# AR metod for Ceramic CPUs...



## SasaK (Jun 20, 2011)

Hi everybody,

I am reading the forum for a month already and have read Hooks book all about gold -few times, and made a lot of notes. I have now something like 70 CPUs (all kinds) so I am slowly planning to do my first refining of 10 ceramic cpus...

So I would be very greatfull if you could advice me a little before my first refine...

Here are few things which are important for my case:
-I will do refining outside on a windy day in countryside so my process must be fairy quick (within 16 hours) because I would like to avoid camping outside for days (weeks) . For this I decided to use AR method.

Poor Man's AR I can not use because it is difficult for me to get sodium nitrate...

Basically I plan to follow Hooks procedure for "Rolled, Filled and electroplated gold, and gold scrap containing soft solder" -page 67.

Any advice to speed up the proces ? Some step to take out or to include ? 

You guys never boil CPUs or pins in Sulfuric Acid, I wonder why ? There is a Pb in solder.. right...

Hoke is using a lot of time on settling the sediments (days) and then pouring of the liquid. I plan to use finest quality filter paper and vacum filtering to avoid spending time on settling all together? Is this sound idea ?

Is there any big diference between Poor Man's AR and clasic AR metod with 65% Nitric Acid ?

Thanx...


----------



## Harold_V (Jun 21, 2011)

SasaK said:


> You guys never boil CPUs or pins in Sulfuric Acid, I wonder why ? There is a Pb in solder.. right...


Sulfuric won't eliminate lead. It does precipitate lead as lead sulfate, however, so if you have lead in solution, sulfuric can be beneficial. 



> Hoke is using a lot of time on settling the sediments (days) and then pouring of the liquid. I plan to use finest quality filter paper and vacum filtering to avoid spending time on settling all together? Is this sound idea ?


In general, no. When a solution isn't eager to settle, it often won't filter, either. Key to success is creating solutions that lend themselves to either process. One of the things that is often beneficial in that regard is to incinerate, then digest the solids in hot HCl. A couple rinses in water (allow the solids to settle, then siphon off the solution) will generally eliminate troublesome substances, so the values, once dissolved, can be filtered without issue. 

Harold


----------



## SasaK (Jun 22, 2011)

Herold, thanx for replay... I was reading many of your posts and I personally decided to follow up your detailed washing procedure and idea to keep everything clean from start...

Here are the pictures of the CPU-s which I plan to use for my first refine:






They are toatal 10 ceramic CPU-s: 
9 AMD Durons from 1998
1 AMD Athlon from 1999 (something like that)

I hope they will have good yeald...

If I decide to use Poor Man's AR metod, instead of adding Sodium Nitrate (which I dont have), can I add small ammount of 65% Nitric Acid to HCL and CPU mixure? I am planning to do this but I wonder how much is not to much? I do not want to start desolving gold,and on other hand I do not want to use to lilttle Nitric Acid and have to pour off HCL to many times...

Thanx...


----------



## patnor1011 (Jun 22, 2011)

SasaK said:


> Herold, thanx for replay... I was reading many of your posts and I personally decided to follow up your detailed washing procedure and idea to keep everything clean from start...
> 
> Here are the pictures of the CPU-s which I plan to use for my first refine:
> View attachment 1
> ...



You have a lot of study ahead. If you put Nitric in HCl you create AR so any pouring off HCl will be pouring off gold as gold will dissolve. 

If you plan to do that 10 pictured CPU your yield will be in 0.1 up to 0.4g range. Depend on your skills. I highly doubt that there is more than 25-35$ worth of gold.


----------



## SasaK (Jun 22, 2011)

Patnor, to study and learn is OK and normal... and before pouring off I will test solution for gold... this I know... 

