# Noxx Condensate From AR



## rusty (May 21, 2013)

Just some ramblings from my personal observations - Rusty's Lab Notes.

Evaporated with out the condenser hooked up, open ports to expel fumes. Yellow precipitate formed on insulation blanket. Taken measures to correct, condensate collected in receiver is amber - possibly some gold content as evident on the insulation blanket.

It would appear that colloidal gold will hitch hike on vapor.

Noxx fumes begin at 87 degrees Celsius ( 188.6 Fahrenheit ).


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## Marcel (May 21, 2013)

Now the 1 million $ question:

Did you test the condensate with stannous chloride?


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## skippy (May 21, 2013)

Is that Roxul? Roxul has a fair amount of iron in it and might turn that color with any acid on it. PS I love roxul. It doesn't melt till about 900C IIRC and makes a good backup insulation for all kinds of little heating setups. Drainboard is a good roxul product too. Much denser than the batts.


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## rusty (May 22, 2013)

skippy said:


> Is that Roxul? Roxul has a fair amount of iron in it and might turn that color with any acid on it. PS I love roxul. It doesn't melt till about 900C IIRC and makes a good backup insulation for all kinds of little heating setups. Drainboard is a good roxul product too. Much denser than the batts.



Yes that is Roxul, my shop is 2 x 4 construction I added 2" to each stud to accept 6" batts. It's a bit more money than glass wool but so much easier to work with, doing the ceiling this stuff stayed put while I stapled the vapor barrier.


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## rusty (May 22, 2013)

Gold chloride is a water soluble salt - hydrochloric acid contains purified water, which makes up a good portion of your AR.

Water takes on many forms, mineral free water welcomes hitch hikers.

The reactor has it own set of rules, my observations these past few days have allowed me to tame the beast. 

I've learned about liquid volume, stirring versus not, distilled water, hot and cold heat, vapor, vacuum, evaporation, condensate, ground glass, expansion and contraction of borosilicate, PTFE the disadvantages of heating with water versus oil.


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## skippy (May 22, 2013)

Rusty, I've never operated a beast like your reactor, I'm interested to hear all observations, no matter how mundane.
Good luck as your gold solution nears the precipitation phase!


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## rusty (May 22, 2013)

skippy said:


> Rusty, I've never operated a beast like your reactor, I'm interested to hear all observations, no matter how mundane.
> Good luck as your gold solution nears the precipitation phase!



Thanks, as for the reactor I give high fives to the seller.

Not much to comment, it's a large piece of glass with more lines and hoses hooked to it than a someone requiring life support.


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## rusty (May 22, 2013)

The key to not dragging gold ions along with vapor, evaporate hermetically sealed system at a lower temperature vacuum assisted. A nice clear condensate forms in the receiver.

As in any evaporation process patience is required.


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## rusty (May 22, 2013)

Marcel said:


> Now the 1 million $ question:
> 
> Did you test the condensate with stannous chloride?



Previously yes, I would not have wasted my time evaporating a gold barren solution. 

The color of the condensate and the precipitate on the insulation told me something was very wrong. 

Refining is not an art it is a discipline.

Following procedure, cleanliness with lab glass, using designated crucibles for melts, knowing when to use tap or distilled water, managing your time.


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## g_axelsson (May 22, 2013)

rusty said:


> Marcel said:
> 
> 
> > Now the 1 million $ question:
> ...


I think he meant the condensate you get at the condenser. If gold is hitching a ride in the fumes then you should be able to detect it with stannous. Don't drive blindly.

Change in the color of the insulation could be from the bleaching action of the acid, it doesn't need to be gold chloride. As stated, if there is iron in the material it could give a yellow color.

Göran


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## rusty (May 22, 2013)

We all know that you can not totally rely on stannous, it has been well documented that it can report false positives or nothing at all if it has exceeded its life expectancy. This is why it is recommended to keep a gold standard handy to test the integrity of the tester.

I always have a stannous solution on hand, but it has its time and place of where I rely on its use.

A prospector who knows how to read the lay of the ground upon finding gold bearing ground would be able to consistently recognize future prospects of similar geological make up even with a wild card thrown in. 

I've always considered e-wast as high grade urban ore, in order to economically process one has to liberate the values then concentrate those values to cut down on chemical costs. For those that have been following my ramblings I've been following the same steps used to process gold from a hard rock mine.

