# Thankyou all very much.........



## firedan525 (Apr 29, 2007)

I am still new and learning. All of you have been a wonderful source of information. Harold, NOXX, and Steve thanks for your replies. I am very excited about this endevour. I am defininatly not a chemist, its actually kind of funny, i'm a HAZMAT specialist at the fire dept I work for. So I am cautious, safe, and after screwing up my first batch I am patient and looking for wisdom. Well I have collected another 5-6 LBs high yeild CPU's, finger boards, and solder free gold pins from a 1973 mainframe. I am going to utilize some of your all's advice. I am going to use a aqua regia method using (SUBZERO), After I will add urea to rid all nitric. Then I will filter my gold chloride solution into clean 5 gallon buckets. After filtering I will percipitate slowly not to add excess and to test for disolved gold in between additions of STORM percipitant. Then clean rinse gold w/ distilled water. After add borax to gold mud (dried of course) then torch. I hope I havent missed anything. I just want this batch to go better then the first. Can I do my pins w/ the rest of the batch sinse they are clean and free of excess solder or other metals.


One more thing I have looked and I can't seem to find a post on how to add nitric so I wont have a large excess left over. I know I can use urea but, If I can add more percisly I will be able to save more nitric. The directions Ishor gives for their subzero is 1 lb suzero to 1/2 gal muratic. Any other advice you all may want to share feel free. 


Thankyou all again. This forum is a great learning tool. One day I hope I will be a source of helpful information. Untill then I'm all ears. DAN


----------



## AgAuPtRh (Apr 29, 2007)

dan dan the fireman -- heh heh !!! that's what we called my Uncle. 

Hey listen -- there is a thread in the help needed section for getting shining gold. Read that thread my man and you'll have the whole story. 

And you're right Dan -- this is by far the best place to learn. Some of these folks are pouring out the info so fast I can't keep up. 

If i get the process correctly on adding the nitric -- you want to add a little bit and let it do it's work. Keep adding small amounts until all of your gold is dissolved. I could be wrong about that but the posts from Harold and goldandsilverPro have the details. 

Good luck 

AgAuPtRh


----------



## Harold_V (Apr 29, 2007)

AgAuPtRh said:


> If i get the process correctly on adding the nitric -- you want to add a little bit and let it do it's work. Keep adding small amounts until all of your gold is dissolved. I could be wrong about that but the posts from Harold and goldandsilverPro have the details.
> 
> Good luck
> 
> AgAuPtRh



Yep, that's what you do, but not just nitric alone. Always add a little too much HCL first, so if you're "out" of HCL in the solution and there's still a little nitric left, you don't add the wrong acid. You'd need a little HCL to go with the nitric you may need to add, anyway, so it's not wasted, and can prevent adding nitric when it's not needed. Remember, you can have free HCL in the solution and it does no harm aside from possibly complicating filtering if it's too strong. I've had the solution destroy filter papers on more than one occasion because the acid level was too high. 

Harold

Edit: removed an "a" and added words for clarification.


----------



## goldsilverpro (Apr 29, 2007)

If you're using HCl and Subzero (sodium nitrate), it will be difficult to control the amount of free nitric left in the final product and, urea will have to be used. It probably could be minimized but I don't think anyone has worked on this problem.

It's another story with HCl and nitric acid. With this, you can reduce the free nitric to nearly zero. If you can do this, no urea is needed. If you can go this route, and avoid urea, I feel you will end up with purer gold.

My experience with urea is that it's fairly touchy. Most people add until no more fizzing but it's easy to add too much and end up with a white, insoluble material. I have assumed that this is undissolved urea but, I wonder. It really doesn't look exactly like urea.

Some people add urea until the solution has a pH of 1. This is more precise than the fizzing method and is the one I used.


----------



## catfish (Apr 29, 2007)

Welcome aboard Firedan525;

You came to the right place to gain information on refining and recovery. This Forum has some awsome folks that not only have a lot of knowledge on refining, but they are eager to share this knowledge with other less knowledgeable folks. (Us Neophytes)

You have already received two posts from what I consider two of the very best in the business of refining techniques for gold. Harold and Goldsilverpro.