But my idea was like this:
Since in Poor Mans Ar method is added small amount of sodium nitrate in diluted HCL to form small amount of Nitric Acid in the solution (HCL to Nitric ratio is very high and not like in AR), maybe I could do the same by directly adding small amount of nitric acid, instead of sodium nitrate??? Pour of and repeat proces 3-4 times (according to Poor Mans Ar method). Or maybe it does not work this way... ?

If I could not get some sodium nitrate on my hands, maybe I should forget Poor Mans method and boil the CPUs in nitric acid... But how long will it take for nitric to completly desolve base metals in 10 CPUs? 

Yield is that low, 0.01g til 0.04g per CPU ?  
OK, never mind ... I do this just for training anyhow. .this is my first refine...

Thanx...
Sasa


----------



## patnor1011 (Jun 22, 2011)

I am not an expert by any means but I am here long enough to know that most of problems are created when people try to substitute something or alter process. If I would you I would start with Nitric. In that way you keep gold in a plain view and base metals will dissolve. Then proceed with purification of your gold. As I said before do not expect too much of a gold from 10 CPU. It is a good way to learn by doing small scale batches but result will barely cover cost of your chemicals and time invested in this.


----------



## samuel-a (Jun 22, 2011)

Sasa

Pat has a very good and important point.

yes, if it were me i would use AR, but for someone that is just starting, this process may create a lot of confusion.
First you must acquaint yourself to the working process with the different concentrations of gold solutions and with different levels of contaminants.
It's not simple to control contaminants when dissolving everything with AR, therefor, hard to undersand the dynamics and qustions like "where the hack is my gold?" start to pop up.

for example, with 10 ceramics and say 0.3 g yield.
you will probably use around 200-300 ml of dilute AR, filtering will add more 100ml h2o, so now you are at 300-400ml dirty solution, starts the drop... but hay...
it's not like in the videos on youtube, nothing is happening "what the h%#% ?" but gold is actually is dropping, just you can't see it... bla bla.. you get my point :mrgreen: 

Treat base metals (with nitric/AP) first as Pat suggested, keep your eyes on your gold through the process, until you are ready to dissolve it and just it (of course some BM will be left to be dissolved with the gold, but that's not the point.)

BTW - Poor man's AR and AR are same thing and with same results. The only difference is in the way nitric is introduced to the solution.

Good luck and stay safe.


----------



## SasaK (Jun 23, 2011)

Thanx guys... You all gave me some very good advice...
I will now try to buy chemicals and equipment and slowly prepare for the refine...

I'll keep you posted how it went...

Thanx
SasaK


----------



## SasaK (Jul 1, 2011)

Hello everyone...

What is the best way to treat thermal paste on this CPUs? Should I wash it with soap, wipe clean with paper or ignore it totally ?

I plan to do flowing things on CPUs:

-take out plates with blow torch
- NaOH boiling
-boiling in water
-Nitric bath...
-H2SO4 bath
-AR
-dropping with SMB
- another AR
-washing
-melting

I am not sure in which of this phases thermal paste will go off. .so I would like the most to remove it totally before starting the process..

Thanx


----------



## Claudie (Jul 1, 2011)

I usually just wipe it off with a paper towel. Water doesn't do much to it.


----------



## glondor (Jul 1, 2011)

I believe many types of thermal paste contain silver. I do not clean it off, rather I just run it through the process and filter it out on the second filtration.


----------



## dtectr (Jul 1, 2011)

The paste will likely have silicone as an additive, if not the base. 
Silicone's job in formulas is to keep things from sticking together. 
It also adds a measure of heat resistance, keeping the compound flexible. 

*The first characteristic* is the one you don't want in solution. You will likely wind up with fine metal floating in a solution that refuses to settle. Remember, you want your gold particles to agglomerate, find each other and then settle together in one mass.

Many people clean the compound off with alcohol & paper towels. Coming from the sanitation industry, I frown on that as final treatment - its virtually impossible to get all the residue off of anything, regardless of the cleaner used, as you smear it around repeatedly with a towel.

