# I wanted gold powder and I got some sort of tan crap instead



## skorpyun812 (May 13, 2013)

These site is so extensive I have no idea where to properly post this so I figured this would be a good place to start. I apologize in advance for all the mistakes I will make.

First off, I'm a total newb to this forum and a total newb to refining/recovering gold. I never studied chemistry (only astronomy) and recently I found myself in the unemployment line, (the trend of Obama's America)
I had a bunch of old cell phones and still have some old computer boards and need to pay my bills, hence the reason I tried any of this and the reason I'm here crying about it now.

I used 210 ml HCL 31.45%﻿ (Muriatic Acid) and about 75 ml Nitric Acid 69.5% (this was a mistake, I overpoured a bit.), just enough to submerge my materials, (I took care to try and remove as many foreign metals as possible) I used a hot plate on low setting for the first 10-15 min. Once it started to boil a bit, I shut the hotplate off and let it sit overnight. Next day, I poured off my aqua regia from my jar into a large plastic water bottle using a coffee filter and a funnel. I sprayed the inside walls of the jar with charcoal filtered tap water using a typical spray bottle. I then added some Sodium metabisulFITE (not FATE) and noticed a tan colored powder begin to drop out of the liquid. The liquid had turned from a very dark aqua color, to black. At first, I thought the color of the liquid was playing tricks on my eyes so, I tried straining out this tan colored powder using another coffee filter﻿ and noticed this tan colored slurry was sticking to the bottom of the water bottle, I filled the bottle with more of my filtered tap water and the color changed from tan to a greyish white. This was my very first time ever trying this and so the few questions I have is, #1 What could﻿ this grey/white powder be? #2 What did I do wrong? (I suspect it was the water because it wasn't distilled) #3 I still have all my liquids and powders, is there anything I can do to recover any possible gold?

Thank you in advance


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## g_axelsson (May 13, 2013)

Did you add any sulphuric acid to your solution before final filtering and SMB treatment?

As I understand it when SMB is mixed with HCL we get sulphuric acid and SO2. If you have lead chloride it is converted into lead sulphate, a white powder. In that case the gold is probably mixed within the tan powder.
What does stannous testing tell you, any gold left in solution?
My suggestion (been in this situation myself a couple of times) is to redissolve the gold, filter and then drop it again. It will work a lot better the second time around.

Another posibility is that you had a lot of copper in solution. SMB could precipitate copper chloride from dirty solutions. This could be fixed by washing the powder in HCl which dissolves the copper chloride. It's happened to me once or twice, probably when I tried to drop gold from dirty solutions with very little HCl in it.

These are some speculations so don't rush away and test it (except for the stannous test), wait for some other comments. If I'm wrong or giving bad advice I'm sure someone will chime in and tell us that.
The gold is sitting there and waiting for you.

:mrgreen: 

Oh, I just realized you are new here. Welcome!
Refining gold isn't a get rich quick scheme, it takes a lot of studying, especially the security section. Others than me is so much better on explaining the basics... read this thread, it contains a lot of introduction material and advices.
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=18307&view=unread#unread

Best advice for getting money from e-scrap, sell it on eBay. It pays the most, is easiest and the dangers are minimal.

Göran


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## skorpyun812 (May 13, 2013)

Thank you for your insight. I'm about 30 pages into Hoke's book so I still have yet to finish reading that. I don't quite know what stannous testing is but I plan to read and educate myself to make sure I do that correctly. I plan to continue recovering gold from tech waste because I study astronomy and I realize what a gift gold is to the world. Without stars, there would be no gold on earth. Our own sun, while not in the correct phase to contain gold just yet, will one day explode and spread it's gold contents throughout the universe. But I digress, I only recently decided to do this to try to help pay my rent for now and will continue to recover gold from tech waste a.k.a. "e waste" in my spare time. I realize the dangers involved and in know way view this as a get rich quick practice. I'm in this for the long haul and whatever endeavors may result in the future, will play out when the times are right. Until then I will keep working like everyone else. 

