# First Try with a/p odd outcome



## rickdozier (Jun 8, 2014)

This is my first try with gold recovery and my steps listed below. I used 31% Muratic Acid and 3% Hydrogen Peroxide. The test plated items were 100 gold plated ball head pins. I was not expecting these to actually be Au, but a gold color look or paint. This was just a small test for me to get use to working with these chemicals again and a procedure on handling recovery ect. 

I used 20 ounce soda bottle that had been thoroughly cleaned and dried, tossed in the pins and put enough muratic in to cover the height of the pins, which was a little over an inch. Then I put cap size amounts of peroxide in the mix to get the reaction going. Over the course of a few days I would shake them up well and put another cap size of peroxide in. What was left was just the plastic base of the pins and the a/p. I filtered the liquid several times through a coffee filter and it seemed if there was any gold it was dissolved or to tiny to see with the naked eye. The color of the solution was a dark green so I assumed there was atleast some copper or other types of metals in the liquid.

Next I decided to drop any copper that might be in the solution by putting a stainless still spoon in it. Copper started to precipitate almost immediately and for a few days I would stir the spoon in the solution to knock off the excess copper to the bottom. At the third day I removed the spoon and decanted and cleaned the copper mess, then let it air dry in a mason jar for a couple days. The jar was covered with a few filters.

Finally when I looked into the jar it seemed like there was gold looking clumps embedded in the copper. I have a image below (sorry for the quality). Anyone encountered this before? A gold looking substance embedded within the copper. I have watched several videos and read some articles online but I have not seen this mentioned before. I plan on dissolving it all in muratic/bleach mix to see if I can get any gold to drop with smb. Any comments is appreciated. 

Note: The image was from the 2nd day and was still wet.

My next project is with some RJ45 connectors I got off ebay. 1000 unused connectors for 20 bucks. Took me a week in my spare time using a pick to get them out of the plastic cases. Will see how those come out. Is that a fair price for those. I filled up about 1/4 of a pint size mason jar with them. I know it can be hard to measure how much gold you actually get from plated electronics. I plan on getting a jewelers scale in the next day or two before I begin processing these so I can figure out the cost/benefit of the connectors and will post here as well. I may put them straight into a muratic/bleach bath. But, I will read up more on that before hand.

Also If there is anyone in the Raleigh,NC area that you know that buys recovered gold like this could you let me know. The refineries I found online generally take only melted gold. I really have no idea on where to start and have no means to smelt anything at this time.

Great forum, lots of info!


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## TomVader (Jun 8, 2014)

I can't tell anything from the photo. I think the idea in recovering gold from plated electronics is to NOT dissolve the gold. The idea is to dissolve everything but the gold, and thereby recover it. Try reading the about the AP method on this forum and get a better understanding before you continue. I don't deal with plated electronics myself, but I'm pretty sure you use bleach/peroxide to dissolve the copper ( and isolate the gold). And then acid/ peroxide to refine the recovered gold. It seems like you jumped right to the second step...


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## rickdozier (Jun 8, 2014)

Yeah, that was my first thought that the a/p dissolved the gold, but at the same time this was a unheated mix (Aside the reaction). Thanks for the info I will read up more here.


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## joubjonn (Jun 8, 2014)

I'm going to give you some advise. Don't waste your time and acids on plated material. Especially jewelry plate. It's very very thin. If your going to do plated then use a sulfuric cell. Your going to make a lot of waste acid for very little gold. Their are exceptions to this, like CPU pins or ceramic cpu's or heavy gold plate in mil spec scrap or RAM fingers. AP is acid peroxide. Read up on it on the forum. You want to keep it to just copper/gold material if possible. HCl/Bleach is for gold foils or dust, since HCl alone will not dissolve gold you need an oxidizer like Clorine to do that job. Doesn't work on anything solid, at leased not very well. With AP and gold plate, if it's very thin the AP will not leave nice foils behind but instead it will look like brown mud. The heavier the plate the more intact the foil will remain once the base metal is dissolved