I use Awesome!, a very concentrated alkaline detergent with very few additives, and a scrub brush. After rinsing thoroughly, with a separate brush, I scrub them with with Bon Ami cleanser and, you guessed it, its own brush and a final rinse. 

This sounds like it takes a long time, but it doesn't - a few seconds per CPU. Arrange them assembly line fashion.

*Please note:* Some frown on the use of any and all detergents in refining, but I believe they have their place if you eliminate the residue properly.

*The second characteristic* keeps incineration from completely eliminating the silicone, as it is highly heat resistant. Anti-seize compounds for high heat applications use as their primary ingredient - silicone, without the added fillers, which will break down in that environment.

Keep this in mind as well, please - I am still very new at this myself, and my recommendations are based on my brief experience as a hobbyist refiner.

Good luck!


----------



## SasaK (Aug 8, 2011)

Thanx for advice....

What I did at the end is that after taking of the leads with blow torch, I just wiped off the paste with some soft paper and it seamed to made a good job...

But now I have another dilemma...

I have done refining of the above processors (20 pcs total) but only half way trough.. 

What I did is following:
-I did 1h boiling in 30% HCL to remove leftover solder.. It did a fine job...
-Washing in 3-4 times in hot water to remove HCL...
-Boiling for 1h in 65% Nitric to loosen pins (legs). It did also very good job because after 1h all the legs were on the bottom of the beaker so I could easily take out the ceramics...
-Then I started to boil legs in new fresh Nitric to remove base metals.. But this was taking me 4-5 hours, with changing of 4-5 batches of nitric and it only did something like 50% of legs... Then I run out of gas and went home...

Now I still have to boil further more in nitric to remove the rest (+/-50%) of base metals, but I start to wonder did I do something wrong ?
8-10 hours of boiling in Nitric to remove base metals from 20 Ceramic CPUs (all AMD Durons) seams to me little to long ?
Am I doing something wrong ?

Any feedback/advice/experiance on this one ????

Thanx...

Sasa

PS.
Au foils floating in Nitric solution inside a transparent plastic bottle....a beautiful site


----------



## patnor1011 (Aug 8, 2011)

I would say that using 65% nitric is counter-productive. It is recommended to dilute nitric with water. Reaction will be much faster. I do not boil pins in nitric as dissolving base metals produce enough of heat and beaker become very hot during process. I use 30% HNO3. 
There is iron in legs of your processors.


----------



## SasaK (Aug 8, 2011)

@patnor...

OK patnor, so you recomend I should dilute my Nitric to be 30%.. this make sense. .I was reading about it.. and no heating. .but still what do you think about 8-10 h for 20 processors. .is this still to long ? Will it be less if nitric is diluted.. and should I replace it as soon as it becomes dark brown/black.. or I should wait until all feezing/boiling stops ?

Thanx...


----------



## patnor1011 (Aug 9, 2011)

It takes much less time and I replace nitric when reaction is stopped. I used that last time on about 500g of pins from motherboards and it took about 4-5 hours and I changed nitric 0.5l about 6-7 times. It was just kinda testing batch.


----------



## SasaK (Aug 10, 2011)

And what about steering.. ?
I noticed that majority of the legs with base metals fall on the bottom of the beaker, and only few fly around feesing, desolving... Do you steer and how often ?
I was steering from time to time, but I think that if I steer all the time then I will be exposed 4-5 hours to toxic fumes and this is not good for my health.. Also it is not easy to stear 4-5h 

In my last refine, my "acid resistant" glove on the right hand was totally dissolved because it was above the baker with glass rod steering very often... 

Is there some trick or nice procedure in this ?


----------



## patnor1011 (Aug 10, 2011)

Some people use magnetic stirrer but I just stir when I put fresh acid in and then after while... Not much often as I have a lot of time...