I read a lot of forums and watched several videos before I even got started. I read today that the chlorine added by treatment facilities may have turned my gold powder into silver chloride. This makes sense, as I said the powder changed from tan to very pale grey when charcoal filtered tap water was added. But then I researched my water filter and found that charcoal actually removes chlorine so I'm doubtful this is silver chloride with this new knowledge. So now I wonder if I introduced an element of carbon that may have affected it. 

Until this post receives more critique, I will stick with your advice and perform a stannous test.


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## skorpyun812 (May 13, 2013)

Oh I forgot to mention, the answer to your question is no, I did not add any sulfiric acid. I tried to keep it as simple as possible. 

210 ml HCl (31.45%)
75 ml HNO3 (69.5%)
No H2O
16 hrs of process
decanted and filtered aqua regia (very dark aqua color)
through typical coffee filter into second container
precipitated with about 2 Tablespoons of SMB 
Tan powder dropped
Problem began.


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## Claudie (May 13, 2013)

If you are doing this to pay the rent, I hope you have a very understanding landlord :|

EDIT:
That comment probably didn't sound too encouraging. Refining Gold or any other precious metals from electronic scrap is not as profitable as many might think. It can be a lot of fun as a hobby, but unless you are working on a very large scale, I doubt you will see enough profits to pay the rent and other bills. Gold can be spread out extremely thin. Just because you can see a large area that is covered with Gold, doesn't mean that you will even be able to see that same Gold once you remove it and clump it together into one bead. Keep reading and search the forum for types of scrap that have the highest yields. There is a lot of information on this forum, it can take a while to absorb it all. Be patient, read how others are doing things, and please read the safety section, and never ever do this in your home, the fumes can be deadly.


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## Geo (May 13, 2013)

tan powder from aqua regia usually is a good thing as thats what gold will look like. that change in the solution when you diluted it was probably silver chloride along with a couple other white salts. this is not something you will learn in time to pay your bills. try unemployment if you cant find work. that will give you time to study so you know what your doing and not harm yourself or the family.


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## AndyWilliams (May 13, 2013)

skorpyun812 said:


> I read today that the chlorine added by treatment facilities may have turned my gold powder into silver chloride.



Gold to silver? Let me know when you get it going in the opposite direction!!

Welcome to the forum!


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## skorpyun812 (May 14, 2013)

I'm not completely depending on this venture to pay my rent. LOL. I have other sources of revenue coming in like, unemployment, car repair side jobs plus my gf works but it's just barely enough. I plan to continue on with this as a hobby even after I've gained new employment.

So today, I took some very small particles of my clumpy powder and tested to see what would happen in HNO3 and HCl. 
HNO3 - dissolved quickly and completely turning my powder into a reddish brown and turned acid blue
HCl - dissolved slowly but, completely turning my powder black. No color changes in acid.

It's really hard to find tin powder so I'm off to Menards to look for a high tin solder. I found one that is lead free 95/5 - tin/antimony. If it truly is 95% tin, I'll pick it up, come home and check this forum before I go outside and make my stannous chloride solution. If I see no objections, warnings or concerns, I will proceed with a stannous test and post the results.

And now that I see the upload attachment tab, I'll try to upload some pics of this powder and my stannous test.

Thanks again for everybody's help. Maybe I found a cure for cancer and I just don't know it. LOL....probably not


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## kkmonte (May 14, 2013)

Yes you can use the 95/5 tin solder, people use it on here all the time. Another thing people use are the tin fishing weights from walmart.


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## Geo (May 14, 2013)

you cant test powders with stannous but you can test solutions. dissolve a small sample of the powder in hcl and bleach. a few drops of hcl and a few drops of bleach. test the solution that comes from this test. then test all the other solutions you have.


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## skorpyun812 (May 14, 2013)

ok so I made my stannous chloride using 2 grams of 95% tin solder and 30 ml of HCl. I found this recipe on goldnscrap.com


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## skorpyun812 (May 14, 2013)




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## skorpyun812 (May 14, 2013)

Geo said:


> you cant test powders with stannous but you can test solutions. dissolve a small sample of the powder in hcl and bleach. a few drops of hcl and a few drops of bleach. test the solution that comes from this test. then test all the other solutions you have.



