# Drying gold powder w/acetone



## Dude4ever (Feb 7, 2015)

Hello comrades

Just a quick question:
I often clean and dry glassware with pure acetone (and salt), because it's hygroscopic it removes water after regular cleaning,
and in addition it evaporates really quickly when the glassware is hold in running hot water for a few seconds.

I thought of just swirling the gold powder in a small amount of 100% acetone, and then dry the gold powder by heating the flask in hot water bath,
would this in any way contaminate the gold, or will any remnants disappear in the melting process?

I thought this would make it really easy to control the evaporation while swirling, so that no powder could get stuck, and would enable pouring the powder into cruicible immidiately?

Thanks in advance
Erik


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## butcher (Feb 7, 2015)

Erik,
Personally I would follow the known safe tried and true methods of washing and drying the gold, the metals and powders we work with can easily form explosive substances when mixed with certain chemicals, acetone being a carbon compound, and being flammable at that I would be very Leary of using it in my lab with the other compounds I use.

I am not sure of all of the dangerous compounds of acetone, but I do recall it can make an explosive of acetone acid peroxide which is dangerous when dried, so using acetone with gold recovery can become dangerous.
Acetone with concentrated nitric or sulfuric acid is also a danger...

Since gold is so difficult to combine with other elements all gold compounds are fairly unstable. some much more than others, in some cases explosive compounds can be formed, even with some of the chemicals we use with recovery and refining the metals in our labs.

I cannot say that what you wish to try will become a danger or not, but without knowing more, I would say keep acetone out of the process.

You can get very good results of doing anything you wish to by following the tried and true methods promoted by the experienced members of the forum.


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## Dude4ever (Feb 7, 2015)

That is a good point, I know about the unstable nature of acetone compounds.
The question is ment for using a small amount of acetone, after the 3 washes with distilled water where the last one is boiled, then the acetone immidiately evaporated by hot tap water (60°C) running on the outside of the flask while swirling.
But if this potentially makes trace amounts of combustable acetone compounds in the gold powder, I sure see the problem if it were to "explode" or something while melting it, it would be a lossy method at best if that's the case.


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## butcher (Feb 7, 2015)

With learning to get my gold pure, and keeping my glassware clean, I do not have problems with the gold, either in getting the gold to ball up, and to get it to roll out of the glass and into the melting dish, or in drying and melting the gold.

With spending time studying much of what Harold and others here have taught, on how to clean my glassware, and to refine my gold and properly wash the gold, and how to dry it, it made much of this much easier for me.

Clean glass ware the fine gold powders are less likely to stick, and while drying the pure gold, and rolling the gold into balls as the gold dries the rolling balls of gold tend to pick up the stray powders, with good procedures you have the gold in small balls, that are easy to transfer to the melting dish...


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## goldsilverpro (Feb 7, 2015)

I spent a period of time where I used acetone to dry pure gold powder in a vacuum filter. Worked quite well. Never had melting problems. If the gold is pure and only contained distilled water, I can't see how any undesirable acetone products could occur. After doing all the water rinsing, etc., I used 2 acetone rinses at the end. Once it was sucked fairly dry, I put about a 75W incandescent bulb in a work light about a foot or so above the filter. The vacuum sucked the warm air through the powder and it was dry almost instantly. Then I found that the light bulb thing would dry water rinsed gold about as fast. I then sopped using acetone. I didn't like the smell anyway.


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## Palladium (Feb 7, 2015)

goldsilverpro said:


> I didn't like the smell anyway.



I love the smell of acetone and methyl ethyl ketone. I know that's probably why I'm brain damaged, but after my years as a technical coatings man it still reminds me of money! I can spot the smell two miles away. I use to literally take baths in the stuff. After years of exposure your skin starts to develop a tolerance for the stuff. Most people can't get near it without having a chemical burn or skin reaction. Around your eyes and the back of your neck next to your ears was always a sensitive spot no matter what. I'm pretty sure that helped lead to my problems in the past with cancer. Gas can anyone! :mrgreen:


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## Lou (Feb 8, 2015)

I like the smell of benzene and ether 


Makes me think of race day!

Seriously though, invest in a heat lamp and skip the acetone.


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