# Noob Disaster or on the Right Track?



## BuggyMan (Sep 16, 2014)

Hi everyone!

My first post... been browsing lots of sites, watching videos, and consulting with a friend on the process now I am reaching out for help from the experts.

Where do I begin?

So... 


--- I started with chip free cell phone boards... soaked in a AP bath for several days...
--- Took the boards out, filtered the gold flakes, etc.
--- Then I created a AR solution heated it up on a hot plate and dissolved the gold...
--- Then a heated up a second AR solution to dissolve some gold off some stubborn boards and scrap pins etc...
--- Next I added the urea to make the acid inert... all looking good... had over 1000 ml of deep green solution afterwards.
--- I broke down the solution into 200 ml beakers... heated it back up and added SMB.
--- SMB reacted nicely and out dropped a nice amount of gold mud.
--- I let it all settle over night, poured off the remaining solution and recombined the gold mud into one beaker...
--- after all was said and done I ended up with about 205 grams of gold mud.

Here is where it gets weird.

--- I fired up 6 grams with a propane torch to a test... well.. 
--- it melted down to 1 gram into a Shiny Black Ball... not the shiny gold I was hoping for.
--- Then I read in a book that I had to rinse the gold mud with ammonia... 
--- I then took a small amount of the mud gold and added it to the ammonia.
--- The ammonia turned bright blue and then I had some brown precipitate left over after filtering it in a coffee filter.

What happened?
Why is the ammonia now blue?
It the brown precipitate left over the purified gold mud?
Should I rinse the rest of my gold mud in ammonia, filter, then fire it to get the 999 gold instead of the shiny black ball?
What was the shiny black ball?




Picture of the Shiny Black Ball:
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/3c9dizmwuxhst37/AABbC-TzOE_3D6UuRmC7GrLBa
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/ne8t2u0u7mg7k6w/AABpXdfGKaZCD22ALWmNtZHLa

Video of the Shiny Black Ball:
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/xdq6pepm9q5rob7/AABBS-JHzMkAcSiCNfSJrhuHa

Picture of the Blue Ammonia under the purified Gold Mud in filter:
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/yevvzidbwh0llo6/AACoLBQbWOwDgvsoZoWc2zaba

Video of the gold dropping out of the heated up deep green solution with SMB:
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/osnglczv4x1lep2/AABtZ5NPuWfSHTnbC9SEKEsBa

Some of the dropped and settled gold mud:
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/iedob92w0kmb9ia/AACINohuIcR-oKPS6YKUlVKDa

Picture of the filtered left over gold mud:
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/aoxwqalytjunmrt/AAAEUxfZ00JjbKmgfiQyhoAIa
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/xjh7po396x9tswb/AABmrxqeh82aX0TiqFmR4QyOa
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/6ol4dl3fftppmdq/AAD-3C8kmrMDh--nWbtkZ0aSa
I really appreciate any advice, tips, or answers to my questions above.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post and browse my photo/video album to help me with this process.

[EDITED 10:22PM CT: Album Link removed]


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## Long Shot (Sep 16, 2014)

You joined the forum today. I don't think you are within your bounds to do all of this and THEN ask for help. Everybody here will expect you to have done your homework and that can't be done by watching YouTube videos. Slow down and study. I have been a member here since April of this year and still do not have the confidence to do what you have done. It is not as simple as you have been led to believe. I think your error is "putting stubborn boards in AR" and mixing the whole lot up. It would account for the green - copper. Search Harold_V for washing techniques. Download and read the vast amount of FREE information from experts on this site then ask your questions. Sorry to be harsh but you you need to slow down and learn to walk before you attempt to run.


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## BuggyMan (Sep 16, 2014)

I've been working on this since June. Studying through the process.


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## butcher (Sep 16, 2014)

BuggyMan,
My opinion, you need to begin studying the forum and learn how it is done.

At this point you seem to think this is a simple process, learning recovery and refining is much more than following a simple process. or instructions on a video.

Begin with study of the safety section and pay close attention to dealing with waste.
Start with Hoke's books to learn the basic principles.
Study the forum.

Doing the getting acquainted experiments found in Hoke's book will help you understand better what happens with different metals in acids, this will be very valuable latter, her book will help you understand how to test for metals in solutions, and will help you learn how to recover your values before attempting to refine them.

Starting off learning on a more simpler material like memory fingers, will help you understand the different processes to recover the gold, and learn the processes to refine the gold, without many of the problems you will encounter in other types of scrap, learning to recover gold and refine it will give you a better idea of what to expect when you do begin working with other scrap and its related problems.

