# Back to metallic state.....



## Mida (Jul 27, 2007)

Hi People....
Some years ago I read about a "recipe" that permits to recover -metallic- gold out of a concentrated solution of gold trichloride,simply addiing sulfuric acid and heating it.Now,I have not found any infos on this subject,so I hope here there is some expert that can help me posting the details of the process.
The gold would have to come out as yellow metallic splinters (acicular gold).
Thank You.
Regards,
Mida


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## lazersteve (Jul 27, 2007)

Welcome ot the forum,

The easist way to return metallic gold from auric chloride solutions would be with Sodium Metabisulfite. I caution you about working with hot concentrated sulfuric acid. I've never seen gold drop out of solution as splinters.

Steve


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## goldsilverpro (Jul 27, 2007)

Hot concentrated sulfuric is used primarily to analyze gold or silver in cyanide solutions, under a fume hood! It is called "wet ashing." It is a very dangerous method, as it will require temperatures of about 450 deg F., or more. It is not as simple as you suggested. It is not meant for quantities much larger than about 5 mL. It is best used as an analytical method and not a recovery method. It is far too dangerous in large quantities. Don't even think about using this method. The SMB (sodium metabisulfite) method is far simpler and safer.


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## Mida (Jul 27, 2007)

Ok,but nanorods?
See this:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanorod
Various scales of largeness? Possible?


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## goldsilverpro (Jul 27, 2007)

I assume that you want to produce gold crystals in a needle-like (acicular) shape. You are not interested, at this point, in the normal refining of gold. Am I correct? As I understand it, gold nanorods and acicular gold crystals are 2 different things. Although the subject is interesting, I doubt if anyone on this forum has much knowledge of it. I may be mistaken about this. I know that needle-like gold crystals are occasionally found in nature.

http://www.greatbasinminerals.com/Archived%20Mineral%20Pictures.htm

Before messing with the sulfuric, I would suggest that you locate the "recipe" that you referred to. If you can locate it, please post it and we can go from there.

Twice, many years ago, I played around with producing gold crystals. Once I produced a gold powder that was made up of single, perfect, pyramid shaped, gold crystals. The individual crystals were only visible at about 1000 power using a B&L metallurgical microscope. The other time, I grew beautiful fern-like gold crystals, which were viewed at about 100 power.


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## Harold_V (Jul 28, 2007)

Funny you should mention gold crystals. On very rare occasion, when I'd precipitate my re-refined gold, it would come down as small crystals. Very dense and bright. If I was to be brutally honest, it happened, tops, maybe three times in over 10 years. I used SO2, if that makes a difference. Never could figure out how to do it on demand. 

Harold


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## Mida (Jul 28, 2007)

Sorry,but really I dont know were I can found the recipe,but I remember was really simple,just as describred above.After the dissolution in AR,the nitric have to be removed boiling it off and adding HCl after the evaporation,at least for three times ,as the common process.To the thick solution is added a volume of water and then a quantity of sulfuric acid is added.I rember that the trick was to cook the gold solution with sulphuric for two three days without allowing the normal precipitation.
At this point only a chemist can give us the answer...


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## Mida (Jul 28, 2007)

Just another question:someone knows the process to obtain gold sulphate salt, starting from gold trichloride?Is it possible to obtain this sulfate just adding sulfuric acid to the trichloride?Thank you.


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## goldsilverpro (Jul 28, 2007)

Somewhere, I made a statement that there is no such thing as gold sulfate and, someone corrected me and gave me a link in German, which I couldn't read. After doing my own research, I'm still not convinced that it exists. There is quite a bit of literature on sodium gold sulfate, where there is a anionic gold sulfate complex, but not true gold sulfate. Also, I noticed that people erroneously called the sodium gold sulfate compound, "gold sulfate." This compound is used primarily for plating solutions. There are some patents on this.