I would like to share with you on how I refine gold plated, filled or rolled products.

I have a set formula for aqua regia using Nitate Soda/ Sodium Nitrate and Muratic acid. I use 8 oz of nitrate soda mixed with one cup plain hot water (H2O), make sure your water is about 130 to 150 F. This disolves the nitrate soda very well. Make sure you dont get the water too hot, because nitric acid has a very low boiling point, 83`C or 181.4`F. Then I mix with one quart of Hydrochloric acid. Stir well and mix, let it sit for about 3 to 5 minutes and a certain amount of salt will form and settle to the bottom of the container. I pour off the liquid and seperate the salt. A lot of folks dont. It is a personal prefence. Also I have found that it is very important that you want to balance the amount of Aqua regia to the amount of metal you want to disolve. I run about 150 grams of metal with forumla. This is very important.

As far as some of the more experienced folks reccommend that you only add enough Nitric acid to do the job and you dont have to worry about neutrilizing the nitric acid with Urea afterwards. Those folks use concentrated nitrate acid. I only use nitrate soda and it would be extremely difficult to determine the exact amount would be required for each job this way.

What I do and it seems to work very well for me, is once my aqua regia has done it thing. The time will vary for a couple of hours up to 24 hours, depends. I filter the spent aqua regia through a fine cloth, bed sheets work fine. then I take a pre-specified amount of Urea, I have a formula for the amount of urea that it would take to neutralize the nitric acid in the aqua regia solution to a ph of ~1.0, just like if none of it has deminished. I then take this amount of urea and again mix with water at ~150` F and disolve. This makes it much faster to determine if the nitric acid is neutrilized and also you will not wind up with any unspent urea in your solution. I use an inexpensive electronic PH meter to measure the ph. I only add enough urea solution to bring the ph up to ~1.0 and stop. (Note, this is very important.) Throw away the remaining solution, for I found out it does not keep.

The next part of the process is what I think is the most important of all, and that is the precipitation of the gold. I have found out that SodiumMetabysulfite works best for me. I have developed a formula for the amount of precipitant that I add. I take the amount of metal that I disolved and make a rough calulation of how much gold that I can expect out of the solution. 

I have found in many many tests on quanties of gold from different items such as pins, Ceramic cpu chip and many different types of material except karat gold, that the most you can expect is from zero to 3.0% gold. Most average plated pins (good grade) will average about 1% if you are lucky and some real good gold plated, filled or rolled items can produce up to 3.0% gold. You will get better at making this calulation on this amount.

As I stated before that I only add the required amount of precipitant that is required and it will be much eaiser to break out the gold. After I have precipitated the gold, then I test to see if any gold remains in the solution with using the standard gold testing solution. Just remember that this commercial solution tests for 4 parts per million. If all the gold is out, I stop, if not I add more precipitant and get the rest of it. (Sometimes I may heat it a little to make it work faster.)

On this forum you will find that just about every one has thier own perferred method of refining gold. Processes for refining gold is kinda like "Beauty is only in the eyes of the beholder". or what ever works best for you.

The only advice is that I will give you is to continue to surf this forum and ask questions. You will soon learn that there is a tremendous amount of collective knowledge and experience of the folks who make up this forum.

Lots of luck.

Catfish


----------



## Noxx (Apr 29, 2007)

Welcome ! And good luck for your batch.
BTW, Do you know if it's legal to ship fuse from the US to Canada ? I think it's hazmat.
Thanks


----------



## Palladium (May 5, 2008)




----------



## Irons (May 6, 2008)

Noxx said:


> Welcome ! And good luck for your batch.
> BTW, Do you know if it's legal to ship fuse from the US to Canada ? I think it's hazmat.
> Thanks



Be careful you are not hoist by your own petard. 8)


----------



## ppoowweerr (Feb 2, 2009)

> let it sit for about 3 to 5 minutes and a certain amount of salt will form and settle to the bottom of the container.



I am not sure what this salt is. I know that it is hygroscopic and very soluble in water. My guess is sodium chlorate. Anyone have a clue what this salt is?


----------