For instance we all know fingers and CPU's are gold bearing items recovered from this urban waste, if this is the material we specialize in processing on daily basis would it be prudent to test every step with stannous. Absolutely not as we would know from experience what to expect just by the color of a leach what it contains, if I wild card reared it head bring out the stannous.

Ball mill to liberate values, centrifuge to concentrate values, that out of the way I'm now processing the first batch of concentrates which I have recovered from my urban ore.

Should change my nic to Urban Mine, as I'm working my way through the cons I'm discovering new things for myself first hand which I willingly share with you here on the forum but I see my ramblings and musings soon coming to an end. 

As there are few of like mind who have the time or willingness to share and educate the other. I've grown tired of writing into dead space.

I have no desire nor the patience to correct newbies in their failures, when they could have grabbed a free copy of Hoke of which I had spent hours scanning and proofing the OCR output.

You should question yourself as to why someone more scientifically educated than I have not come by and corrected my statement of claim - gold hitch hiking on a vapor.

Again it is documented another airborne critter. -- osmium tetroxide is its capacity to cause irreversible blindness.

How does the osmium tetroxide transport to the cornea of the human eye. If that were a quiz question I would have answered, it seeks moisture.


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## skippy (May 22, 2013)

Roxul is spun basalt and iron slag, if you get an acid on it you likely will see color from dissolving iron oxides.


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## rusty (May 22, 2013)

skippy said:


> Roxul is spun basalt and iron slag, if you get an acid on it you likely will see color from dissolving iron oxides.



This is easy to answer. If there was free iron in the Roxul the gold chloride would have precipitated as a brown powder and not dried out as a yellow chloride.

Since the yellow stain on the Roxul has similar characteristics IE color as the chloride inside the reactor it would be natural to assume they came from the same source. 

Next question would be how did the chloride get there, next would be to correct the situation from recurring.


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## g_axelsson (May 23, 2013)

rusty said:


> skippy said:
> 
> 
> > Roxul is spun basalt and iron slag, if you get an acid on it you likely will see color from dissolving iron oxides.
> ...


This is just wrong, there are no metallic iron in roxul, any free iron would rust if it got wet. Generally, iron compounds doesn't precipitate gold. But with acids you could leach iron from iron containing components, for example slag.



rusty said:


> Since the yellow stain on the Roxul has similar characteristics IE color as the chloride inside the reactor it would be natural to assume they came from the same source.


It's been said over and over again on the forum, a yellow color in a solution isn't proof of any gold, the same thing is true in this case, there are so many other explanations of why it turned yellow than evaporated gold chloride.


rusty said:


> Next question would be how did the chloride get there, next would be to correct the situation from recurring.


The easy and for me most plausible explanation is that acids evaporated from your solution and condensed in the roxul, changing the color to yellow. No problem other than you got acid in your roxul and needs to handle it carefully. Just fix the leakage and be happy.
You could also have NOx from your AR coloring the condensate.

As for your osmium tetroxide example, it is a well known fact that it does sublime at room temperature. It doesn't seek moisture, it just reacts strongly with lipids and attaches itself to organic materials. The cornea is just the most visible result as it will stay there for the rest of your life. It also attacks the lungs, giving lung oedema. 
Osmium tetroxide melts at 40C and is transported in sealed glass ampoules.

Gold chloride on the other hand is stable at temperatures below boiling water and higher. It decomposes at 254C. Unless you boil it, it should stay in solution.

Göran


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## rusty (May 23, 2013)

g_axelsson said:


> As for your osmium tetroxide example, it is a well known fact that it does sublime at room temperature. It doesn't seek moisture, it just reacts strongly with lipids and attaches itself to organic materials. The cornea is just the most visible result as it will stay there for the rest of your life. It also attacks the lungs, giving lung oedema.
> Osmium tetroxide melts at 40C and is transported in sealed glass ampoules.
> 
> Gold chloride on the other hand is stable at temperatures below boiling water and higher. It decomposes at 254C. Unless you boil it, it should stay in solution.
> ...



Thank you for correcting me on the osmium.

As for the gold chloride transport, I'm sticking with my personal observations.


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## qst42know (Jul 21, 2013)

If I understand the question correctly, the answer will be found on this page.

http://www.etap.org/demo/chem5/instruction2tutor.html

The kinetic energy of gases causes the difusion of gold molecules. Under vacuum there are fewer molecules to collide with and carry off the gold.

You might consider sulfamic acid for denoxing if you are worried about vapor losses.