To produce sodium gold sulfate may be much more difficult than meets the eye. About 40 years ago, I worked for a company that made gold plating solutions. One of the things I was in charge of was the manufacture of sodium gold sulfite, which is very similar to sodium gold sulfate. It was a long, complex, dangerous procedure. If I remember right, the gold went from a chloride to a phosphate to the sodium gold sulfite. I can't remember but, an intermediate cyanide step may have been involved. There is also an ammonia step that can produce explosive gold fulminate, if things aren't done right. Instead of using sulfurous acid, sodium sulfite was used in the final step. I would imagine this would be analogous to the production of sodium gold sulfate. Instead of sulfuric acid, sodium sulfate would most probably be used in the final step. You need that sodium ion.


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## Mida (Jul 28, 2007)

If I have a solution of gold sodium chloride and I add sulfuric acid,and evaporate the chloridric,do you think is possible to obtain something stable?

I have found at the grocery store,some bags full of metabisulfite of potassium,for homemade beer.It is good as precipitant?

P.S.:I have some books in pdf format about gold and silver refining.There is a place in this forum were I can upload it?


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## aflacglobal (Jul 28, 2007)

Books :?: Hey now your talking. :lol: :arrow: :arrow: :arrow: http://goldrefiningforum.com/~goldrefi//phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=559

Add them here. I might need to update my links to. I have been trying to since the move from our other srever, but have been busy here of late.


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## goldsilverpro (Jul 29, 2007)

First of all, you don't have gold sodium chloride, You have a solution of chloro auric acid. If you combined chloro acid acid, evaporated to syrup to be rid of free nitric, with hot concentrated sulfuric acid, I would imagine that the gold would eventually precipitate as a light brown powder.


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## Harold_V (Jul 29, 2007)

Mida said:


> Hi People....
> Some years ago I read about a "recipe" that permits to recover -metallic- gold out of a concentrated solution of gold trichloride,simply addiing sulfuric acid and heating it.Now,I have not found any infos on this subject,so I hope here there is some expert that can help me posting the details of the process.
> The gold would have to come out as yellow metallic splinters (acicular gold).
> Thank You.
> ...



Prolonged evaporation of such a solution will cause the gold to self precipitate, with or without the addition of H2SO4. Having it present appears to make no difference. That it comes out as splinter, or not, I don't know, but my experience dictates that it does not. It precipitates much like it does when SO2 is introduced, as fine particles. 

Harold


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## Mida (Jul 29, 2007)

[email protected]

Sorry, but the questions about the gold splinters and the gold sodium chloride are different.Now,I want to know if I add sulfuric acid to a soludion of gold sodium chloride ad evaporating the HCl,I can obtain a salt that can trap the gold inside.Thank you.


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## aflacglobal (Jul 29, 2007)

Chris, Have you ever studied the effects of magnetics on plating sulutions. I have been reading that it can increase the density of plated materials and so on. I have also been chasing the effects that it can have on crystal grown from solutions. It all started with astro physics. Some use it in space and 0 gravity to grow new crystal structures. Now i am looking at the same effects but in heavy gravity situtations. Kitty got an idea on lining up some atoms while seperating some unwanted atoms. Even varying the field to make smaller of larger crystals. 

Harold got me started with those beautiful crystals of his. Their are already fields created between between plates in electrowinning. I'm wonder if this is what leads to the shorting of plates by the long crystal growths and gravitional attraction. This to will play a part in project Aflac. Their is a lot more i have studied than this. I'm just not sure how to explain it yet. But, i'm getting their. It's deep, i'm just not sure i can articulate it. :shock:

Am i on the right track so to speak ?

Ralph

Thanks for the post Mida on the chemistry book section. Is you intrest in the nano rods for medical applications ?


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## Mida (Jul 29, 2007)

Hey,Ralph
Very interesting your talking about the increasing the density of the materials by magnetic field .I'd like to know more about the subject.
Also I'm intererested in the growing of "gold trees" and any other metallic crystalline formation,but there isn't too much infos around on these subjects.
Yes,Im interested to nanorods for medical appliances.Gold works very good aganist inflammatory states.