Browsing lots of sites, watching videos, and consulting with a friend on the process and jumping in head first has shown you is not as easy as you think it to be, now spend the time to learn to do it right.


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## BuggyMan (Sep 16, 2014)

I appreciate the advise to study up more but I thought that asking questions was the way to learn from others on a forum subtitled "helping one another" in the board "Help Needed."

Not really a warm welcome... but I should have figured I'd get this being it's my first post.


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## Geo (Sep 16, 2014)

It's hard to jump in when your just in the crawling stage. It took me almost six months of study before I was confident enough to dissolve the first foils and precipitate the gold. Also, I was a member here for around a year before I tried the AR process. Baby steps. You would not be the first to come here thinking you have it all worked out and hoping someone will say " wow, you have the knowledge to do it all on your own". The way you post makes it seem you want confirmation, but no one here would give you their approval because they know nothing about you. Does your chemistry background include a junior chemistry set when you were a child and that's it? I wouldn't tell you it's ok to try a process that could ruin your health or someone close to you unless I knew that you knew what you were doing. 

My advice, forget youtube, especially if it's mine.


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## Claudie (Sep 16, 2014)

You should not be working with Nitric inside of a garage or any other building, the consequences can be deadly, even with a respirator. You should never work with any refining chemicals inside without a fume hood, and even then not inside a dwelling. 
Were those red fumes coming out of the beaker?
The photos of the mud do not look at all like Gold. I'm sure there is some Gold in there somewhere, but you are going to have to do some studying to figure out how to get it back out. 
How much starting material did you have? 200+ grams of Gold is a lot of Gold from cell phone boards, I'm assuming you must have had thousands of phones to expect anywhere near that amount. 

EDIT: Clarification


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## Geo (Sep 16, 2014)

I have to ask, 205g of gold mud. You think you had almost 7 OZT of gold from cellphone boards. Maybe if you had several thousand pounds of bare boards being most of the gold in a phone is in the components.
How many phone boards did you process.


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## mls26cwru (Sep 16, 2014)

BuggyMan said:


> I appreciate the advise to study up more but I thought that asking questions was the way to learn from others on a forum subtitled "helping one another" in the board "Help Needed."
> 
> Not really a warm welcome... but I should have figured I'd get this being it's my first post.



Butcher IS giving you the best advice he can. What you have done is a 'noob disaster.' Don't feel bad, and don't take that as a condescending statement... even the most experienced here still run into problems that stump them. The truth of the matter is that what you have on your hands now is a very complex problem that has no simple answer that may take a good bit of trial and error to figure out. 

The only way that you are going to be able to find your answers is by starting at the beginning with easier recovery/refining experiments (for what it is worth, starting with cell phone boards extremely difficult). Work through the easier things like gold fingers and work your way up through more complex methods and in doing such you will expand your knowledge and eventually find ways to solve the problems you have with your current experiment.

And one last bit of useful info... Unless you were studying Hoke's and/or CW Ammen's books in addition to studying on this forum, you are probably not getting good advice. The VAST majority of youtube videos and websites out there are wrong/misinformation/leave info out.

Good luck in your future refining and hope you will be posting plenty of pics of pretty gold buttons!

Mike


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## BuggyMan (Sep 17, 2014)

Thank you to everyone for the tips. Sincerely. 

It was about 200 Nokia 5165 boards and a bunch of ram fingers. 

I'll look up those authors and keep digging into these forums. 

After looking more info to forums, I have a strong feeling all that I thought was Gold Mud is actually copper or something. The blue ammonia is the tell. 

That Shiny Black Ball is probably just copper.


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## Claudie (Sep 17, 2014)

Don't throw the black ball away, or anything else. What Gold was there, is still there. You just need to figure out how to get it out.


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## MarcoP (Sep 17, 2014)

My luck was not having much escrap to start with, but like you I've followed simple instructions and made a big mess. Then I've found dozens of all-around-knowledged people in this forum and I've learned that many so important details were left out. Since then I've learned how to deal with wastes (where some of my PMs went), safety handlings and measures and more economical and ecological recovery and refining processes. For months I went through hundreds, if not thousands of posts and book pages while holding up on my new escrape, still waiting to be processed. Currently I felt confident in recovering PMs from leftovers of past mistakes and so far it's going great!

Please, you need to understand that everyone here wants you to learn but to be safe first. Those are not harsh comments, by taking your time to read you will shortly understand. On the mean time hold up your mess and your new escrap, they wont go anywhere.

