# oxygen tank for AP



## joubjonn (Mar 15, 2014)

I was reading a thread earlier about the use of an oxygen concentrator in a AP bucket

this may be a bad idea but why not get an oxygen tank like the senior citizens use, hook up a regulator and pump that through an air stone to speed up the process? any dangers in doing this? besides the obvious of no open flame/spark?


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## skippy (Mar 16, 2014)

How about an oxygen concentrator? No refills!


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## joubjonn (Mar 16, 2014)

they looked expensive. unless I'm looking at the wrong models.


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## FrugalRefiner (Mar 16, 2014)

Oxygen concentrators and filling oxygen cylinders are both expensive compared to a simple aquarium pump. There's plenty of oxygen in the air we breath.

Dave


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## joubjonn (Mar 16, 2014)

I think a comparison is in order. 
problem is I spend WAY to much money on crap for this hobby. the wife is starting to get annoyed 
so an oxygen tank wouldn't go over so well. maybe I can ask my scrap guy if he's got one and a regulator
20% atm oxygen in AP compared to 100% through a regulator, my little aquarium pump puts out 1.13psi. have to do some math to convert to a regulated O2 supply and then find some good material to run in both.


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## g_axelsson (Mar 16, 2014)

Even if you bubble 100% oxygen through the copper chloride solution it isn't sure it would work any faster, there is a limit of how much oxygen you can dissolve in it, and when it is reached any excess will just pass through.
Instead of messing with expensive tanks, regulators and oxygen, try to find the optimum temperature. The higher temperature the faster reaction, but the lower temperature the more oxygen can be dissolved. Other factors affecting the process is size of the bubbles, the amount of air going through, acid concentration, copper chloride concentration, agitation of the solution, surface area of the metallic copper.
Unless you control all other factors how could you ever know if the change of speed is from changing the oxygen level from 20% to 100% in the gas you blow through the solution?

Göran


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## joubjonn (Mar 16, 2014)

water content, more water = more oxygen storing ability. so if you keep everything the same, material, acid amount, temp, peroxide amount, water amount use an air bubbler vs 100% oxygen as the only two variables I would think the 100% oxygen would work faster then just atm air bubbling. but hey I might be wrong. 

as an oilfield engineer (intelligent well electro/hydraulic tools design) we do a lot of testing, especially with broken tools coming back from the field, we like to eliminate the possible issues one at a time, I guess I'm bringing some of that thought process to refining.


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## butcher (Mar 16, 2014)

Too much dissolved oxygen in solution can result in oxidation of fine gold putting the gold into solution, like adding concentrated H2O2 and HCl to dissolve gold powders or fine foils.

g_axelsson, and others gave the answer very well, They have a good understanding of the chemical and physical reactions of the copper II chloride leach.

Atmospheric air Is not pure oxygen it is mostly nitrogen, adding pure oxygen may act like a concentrated H2O2 solution, as stated the solution can only hold so much gases depending on conditions...

This idea is just a waste of time and $$$,and values, in my opinion.
Save that expensive oxygen for melting your metals.


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## joubjonn (Mar 16, 2014)

I see. glad I asked before wasting the money on that action

thanks everyone for the responses


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## modtheworld44 (Mar 16, 2014)

joubjonn said:


> I see. glad I asked before wasting the money on that action
> 
> thanks everyone for the responses



joubjonn

If you want a cheap way to get more psi of oxygen,just go yard selling and buy a nebuelizer for breathing treatments.



modtheworld44


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## joubjonn (Mar 16, 2014)

good call. I actually have one of those. but it's for my little daughter when she gets a cough. so I probably shouldn't use that. for what I'm doing the little pump I have is fine. I was just thinking out loud with this thread.


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## Geo (Mar 20, 2014)

Craigslist is a good place to look. 

Butcher, I dont think there is any harm in using concentrated oxygen in AP for one reason, I just dont think the copper chloride will dissolve gold unless there is an overabundance of hcl. Too, where a aquarium pump is a 16 OZ hammer, a oxygen concentrator is a sledgehammer. It makes short work of pins in a hurry. After the machine is stopped and the hose removed, you can see reaction bubbles coming from the copper based pins and iron based pins dissolve even faster. It's as fast a dissolution as you can get without using nitric, in my opinion.


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## Geo (Mar 20, 2014)

joubjonn said:


> good call. I actually have one of those. but it's for my little daughter when she gets a cough. so I probably shouldn't use that. for what I'm doing the little pump I have is fine. I was just thinking out loud with this thread.