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## NobleMetalWorks (Jul 21, 2013)

I'm sorry, unless you are using some scientific method to prove that there is gold in the condensed liquid, you cannot make any suspect claims as to there being gold present in any of it's forms.

First, and again I am sorry to have to say this, but your NOx fumes should never ever EVER come into contact with the Roxul insulation. That is just simply carelessness on your part. Because you have used some method that has allowed this to take place, everything else that comes after is suspect. It's not good scientific proof of anything. Because it was able to be exposed to a gas it never should have, nor was intended to, it literally means it could have been exposed to anything in the surrounding environment. 



rusty said:


> Gold chloride is a water soluble salt - hydrochloric acid contains purified water, which makes up a good portion of your AR.



Once you mix purified water with anything, it's no longer purified water. Thus your solution does not contain any purified water once mixed, but a solution of whatever you have mixed together. You said it yourself here:



rusty said:


> Water takes on many forms, mineral free water welcomes hitch hikers..



By your reasoning, if you add purified water to a solution, it takes oh "hitch hikers"



rusty said:


> If there was free iron in the Roxul the gold chloride would have precipitated as a brown powder and not dried out as a yellow chloride.



How do you know that the yellow color is "yellow chloride". By calling it yellow chloride you are automatically discounting any other possibility, and only considering the yellow color to be some type of chloride.



skippy said:


> Roxul is spun basalt and iron slag, if you get an acid on it you likely will see color from dissolving iron oxides.



ROXUL insulation is a rock-based mineral fiber insulation comprised of Basalt rock and Recycled Slag. Basalt is a volcanic rock which is abundant in the earth, and slag is a by-product of the steel and copper industry. The minerals are melted and spun into fibers.

Literally, there is no telling what exactly MIGHT be in ROXUL. Slag can contain all kinds of impurities, by-products of steel and copper, meaning the unwanted minerals and other material during what I can only assume must be a smelting process, since it's called slag. The Basalt itself probably contains many different minerals itself. I use Basalt rock taken from the ocean floor in my salt water tanks because it has so many minerals, as it decomposes it provides all those things my corals require to stay healthy.

If you take 100 different samples of ROXUL, and expose them all to the exact same composition of NOx gas, you are likely to get a rainbow of colors. 

Also, it looks in your picture as if the area in question on your ROXUL has actually been dissolved, or corroded away. This is exactly what would happen if something that contained metal were subjected to NOx. Matter of fact, if you take a piece of metal that is ferrous, and subject it to NOx gas, and any chlorine gas, it will in fact turn yellow. I would tend to think what you are calling a precipitant is instead iron that has oxidized because it was exposed to NOx gases/fumes, and that your gas also contained chlorine, and thus changed the oxidized iron to a yellow color.



rusty said:


> Since the yellow stain on the Roxul has similar characteristics IE color as the chloride inside the reactor it would be natural to assume they came from the same source.



You shouldn't be "assuming" anything, specially when it comes to chemistry. It's when we start assuming things, that we make incorrect assumptions, and if we base our processes on incorrect assumptions that's when we make mistakes. And if there is anything we as refiners should want to avoid, it's mistakes.



rusty said:


> Next question would be how did the chloride get there, next would be to correct the situation from recurring.



If you are preventing the gas from escaping, and it's contained in an enclosed reaction system, then you don't need to concern yourself about anything escaping because it's all contained. I agree with you however, you have a leak somewhere, and you need to shore it up before you proceed with anymore reactions. You are lucky in that you were using ROXUL and not a natural fiber. Subjecting natural fibers to NOx gases can under certain conditions create Nitrocellulose, which wouldn't be good at all, specially close to glass vessels full of acid solutions.

Leave your mind open to all possibilities, don't assume that a certain color means chloride or anything else, test everything and if not sure test again. You mentioned that Stannous tests give false positives, yet you are convinced your yellow color is a result of a chloride being deposited on ROXUL, without even considering the possibility, that is far more likely I might add, that your yellow color is something else. Don't label anything as being anything unless you have empirical data that leaves no room for doubt,. You are dealing with NOx gas that contains unknowns, you are dealing with ROXUL that contains unknowns, but what you do know already should lead you to believe that gold chloride is NOT being deposited on the ROXUL.

Also consider this, Iron in water when subjected to bleach can turn your clothes yellow

Iron in water can also turn your hair a yellow color

Iron can in fact turn yellow under certain conditions, and your ROXUL is in part made from slag during the steel production process, which is made from, iron.

Scott


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## Geo (Jul 21, 2013)

:|


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