----------



## dgr (Aug 12, 2011)

SasaK said:


> -I did 1h boiling in 30% HCL to remove leftover solder.. It did a fine job...
> -Washing in 3-4 times in hot water to remove HCL...
> -Boiling for 1h in 65% Nitric


Are you saving this Nitric? My understanding is that free chlorides aren't 100% washed away. Any free chloride will dissolve gold to AuCl in the presence of nitric acid. Harold has commented on this a number of times and at least in my thread he recommended roasting between HCL and HNO3 washes. Doesn't his wash procedure go over this?


----------



## SasaK (Aug 13, 2011)

You are right dgr, 

After HCL and washing, when I was putting first Nitric I saw that solution was turning light yellow... So some Gold was lost in this way... But I was expecting this and I did it with purpose... 

This is my first refine and I do not care so much about total amount of gold.. I want to go trough the process of removing base metals and AR process and later dropping gold with SMB and washing procedures...

I plan on my second refine to take more care about ammounts of chemicals, and ammount of gold on the end of process...

So wish me luck guys... 

0/


----------



## Python (Aug 13, 2011)

Hi everyone.
Im new to the refining project, so can someone please help me. I have already dissolves the gold in AR, so now im trying to precipitate it with Ferrous Sulphate. But nothing seems to happen. What can i be doning wrong. Im from South africa, and i dont know anyone here who can help me.

Enjoy your day.


----------



## Geo (Aug 13, 2011)

Python said:


> Hi everyone.
> Im new to the refining project, so can someone please help me. I have already dissolves the gold in AR, so now im trying to precipitate it with Ferrous Sulphate. But nothing seems to happen. What can i be doning wrong. Im from South africa, and i dont know anyone here who can help me.
> 
> Enjoy your day.


did you test with stannous chloride to make sure you have gold in your solution?


----------



## Harold_V (Aug 13, 2011)

Python said:


> Hi everyone.
> Im new to the refining project, so can someone please help me. I have already dissolves the gold in AR, so now im trying to precipitate it with Ferrous Sulphate. But nothing seems to happen. What can i be doning wrong. Im from South africa, and i dont know anyone here who can help me.
> 
> Enjoy your day.


Pretty hard to help when we have no idea of what you've done. To suggest you dissolved "everything" in AR doesn't really give us much of a clue, aside from suggesting to us that you are starting off wrong. 

Please describe in fine detail what you started with, and what you did. Leaving out the smallest detail will derail your attempt to learn what to do, and what not to do. 

I'm going to leave you with this tip. Dissolving "everything" with AR is a huge mistake, especially if not "everything" gets dissolved. You should do as others are told to do----which is to read Hoke's book, so you gain an understanding of what works, and what doesn't. 

Harold


----------



## Python (Aug 14, 2011)

Hi Harold.

Thank you very much for the reply. I start off by cutting out every piece of the motherboard that have gold like pins, and then i put it all into the AR. But there are still pieces of motherboard onto these pieces that i put into the AR, i guess that is all wrong? When i filter the AR, there are only other pieces left, but no gold pins. But the AR then isn't the colour like it shows in the movie clips, yellow, mine is dark, emerald like green. I will look for the book tonight and see if i can get it somewhere on the internet. Thank you very much for your reply.

Sincerely gratefull
Johan


----------



## dtectr (Aug 14, 2011)

Here, my friend, is a link to a pdf version of Hoke's book from patnor's signature line. 
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=10052#p101972


----------



## butcher (Aug 14, 2011)

Python, you have been given some of the best advice so far, from the way I see it you are wandering in the dark in this field, Hoke's book will light your way.

I would add a copper buss bar from electrical panel or piece of clean copper pipe cut long wise hammered out flat small hole to put a copper wire in to hang it inside vessel, into the solution, this will cement out all values below copper, use old toothbrush and clean and rinse copper bar, decant liquid, (save these powders, I would add a dilute hydroxide solution to neutralize them and rinse salts from them), now the important steps:
to treat this liquid add an Iron bar to cement out copper and metals below Iron, then add again decant liquid and bring PH to about 9 this will precipitate the iron and most other metals leaving you a salt water to dispose of.
Read Hokes and get the information you will need to guide you through this mess, it will also get you on your way to getting gold and not wandering all the time where is my gold.