I can buy them for $30 new, still in the box. If you send a check and pay for the shipping, I'll buy you one and send it to you as long as they still have some in stock.


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## skippy (Mar 20, 2014)

Geo said:


> Craigslist is a good place to look.
> 
> Butcher, I dont think there is any harm in using concentrated oxygen in AP for one reason, I just dont think the copper chloride will dissolve gold unless there is an overabundance of hcl. Too, where a aquarium pump is a 16 OZ hammer, a oxygen concentrator is a sledgehammer. It makes short work of pins in a hurry. After the machine is stopped and the hose removed, you can see reaction bubbles coming from the copper based pins and iron based pins dissolve even faster. It's as fast a dissolution as you can get without using nitric, in my opinion.



Very cool Geo! I was wondering if anyone has used one of them! Another possible use would be for regenerating nitrous oxide to nitric acid in dissolving silver or gold filled. One thing that concerns me is that the possible explosiveness of any hydrogen being generated would likely be a lot higher in a high oxygen atmosphere. Dissolving copper doesn't make hydrogen, but dissolving tin, steel, zinc, aluminum does...


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## pgms4me (Mar 20, 2014)

Just so no one gets confused. A nebuelizer is not an oxygen concentrator. It is basically an aquarium air pump that helps turn the Abuterol medication into a vapor.They are inexpensive.
An oxygen concentrator is far more expensive and complex. I use an old oxygen concentrator as the oxygen supply for my small torch. It works great. I had one of those small bernzomatic mappgas/0xygen torches. I cut the oxygen tank fitting off of it and connected the rubber tubing through an adapter to the output of the concentrator. I usually run it about 50% of its output as adjusted by the fron output control guage


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## butcher (Mar 21, 2014)

I have not tried to dissolve gold with HCl and bubbling in pure oxygen, but I truly believe it can be done, especially if the gold was finely divided like foils or powders.


Here is why I believe you could dissolve your gold using pure oxygen.
Hydrochloric acid may be oxidized by pure oxygen to form a hypochlorous acid HOCl (a type of bleach solution) a very strong oxidizer, this will oxidize gold with HCl, and as we know we can use bleach or sodium hypochlorite NaOCl, or other chlorine spiecies oxidize gold, and with HCl we can dissolve the gold to form a gold chloride solution.

2HCl + O2 --> 2 HOCl 

Hypochlorous acid decomposition
2HOCl <--> Cl2O + H2O

HClO + HCl <--> Cl2 + H2O
HClO reacts with HCl to form chlorine gas:



Leaching of gold with hypochlorous acid , and HCl acid reaction 
2Au + 3HOCl + 3H(+) + 5Cl¯ --> 2[AuCl4]¯ + 3H2O


I do not see too much difference in adding concentrated 32% or 50% H2O2 or bubbling pure oxygen into HCl acid , they both would act to oxidize the HCl acid. and i believe to dissolve the gold.

Pure oxygen is expensive, most would not be absorbed into solution easily, so if my goal was to dissolve gold, I would choose use 32% H2O2 or NaOCl, or some other oxidizer, if my goal was to add just enough oxygen to dissolve base metals and not dissolve the gold I would use air (mostly nitrogen with a little oxygen) or a 3% H2O2 solution (mostly water with a little excess oxygen) in moderation.


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## Geo (Mar 21, 2014)

I agree that the copper chloride holds the potential to dissolve gold but here is the reason I think it will be difficult to dissolve gold into the solution at all. Even when doing a dissolution with AR on material with a heavy base metal content (such as gold filled), the higher reactive metal (copper) will dissolve first. In other words, as long as you have metallic copper in the solution, it's almost impossible that any gold will dissolve. Too, the base metal in solution acts as a buffer. The more base metal in solution, the more difficult it is to dissolve gold into solution. I've used pure oxygen in my copper chloride for about a year now and haven't noticed any large amounts of black powder gold such as might cement out of solution on pins base metal. I wouldn't say that I believe it's safe to use in AP unless I used it and know how it reacts.


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## butcher (Mar 21, 2014)

The more reactive base metal can very well be acting somewhat as a buffer as it will oxidize easier than the less reactive gold.


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## Anonymous (Mar 21, 2014)

Butcher that process makes my mind boggle but as you said it has to be possible.

The equations don't lie.


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