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## solar_plasma (Jun 9, 2014)

I f you decide to use copper chloride leach on pins again, I'd like to give you some advices: 

cut off all non plated stuff, only use the plated parts - this will save acid and time

save low grade plated parts for later experiments - maybe you will find it best to use them in the sulfuric cell or you want to use butcher's very advanced methods to squeeze the last usability and re-usability out of old contaminated copper chloride leach.

use air instead of H2O2, air works fine, is cheap available, it does not add extra liquid and does not tend to dissolve your gold as much as H2O2

and of course, read everything you find about "AP" and "CuCl2" over and over again


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## Pantherlikher (Jun 9, 2014)

As the others have encouraged, read, read, and read some more.
That being said:

The pins you you started with and he amount will never be seen if there is gold, probably is but not enough to see let alone measure.
The RJ45 jacks are gold plated but unless you use a cell as Solar suggested and processed a couple few pounds, again not enough gold to be worth the effort. Net even to experiment on. To get your $20 out of them, you would have to repackage and sell.

Find and read Hoke's book to get familiar with how things work, including safety. Her original book is from the early 1900's and says to taste...NEVER taste anything. But it will give you insight on how acids and metals react. 

AP on the forum is widely explained here so again, read. 
Peroxide mixed with acid will dissolve gold but is not strong enough to be worth using. It is added to HCL to begin the process of dissolving and thus removing the copper base under anything plated, like "Ram Fingers". Some gold will dissolve until the solution is pregnant with copper which replaces any dissolved gold which drops out as a brown "mud".

Most stuff that looks like gold, could very well contain gold. Unfortunately, overlooked is the reason to use gold and that can determine how much there is. Example is the gold color on the stick pins are for show color only so it is only enough to look like gold. The RCA jacks are also for show but also for electrical contact so will have more gold/ inch but still not enough to recover by itself.

A side note:
For recovering PMs, it is a poor investment to get your material from "Fleabay". It is way over priced for it's content.

Good luck learning and hope you find your path

B.S.


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## solar_plasma (Jun 9, 2014)

If the RJ45 are fully plated with a more dark yellow color and  if their weight is about 100g you can expect a half gram of gold.


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## joubjonn (Jun 9, 2014)

Also, I would get away from using plastic bottles or old jars and go with Pyrex. Like Pyrex measuring cups. That's what i use. They are thick, hard to break and take heat. And they pour well. Cheap to buy. 

And I actually now prefer a sulfuric cell to acid dissolve for plated material. It's a bit more fun. I do not like the dangerous sulfuric acid but as long as your careful with it and have a good system it works. And I can use HCl/bleach to get the gold in solution instead of AR. But now that I'm getting better with AR I might use that next time.


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## rickdozier (Jun 9, 2014)

Hey thanks for the replies and I will read up more for sure. This is more hobby than investment at this time, that is why I bought a few things off ebay. I used the jars and a plastic bottle as it was pretty cheap to test out with. But, I am going to get some pyrex in the future before I continue with any more chemical mixes. They did the job I wanted them to do and I can reuse the leftover chemicals again.

Thanks again for the info!


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## FrugalRefiner (Jun 9, 2014)

joubjonn said:


> Also, I would get away from using plastic bottles or old jars and go with Pyrex. Like Pyrex measuring cups. That's what i use. They are thick, hard to break and take heat. And they pour well. Cheap to buy.


Be careful with Pyrex measuring cups. They _are_ thick, so they can take a pretty good whack without breaking, and the spout is convenient; good qualities for measuring cups. But you shouldn't heat them. They're not made for that. Glass is a poor conductor of heat, so when you heat thick glass, it heats unevenly and that can create stress between the hot parts and the cooler parts, which can cause it to fail. Laboratory glassware is thin for a reason, as it lessens these internal stresses. Because it's thinner, you have to be more careful with it.