----------



## Harold_V (Aug 15, 2011)

I'd love to strangle the person that got the notion started that you process escrap with aqua regia. More people have failed at that venture than we can count. 

One thing is very important for you to understand. When you dissolve base metals along with values, if there's even traces of base metal left un-dissolved, you tend to lose the values. They cement on the base metal, but don't look like gold. When you filter your solution, you discard the values along with the garbage.

Look at processing escrap as a two step venture. The first one is where you eliminate the base metals. While it's a refining process, your real purpose is to concentrate the values so they can be further processed for purity. If you circumvent the process of eliminating base metals first, you introduce problems that yield the type of results you have experienced. 

There are procedures where direct dissolution with AR can be to advantage, but you should have a firm understanding of what transpires when you apply this method. Otherwise you will struggle, often with no gain. 

Read Hoke. 

Harold


----------



## Python (Aug 15, 2011)

Hi everyone.

Many many thanks to all of you, especially dtectr, butcher and Harld_V. I really appreaciate all of what you advise. Thank you all again.

JohanPython


----------



## Python (Aug 16, 2011)

Hi everyone.

Can someone please help me again. I have a lump of what is said to be "platinum". So, at my disposal, i only have nitric and hydrochloric acid, and i wanted to test it. I soaked it for a whole day and night in AR, nothing happens, exept that it is a lot softer than it was before. I can dent it with a knife if i push onto it. I had only cut off a piece from the original lumb for the test, but then i had use a grinder because it was so hard. Can this be platinum?

Thank you all.

Johan


----------



## patnor1011 (Aug 16, 2011)

Use stannous.


----------



## jimdoc (Aug 16, 2011)

You could also check the density or specific gravity of the platinum lump.

Jim


----------



## Python (Aug 16, 2011)

Thanks for the info everyone. 

Johan


----------



## Harold_V (Aug 17, 2011)

If the material is platinum, soaking in nitric and/or aqua regia would not make a difference in how hard or soft it was. 

If you soaked it in ambient temperature AR and it did "nothing", there's a fair chance it's platinum, but that isn't a conclusive test. You would be better served to heat the solution to near a boil, covered with a watch glass. If the material is platinum, the solution should slowly shift towards a yellow color. It will dissolve, but VERY slowly. A test with stannous chloride of the solution would then provide a clue what you have. 

Do remember, platinum is roughly 10% heavier than gold, so it should be extraordinarily heavy, assuming it is platinum.

Harold


----------



## SasaK (Aug 18, 2011)

Hi everyone, just to give a brief update on my original post...

I have dissolved all the base metals from my 20 Ceramic Duron procesors from begining of this tread....
Total weight of the gold foils is 0.9 grams...

Still I have to go to desolving in AR, and washing procedures... so at the end maybe I will be left with 0.7 g of pure gold, maybe less...

This is something like 0.035 g per CPU... Is this expected result... ?

Maybe boiling in HCL in the beginning wasn't so good idea after all...  I was adding Nitric in the next phase, (but after washing with water) maybe in this way I made AR and dissolved some of my values... But can this amount be like 0.075 g per CPU ? I was expecting to get at least 0.1g per CPU of pure gold....

Something is not right here.....


----------



## Harold_V (Aug 19, 2011)

SasaK said:


> Maybe boiling in HCL in the beginning wasn't so good idea after all...  I was adding Nitric in the next phase, (but after washing with water) maybe in this way I made AR and dissolved some of my values...


You will come to understand that rinsing, even a lot of rinsing, may not remove all traces of a given acid. That's why I recommend incineration if you switch acids in preliminary wash procedures. 