The following link should be your next stop and it will keep you busy for a while: http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=20219


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## solar_plasma (Sep 17, 2014)

I don't know, how much a bunch is, but 200 cell phone boards plus some RAM sound like 1-2 g. So, do not throw anything away until you have read all of the advised material. Already after having read Hoke, studied the forum guide, safety and waste, you will understand people's reaction on your post, probably you will react in the same way further on and you will be able to ask good questions, that can be answered without writing a new book.

Then you will be able to process, what you have processed, only having 100-200ml of waste solution and reusable AP, instead of 1000ml waste plus probably dirty, maybe fouled, AP. Without losing gold by cementation to copper within the boards. Without the risk to have undetected, not precipitated gold in solution. Without having a lot of base metals in solution and without co-precipitating a lot of copper. And without wasting chemicals.

And hey, this IS the "warm welcome" :lol:


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## bswartzwelder (Sep 17, 2014)

Some of the greatest pieces of advice anyone ever gave me was to put everything down and wait until I had the background knowledge to know what I was doing, what to expect, and what not to expect. Another piece of extremely good advice it to test. I will not go outside with the intention of working with gold WITHOUT taking my bottles of Auric Chloride (gold chloride) and Stannous Chloride testing solution. 

Sit back and be prepared to do a LOAD of reading. Even if the subject line on a post doesn't sound like something you need to know, or something you might be doing, at least skim through the posts. Many times someone will add a little tidbit of information which doesn't apply to the original post, but is worth its weight in gold (so to speak). 

I have often wondered how the big time refiners dealt with solder on circuit boards. It is my assumption they grind the boards into a fine powder and remove the lead and tin chemically, but I'm not sure.


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## g_axelsson (Sep 17, 2014)

The big time refineries doesn't deal with electronic scrap in a wet process, they melt it all together, tin and lead ends up in the slag and is leached in a separate step while the precious metals follows the molten copper.

Göran


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## Geo (Sep 17, 2014)

A collector metal or scavenger, usually lead, is added by weight ratio with the charge and heated at very high temps in a cupel. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupellation This was used as a refining process and still is.


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## BuggyMan (Sep 17, 2014)

Thanks to everyone's advice I'm doing the homework now more than ever. Thank you to pointing our Hokes book and for the great posts throughout this forum!

So I'm trying to determine just what I've got in this brown mud. 

Based on:


> Copper compounds should dissolve in ammonia hydroxide (blue solution) http://www.goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=8670#p214925



The beaker on the left is 150 ml of Ammonia with about a half a gram of the brown mud. Totally dissolved into the Ammonia it turned into a Deep Blue Solution
The beaker on the right is a 100 ml of Muriatic and 50 ml of Hydrogen Peroxide with about a half a gram of the brown mud. The brown mud totally dissolved into the AP solution turning it Greenish Yellow

I'm lead to believe, based on these reactions that the brown mud is copper... but I'm not sure.

I have reviewed this link http://goldrefiningforum.com/~goldrefi/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=562 to get a better understanding on the various reactions. 

Would someone kindly provide some insight as to why my brown mud is reacting this way to each of the solutions?






Image URL (if it doesn't show up: https://www.dropbox.com/sc/l3felvgytdbyya0/AACc4RRY5pJW_K7eYRLguH3Va)

I plan on doing this to a small amount of the brown mud starting at number 5 http://www.goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=1900&p=16039#p16039

Many thanks!


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## Claudie (Sep 17, 2014)

What was the ration of acid to Hydrogen Peroxide in the second beaker? 
Now would be a great time for you to test with Stannous Chloride.

EDIT: I just looked at the photo again and noticed the ratio on the note. What strength was the Peroxide?


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## BuggyMan (Sep 17, 2014)

It's 3%

So... would I just take a drop of the AP then put a drop of stanus on it?





Direct image link: https://www.dropbox.com/sc/inmv4jguukgaupa/AAChGkzQhbuEQ1XbU8FNLfUoa


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## Geo (Sep 17, 2014)

When you raise the PH above the point that there's not enough acid in solution to hold the metal, it will precipitate out as an oxide or hydroxide (I think). The ammonium hydroxide will put the oxides back into solution. In other words, if you add enough base, all the metal will precipitate out of solution.


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## Claudie (Sep 17, 2014)

Follow this link: http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=5271&p=45030#p45030


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## BuggyMan (Sep 17, 2014)

Forgive my ignorance here but could you translate that into general terms? What does that mean I have done?


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## BuggyMan (Sep 17, 2014)

Before/After the Stannous test...