Dave


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## joubjonn (Jun 10, 2014)

When I heat I only go to 120F and no more. I got lots of time. Should of mentioned that.


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## goldsilverpro (Jun 10, 2014)

Rick,

I don't understand your reasoning for dropping the copper. In any case, it was the wrong thing to do. Any dissolved gold would drop along with the copper.


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## rickdozier (Jun 10, 2014)

goldsilverpro said:


> Rick,
> 
> I don't understand your reasoning for dropping the copper. In any case, it was the wrong thing to do. Any dissolved gold would drop along with the copper.



I did not realize the steel would drop gold as well. But, I learned my lesson


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## goldsilverpro (Jun 10, 2014)

Rick,

In order to see what's happening, you must see how it relates to the electromotive (or, reactivity) series. You don't need to understand WHY, you just need to know that it does happen and be happy that there are charts available that will guide you.

There are many listings of the electromotive series on the internet. This one is quite incomplete but it does list the common metals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactivity_series

The rule is that, any metal in solid metallic form will cement (precipitate) from a solution any dissolved metal below it in the chart. You added stainless steel, which is essentially iron (Fe). This will cement (at least in an HCl solution) any and all dissolved metals below Fe in the chart. This would include both copper (Cu) and gold (Au). The metals essentially trade places. Some iron dissolves and the Cu and Au (and anything else below Fe in the chart) will precipitate out together as metal powders.

Beware that some of these published charts are written in reverse order.


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## rickdozier (Jun 10, 2014)

I see, thank you for the link. A lot of help on these forums and tons of information. 
Thanks for all the help!


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## rickdozier (Jun 12, 2014)

I figured I would post an update. From 1000 Rj45 ends I ended up with 129.5 grams of plated connectors. I have another 1k to go through so it will be another week or so till I have another update. I will post updates as I go through this process at least for the numerical values if anyone else searches this forum on rj45 ends. I am going to stick with the chemical method for now. I only have but so much room and time, so I might as well use what I have then move on to other methods. I downloaded that book and is a great read. Thanks all.

-Rick


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## g_axelsson (Jun 23, 2014)

I've seen many different RJ45 connectors, some seems to be fully plated while some newer ones seems to be plated only at the edges, a lot less surface area.
What kind of connectors do you have?

Göran


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## kjavanb123 (Oct 20, 2014)

g_axelsson said:


> I've seen many different RJ45 connectors, some seems to be fully plated while some newer ones seems to be plated only at the edges, a lot less surface area.
> What kind of connectors do you have?
> 
> Göran



Hi,

This is an old topic, but I have been removing RJ45 jacks and cables from 1600lbs of boards to try with AP or cyanide and report weight and yield, I came accross the following articles that gives some details on gold plating on RJ45 connectors and jacks,

http://www.rj45s.com/site/mobile?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rj45s.com%2FGold_Plating_Problems.html#2895

Best regards
Kevin


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## Geo (Oct 20, 2014)

kjavanb123 said:


> g_axelsson said:
> 
> 
> > I've seen many different RJ45 connectors, some seems to be fully plated while some newer ones seems to be plated only at the edges, a lot less surface area.
> ...



Link is broken.


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## kjavanb123 (Oct 21, 2014)

Hi,

I think that link was opened in my mobile phone so I copy and paste the paragraph that talks about gold standard on RJ45 jack and cables as following;



> WHAT THE SPECIFICATIONS CALL FOR
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Best regards,
Kevin


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## patnor1011 (Oct 22, 2014)

You used *way too much* peroxide, it dissolved your gold. No question about that.
I make my AP from 4 liter of HCl and 0.1 liter of peroxide. That is like 40:1 ratio and it is more than enough, it never failed me. I never add more peroxide during process as it is pointless - it only dissolve gold in solution. Peroxide is used only to start process and if it look that process stopped use fish tank aerator or cover bucket tight and shake well (I do not recommend this as it has its own set of challenges). Aerator cost less than 10$.


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