> But can this amount be like 0.075 g per CPU ? I was expecting to get at least 0.1g per CPU of pure gold....


It can amount to 100% dissolution, depending on how much HCl remained. Incineration ensures that doesn't happen. 

You are familiar with stannous chloride, aren't you?

Did you test your solutions to see if you were losing values?

If you did not, what color was the resulting solution? Did it get discarded? 




> Something is not right here.....


My money say's you're right, and it also says what's not right is your procedure. If you don't stick to tried and proven processes, you can expect to lose values. You can expect to lose values if you don't have good work habits, too. Pay strict attention to the process, and don't cut any corners. 

Harold


----------



## SasaK (Aug 19, 2011)

Harold, thanx for the very nice replay...



> You are familiar with stannous chloride, aren't you?
> 
> Did you test your solutions to see if you were losing values?
> 
> If you did not, what color was the resulting solution? Did it get discarded?



Yes, I know about stanious test, and I had the test solution ready. But I was planning to use it during the drop down procedure with SMB... I see now that it is important to test ALL solutions before discarding them... I was reading about this so many times here, but "it can not happen to me, will take care" philosophy is my weak point, I admit... and "it happened" 

Color of the solution..? this is a good question... 

After washing CPUs with water, and putting first batch of Nitric, Nitric solution become intense yellow...    At this point I had a very strange filling in my gut... "This is not good!"...

I discarded the solution thinking it will not have such a big effect on the end result, but I guess it did...

Lesson learned... !

The resulting 0.9g of foils I do not plan to desolve in AR... this is to little ammount of material... Instead I plan to wait untill I have something like a batch of 100 CPUs... Do the proper procedure including inceneration... then I will put all the gold foils together and then do desolving in AR...

I do not see any point in going trough the big work of refining 0.9g to 0.7g or 0.6g.. I better wait a little and do all the work for more value...

But in the end, I am happy with my first refine. I screwed up a little, but I learned a lot, got handy with the acids and health protection procedures, didn't got poisoned or burned :lol: and I got some nice gold foils at the end. For this I have to thank the people in this forum, your help was great and it is very apriciated.

Here is a picture of my gold foils... You guys are to thank for this...


----------



## dtectr (Aug 19, 2011)

I will say, that aside from procedure foibles, to be able to retain that small amount of clean foils, separate & intact, does show some self-discipline.

Remember, the roots of the Greek word from which we obtain, in English, "discipline" & "disciple", means "to teach" or "to learn", depending on your perspective (teacher or student); not "to punish", as we so often apply them. 

You have "learned" & if you continue to learn & apply what you learn, you will become a "disciple" (a "learner" or a "taught one") of this exciting science. You are already well on your way.

Congratulations.
dtectr


----------



## SasaK (Aug 20, 2011)

Thanx dtectr
It means a lot...


----------



## Python (Aug 28, 2011)

Hi everyone.

Can someone please help. I read Hoke's, but i still cant get my gold to precipitate. I get everything right, from getting rid of base metals with nitric acid, then disolving the gold with AR, but then.... Im using Ferrous Sulphate for precipitation. At first, i only adds the ferrous sulphate to the AR solution. It didnt work. then, after reading Hoke, i boiled it, and then when it gets thick, i pour a bit of hydrochloric acid. I did this 3 times, to get rid of nictric acid. then i mix ferrous sulphate with water, and add it to the mix. And i wait.....and wait....and wait. Nothing happens. Can someone please tell me what to try now.

Thank you
Johan


----------



## Geo (Aug 28, 2011)

Python said:


> Hi everyone.
> 
> Can someone please help. I read Hoke's, but i still cant get my gold to precipitate. I get everything right, from getting rid of base metals with nitric acid, then disolving the gold with AR, but then.... Im using Ferrous Sulphate for precipitation. At first, i only adds the ferrous sulphate to the AR solution. It didnt work. then, after reading Hoke, i boiled it, and then when it gets thick, i pour a bit of hydrochloric acid. I did this 3 times, to get rid of nictric acid. then i mix ferrous sulphate with water, and add it to the mix. And i wait.....and wait....and wait. Nothing happens. Can someone please tell me what to try now.
> 
> ...


again. did you test with stannous chloride to assure presence of gold?


