# Making 1 gallon of nitric acid from 1lb Sodium Nitrate



## firedan525 (Apr 29, 2007)

I was searching EBAY's chemical sellers and I came across this.
Quote;
(Here is a 1 pound batch of sodium nitrate. You can make either nitric acid or aqua regia. You can make 2 batches of Aqua Regia or about 1 gallon of nitric acid. I tell how to make the nitric acid on my free help page ) End quote.

Is this really possible and would it be good enough to dissolve silver out of gold & silver mix shot when refining karat gold?


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## lazersteve (Apr 29, 2007)

Dan,

If you follow my recipie for nitric acid you won't have any problems dissolving inquarted gold (25% gold / 75% silver).

Here's the link to the recipie:

http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=2572&highlight=#2572

I'm pretty certain you won't get any where near a gallon of nitric out of a pound of sodium nitrate.

If you need some help just post a question.

Steve


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## firedan525 (Apr 29, 2007)

Thanks steve.


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## firedan525 (Apr 29, 2007)

After dropping both gold & silver from the 50/50 nitric can you neutilize it w/ baking soda?


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## lazersteve (Apr 29, 2007)

Dan,

The nitric will dissolve the silver, the gold will remain in the bottom as a fine powder. Here's my tutorial on the process:

http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=106

After this reaction is done the silver will be in the solution as




silver nitrate



. You can drop the silver out of the liquid after you pour it off of the gold using a small sheet or buss bar of copper. The tutorial shows you how to turn it into silver chloride using table salt, since making the video GSP (Chris) and Harold have recommended NOT making the silver chloride as shown in the last part of the tutorial, but instead using solid copper (not wire) as listed above. You'll end up with a very nice blue copper nitrate solution. When you get to this point make a new post and we'll go over the proper disposal process for the copper nitrate. If you do this properly the solution won't have any nitric acid left in it to neutralize. I'll even show you how to turn it back into nitric acid again for reuse! 8) :wink: 

Have fun and be safe,

Steve


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