybe it is arrogant to say that there doesn't exists any allotropes of gold, but then it is equally arrogant to explain a grey goop would contain allotropes of gold.

I don't understand your coupling between allotropes and isotopes. Do you even know what you are talking about?

Allotropes : Different crystal forms of an element, for example carbon has graphite and diamond among other.

There are a limited way we can stack atoms and one important factor is the valence electrodes. Carbon for example have four and can be made into a whole lot of chains, tubes, sheet and mesh. In metals the atoms have one or several valence electrons that are weakly attached to the atom and when metals bond they do it with metallic bonding, leaving the atom as a small ball without certain direction it would like to bond. This is the basis of the cubic crystal system that gold, copper, aluminum, silver and many more metals crystallizes in.
To create a new allotrope we would need to stack the metal atoms in a new way but metal atoms sits in a sea of electrons and moves easily. The cubic crystal is the most effective way to stack gold atoms.

Isotopes : Different number of neutrons in an atom with the same number of protons. For example hydrogen (1 proton) with deuterium (1 proton 1 neutron) and tritium (1 proton 2 neutrons).

Isotopes can be synthesized by smashing different atoms together in an accelerator and in the debris you can find new isotopes. Atoms with a certain composition is quite stable but if you create isotopes that is further away from the stable isotopes they are quite short lived. With better instruments and better control of the parameters of the experiment we can make more of a certain isotope and we are getting better to detect the isotopes.
That is why we can still synthesize new isotopes but not stable ones.

I do watch the skies a lot, I have worked as a guide at our local observatory and I have a meteorite collection with pieces from Mars and the Moon. I'm constantly amazed of what our scientists can achieve and think that there should be more money put into science. But I don't think we should give money to scientists that wants to prove that the Earth is flat. Some things we know with high enough probability.

So, you say that you have an unknown allotrope of gold in your grey goop. I'm skeptical and say... Prove it!
What is the process that creates the allotrope? Which crystal system has the gold crystallized in?

Göran


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## g_axelsson (Mar 22, 2014)

necromancer, sadly there is no prerequisite that a patent should work to get it granted.  

Göran


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## necromancer (Mar 22, 2014)

g_axelsson said:


> necromancer, sadly there is no prerequisite that a patent should work to get it granted.
> 
> Göran



yes, i understand that you are 100% right !!


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