----------



## Harold_V (Aug 29, 2011)

What Geo said. I see no mention of testing, to assure you have gold in solution. 

I used ferrous sulfate for the first several months that I refined. It works perfectly well, and exactly as Hoke suggests, assuming you have followed her instructions correctly. If you are unable to precipitate gold, two reasons come to mind. One of them is you have no gold in solution. The other is that you have not eliminated nitric acid, and you may have a huge excess present. That's common with those that are not familiar with its use. Many have the idea that if a little is good, more is better. That is not the case with AR, which should be used sparingly, along with heat, when dissolving values. If you failed to do that, you most likely have used far too much, and have not evaporated enough. 

Begin your search by testing your solution. If you have an excess of nitric present, you may have too much for your stannous chloride to provide a reliable result. Watch the test closely, using a drop of solution in a spot plate cavity, or, in lieu of a spot plate, a white plastic spoon. Add a drop of stannous chloride and watch closely to see if a purple/black display develops, but is quickly lost. If that be the case, it's a sign of excess nitric. If you get a thin result, allow the test to remain for several minutes, then rinse the test with a wash bottle. If you have gold present, you should have a purple stain remaining where the test stood. 

Make sure your stannous is active. Test with a gold standard solution. 

H


----------



## dorki22 (Aug 29, 2011)

Hi SasaK.

I can see on the CPUs name Byte d.o.o. - are you from Croatia? If so can I ask where did you buy your nitric acid? Im from SLO and its VERY expensive here  

Greetings,Simon


----------



## Python (Aug 30, 2011)

Hi.

I just did the stannous chloride test, and it turn very dark purple. i even go buying some urea to assure the nitric acid is eliminate. But as soon as i mix the ferrous sulphate, water and hydrochloric acid, it turns a muddy green colour, and when i throw it into the AR, it stays that way. It dont become clearer after a while. 

Johan


----------



## Python (Aug 30, 2011)

Hi

I just did the test Harold was giving, putting a drop of it on a plastic spoon. It turns purple immediatly, but it faded away after a while. I did the test again with the batch that i treated with urea to remove the nitric acid, and when i put a drop of stannouse chloride on it, there was no reaction. Does this mean there is no trace of gold. Thank you very much for all your help so far.


----------



## Harold_V (Aug 31, 2011)

Python said:


> Hi
> 
> I just did the test Harold was giving, putting a drop of it on a plastic spoon. It turns purple immediatly, but it faded away after a while. I did the test again with the batch that i treated with urea to remove the nitric acid, and when i put a drop of stannouse chloride on it, there was no reaction. Does this mean there is no trace of gold. Thank you very much for all your help so far.


If you added urea, then tested and didn't get a purple reaction, it's most likely the urea bound the nitric acid and permitted the gold in solution to precipitate. If you didn't have much gold, it may not be evident that it happened, but the solution will have clouded up a little. Depending on how fine the gold precipitated, it may take several hours for it to settle. Look closely at the solution and see if you can see a layer that is clear, with a cloudy layer below. If you do, that's the gold settling very slowly. Given enough time (it can take as much as 24 hours), it will all end up on the bottom. 

Unless your solution contained ONLY gold, it won't be clear of color after you have precipitated gold. You can expect it to be anywhere from a light yellow color to a dark green/brown color, depending on what you dissolved along with the gold, so don't let the color of the barren solution make you think nothing has changed. Rely solely on testing---and if you have any doubts about the presence of gold, do a second test using a crystal of ferrous sulfate. A drop of gold solution in a white spoon will grow a thin leaf of gold on the crystal when it is inserted in the drop. If there is no gold present, you won't see much of a change, although the ferrous sulfate crystal will slowly dissolve. 