Direct image url https://www.dropbox.com/sc/muhdjxgsfm8712n/AADLn0KkAWZ4dwA6HS9l4c2Qa


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## Claudie (Sep 17, 2014)

I noticed on the label of the Muriatic acid, it says "90% lower fumes then standard Muriatic Acid". You might read the label and see what else is in there and what concentration it is. That may or may not affect the process.


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## Claudie (Sep 17, 2014)

When you have an acidic solution with metals dissolved in it, and you raise the PH high enough, to maybe 12 or so, all of the metals will precipitate out of the solution. I think clean water has a PH of around 7, Ammonia is around 11.5, and 32% Muriatic acid is -1. 

http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_ideas/Chem_AcidsBasespHScale.shtml


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## Pantherlikher (Sep 17, 2014)

Greetings BuggyMan, and welcome in.

You seem to have the gold bug like the rest of us.
Good and bad that is. Bad because it leads to impatience. Gotta find out now, before learning.
It really blows gold dust outa the crucible.

You dove in head first like every one of us have and are still in that diving mode.
Back the truck up and think about this...

You started with depopulated cell phone boards...and some fingers.
How did you depopulate and how did you get rid of solder that migrated into the cell phone boards?
If everything went into your AP(Acid/peroxide) mix, your gold and everything else pretty much dissolved and is hiding somewhere.

Go back and search for AP and study why we barely use any peroxide and add O2 and how it's added.
Reading through just that line of postings will answer most of your current questions. Allot of posts start out with a mess and solutions as to what to do and why. You need to learn the why so you can learn how to fix what you did.

The posts so far trying to help you have been addressing your next questions but not addressing the process itself on how you got there.
Confusing me enough to step back and rethink. 

You have testing solution which is great. Use it and see the reactions of your solutions. Don't worry what it means what right now. 
Look at it as your first experiment on your path to learning how and why.

For now, concentrate on reading AP. Your solutions, you can put on low heat and evaporate down the volume. Do NOT boil... Boiling creates loss. And please make sure you control the fumes so everyone around is safe. 

Learn this and your answers will make cents...literally in the long run.

B.S.
Good luck


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## BuggyMan (Sep 18, 2014)

When I got to 9 from this post http://www.goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=1900&p=16039#p16039

No amount of boiling would take out the discoloration. I was left with a much smaller amount of black pricipitant... No longer the brown mud... And just black muriatic solution.


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## solar_plasma (Sep 18, 2014)

Now you are somewhat fishing for the lesser warm welcome. You should consider to stop experimenting without having any clue and only read for some weeks. Impatience is your enemy.


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## BuggyMan (Sep 18, 2014)

Tested all the various solutions and precipitates... No color that would designate gold.


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## BuggyMan (Sep 18, 2014)

You're right Solar. I'll keep reading.


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## BuggyMan (Sep 18, 2014)

Thank you for the greeting Panther and the encouragement!


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## solar_plasma (Sep 18, 2014)

Keep the solutions anyway. You can easily test false positive or false negative in the beginning. Gold can be hidden by excess oxidizers, probably by complexes and by being in a colloidal state. Maybe there are more possibilities. And you need a standard gold solution for your tests to have something to compare with and to control your results.


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## bswartzwelder (Sep 18, 2014)

Good advice PantherLiker about having a standard gold solution.

The Q-Tip which has had a drop of stannous on it is showing a somewhat black color. Mine always show a very black color, but that's because of the concentration I make them. I always test my stannous chloride against a known (store purchased 1%) gold chloride solution. A drop the gold chloride on a Q-Tip and then a drop of my stannous on it and it turns a very deep, dark black. I know my stannous is not made exactly according to the way others make it, but it works very good for me. If I saw a Q-Tip like the one you have, I wouldn't think there was enough gold in the sample to make recovering it practical.

Make a guess as to how much gold you have, and then use a very small excess of chemicals to dissolve it. Let it sit somewhere safe out of doors where it won't be disturbed overnight. By the next day, the gold should be dissolved. Then, test your solution with stannous.

Read, Read, and do some more READING. Excess knowledge will not cause any harm. Excess stupidity can be fatal.


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## solar_plasma (Sep 18, 2014)

bswartzwelder said:


> Good advice PantherLiker about having a standard gold solution.



In order to avoid confusing, you can call me solar or Björn :lol: 

To the OP:
You should read about the usage of a spot plate, it is far more precise. Harold has written a lot about it. You could search his posts for "spot plate" and "purple stain". Many of us use q-tips, too, but if we want to confirm implausible results or if the solution is dark, probably all of us will use the spot plate instead.


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