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## goldsilverpro (Jul 29, 2007)

Mida,

If you add conc. H2SO4 to a sodium gold chloride (sodium chloroaurate) solution, you would have H+, Na+, AuCl4-, SO4-, water, and Cl- ions in the mix. So, do you now have sodium gold chloride or chloroauric acid? . Under normal temperatures, the solution would only evaporate to the point where the sulfuric concentration is very high, maybe in the high 90% range. As the sulfuric percentage increases, the evaporation rate will decrease. The only thing definitely missing would be the Cl- ion. Some of the Na+ may combine with some of the SO4- and precipatate as the white salt, sodium sulfate. At some high sulfuric percentage, essentially all of the Na+ will probably precipitate out, as the sulfate. If you evaporate to a very high sulfuric percentage, I believe that the AuCl4- [actually probably (AuCl3.Cl-)] complex will decompose, evaporating the CL- as Cl2 or HCl, and precipitating the gold as a powder. Don't forget that most all gold powder is made up of metallic gold crystals. Crystals that are larger and more discernible to the eye might be produced by controlling the variables. At some point, all of the metallic gold crystals will be intermingled with the Na2SO4, on the bottom, and the solution will be nearly pure H2SO4. This it what I think will happen.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about and researching your questions. This present post was taken off the top of my head but, most of my other posts to you required some internet research. You can do that just as well as I can.

Answering your questions is time consuming but, sort of interesting. I would not mind if they had anything to do with the recovery and/or purification of precious metals from scrap. For this reason, I decline to answer any more of your obscure, unrelated questions. No offense, please.


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## Mida (Jul 29, 2007)

Thanks for all.


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## aflacglobal (Jul 29, 2007)

Hey,Ralph 
Very interesting the stuff of increasing the density of the crystals by magnetic field.I'd like to know more about the subject.

Your right, not a lot of information. I have to look in other field and then relate that information to concepts. hydromagnetic waves and FIELD RESONANCE PROPULSION is where i have found most of the effects that the magnetics play in this role.


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## goldsilverpro (Jul 29, 2007)

Ralph,

I have always been curious about using using permanent or electro magnets to alter the characteristics of the deposit but, I've never played with it. My guess is that it would be applicable, somehow, for the production of gold crystals.

Another possibility is the use of a pulse plater. This produces a very high, few millisecond, pulse of current, say, 50 times the normal current. This is followed by an off time period which is, say, 50 times longer than the on time. The on/off cycle can be varied, both in time and ratio. This technique also is supposed to increase the deposit density. I also think there are power supplies that output current in various different waveforms.

Most all plated deposits are porous. That is why the acid will penetrate through the pores into the underlying nickel/copper layer, leaving the gold as flakes. The bulk density of a normal gold deposit will, therefore, be less than the cast density of 19.3 grams per cc. I would think that the term, increasing the deposit density, would mean that it would pack the gold atoms closer together but, the density would never exceed 19.3 gm/cc.

I think that the solution composition would be the biggest factor in crystal production.

Experiment, experiment, experiment. I need a lab, Ralph. About a fourth (10 yrs) of my gold life has been spent doing research, a fourth (10 yrs.) doing assays, and a half (20 yrs) doing production. I really miss this stuff.


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## aflacglobal (Aug 10, 2007)

Dam. sorry i missed this Chris. One of my ideas was to Make a big coil like that of a nail around a clear glass tube and place a plating cell inside the coil and see what kind of crystals i get. You can trace the lines of magnetic fields by laying a piece of white paper across the test object and sprinkling with powdered iron. Etch a sketch powder fillings will work. Now this is crude by all means but yet simple science. 

I could think of much more advanced ways to do it, but to show the simple concept this will work. These lines can alter atom rotation spin. I'm wondering if they can affect the lattic like harold was speaking of with the silver and lead melting at a new temperatures when combined. 

I'm no by any means ready yet. I'm going to throw so serious waves at this thing and see if i can alter the way things work. Might cause some crystals to form that might not form regulary at that temp or ph. I'm still learning the atom thing to. Think of a hard drives and the way it works on the platter surface to control rotational spin ( atom )


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