Harold


----------



## Python (Aug 31, 2011)

Hi. 

Thank you very much for the help. Perhaps i now do something right...or wrong... but there are some things settling on the bottom. But it looks greyish, or black, so i musn't get happy too soon because the gold mud is suppose to be brownish, right? Well, thanks again for all the help.

Kind regards.
Johan


----------



## tmj883 (Aug 31, 2011)

Sorry so late, if you got a yield of 0.075 g/cpu, that is on par with predicted yields for AMD Duron of 0.08 g/cpu. Great job of bench chemistry.


----------



## Python (Sep 3, 2011)

Hi.

Can someone please tell me. I laid hands on a few kg's of ore. I crushed it to a fine dust and want to know if i can treat it with AR like refining e scrap. I know that ore contains very few gold. I processed only a small amount with AR, but cant seem to precipitate anyting. There seems to be very much gold particles in the dust, so i assumed it was fools gold. But i read that Hydrochloric acid will disolve fools gold, so i treat one batch with it, but the next moring, the gold particles was still in the dust. When i treated it with AR, there was a boiling reaction, just like when i treated e waist. But like i said, no precipitation. The stannous chloride test shows a dark purple, but faded away after about 2 minutes. 
Thanks for all the help.

Johan


----------



## butcher (Sep 3, 2011)

Treating ore with aqua regia can be very foolish, but if you concentrated the values and pretreated them properly you could dissolve the values as these then would be mostly gold silver copper some iron and so on.

Treating the ore with acid without understanding what your ore contains can kill you.

If treating ore directly with aqua regia or other acids, you will most likely leach other metals using large amounts of acids at a very high cost and never get any gold the ore may contain.
Did you concentrate the values? Did you roast the ore? Have you assayed the roasted concentrates? Do you know the chemical composition of the ore? This is a whole different ball game and you cannot use the same bat and ball to play it.

stannous can detect very minute amounts of gold in solution, even such small amounts of gold that you can loose all your money chasing after a few grains of the gold in tons of ore, so just because the stannous test did show positive but that does not mean that the leaching process you are trying will work for that ore, or that the ore would not cost you much money for nothing.

The violet color of your test may have gone away if you still had nitric to re-dissolve the gold in purple of cassius test.


----------



## craigmotyka (Jan 30, 2012)

Getting ready to do my first refine i have accumulated 13 pounds of various ceramics. 6 pros 23 486 dx/sx 7 k5 8 pentium double golds other tobshiba double golds 22 cryix type 25 amd duron anthon 4 pounds of regular pentium and 2 pounds of k6 and many types I'm just forgetting ... where should start crush them or not soak pins out or not ive been looking on the forum for like 2 hours for step by step for dummies but i cant find one. right now all the buyers are not really buying so im going to make an attempt at this. I sold off about 30 pounds over the past year and im pretty sure I lost tons of money most of this is free to me some i pay for a few pieces here and there if anyone can post a link or lead me to this information I would be forever greatful


----------



## cnbarr (Jan 30, 2012)

craigmotyka said:


> Getting ready to do my first refine i have accumulated 13 pounds of various ceramics. 6 pros 23 486 dx/sx 7 k5 8 pentium double golds other tobshiba double golds 22 cryix type 25 amd duron anthon 4 pounds of regular pentium and 2 pounds of k6 and many types I'm just forgetting ... where should start crush them or not soak pins out or not ive been looking on the forum for like 2 hours for step by step for dummies but i cant find one. right now all the buyers are not really buying so im going to make an attempt at this. I sold off about 30 pounds over the past year and im pretty sure I lost tons of money most of this is free to me some i pay for a few pieces here and there if anyone can post a link or lead me to this information I would be forever greatful



Samuel has a great video tutorial on the subject
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=12717

good luck,
Chris


----------