I will try this tomorrow and post the results.


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## butcher (May 15, 2013)

Do the white powders dissolve into HCl, if so you most likely have a copper I powder, which will dissolve into copper II solution, if there is little copper in solution dilute it can look blue more concentrated green and saturated to the point of going back into a copper I chloride become a very dark brown solution.

When you dissolve all kinds of junk in aqua regia, you can expect to get all kinds of junk.


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## Pantherlikher (May 15, 2013)

Hey ya'll and welcome to the best forum for what you desire to learn.

First and foremost...
Please, please safely store everything you've done so far and stop wasting time and maybe losing what you seek as a final product.
Now...
Finish reading Hoke's book..completely and then reread the parts of interest and safety. 
Hopefully you are NOT doing this in your apartment. At all. Your health, your Girl's health, the health of anyone near as well as everything in the apartment is at risk of perminent harm. 
Don't take that risk. Accidents don't happen... Carelessness creates accidents.
And any "accident" in this area is disasterous.
The fumes as well as acids are caustic and will destroy! without remorse or pitty.

Read the book and read through the forum on the mess you created and what to do to fix it. Putting whole circuit boards in AR is a nasty mess...
Been there and most of us have done that. 

It takes alot of learning to collect and refine PMs properly so that it becomes an enjoyable hobby with nice benefits.

B.S. Good luck

Never play in traffic blind folded... Leads to nasty messes...


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## skorpyun812 (May 15, 2013)

butcher said:


> Do the white powders dissolve into HCl, if so you most likely have a copper I powder, which will dissolve into copper II solution, if there is little copper in solution dilute it can look blue more concentrated green and saturated to the point of going back into a copper I chloride become a very dark brown solution.
> 
> When you dissolve all kinds of junk in aqua regia, you can expect to get all kinds of junk.




Yes, they dissolve in both HCl and HNO3 (not mixed, by themselves I mean) 

Junk is the key word here. what I did was take a bunch of scrap cell phones, broke them down into small pieces removing as much foreign metals as possible and then tosses the boards in. I wonder if there was just too much solder, copper and other JUNK that screwed up my result. The AR turned this crazy green/yellow color but so dark that it looks black and it's not a clear solution. I'm not sure what I did wrong but Stannous testing has yielded discouraging results. I'm ready to dilute, neutralize and dispose. Earlier today, I took some small portions of "fingers" (maybe .1 grams) and tested it in 20 ml of AR. The AR turned yellow (encouraging) and for poops and giggles I tried to precipitate that 20 ml to see if I could get any colors in the liquid. Unfortunately, after diluting until the sauce was clear, i saw no gold glitter at all.  But I suspect there was not enough to precipitate anyway. Regardless, the point of this test was to see if I could get YELLOW chloroauric acid instead of the blackish murky stuff I got with the cell phones. 

It's safe to say, I think there is just too much junk in the mix to recover anything of value. This was my first attempt and I learned a lot from my failure, which is good. I will continue to refine my techniques with Aqua Regia periodically but for now, I'm going to stick with a simpler (and cheaper) HCl/H2O2 method and just strip it off, clean it with HNO3, neutralize and wash. Thanks for everyone's help. I will check back daily to see if any new ideas come up. 

And please, understand as a former mechanic, I know all about safety. My setup consists of a full face mask, 9 mil nitrile gloves, respirator, apron and plenty of ventilation in the safety of my detached garage. I apologize if anyone assumed I was cooking in the kitchen of my apartment, but the truth is we rent a house with a 1 car attached garage and a 2 car detached garage on 2 acres of land. I know there are plenty of stupid people out there just waiting to spend tax dollars for EMT services, but I am not one of them. I'm just new, not dumb.


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## butcher (May 15, 2013)

Colors of solutions can be somewhat of indicators as to what may be in solution, but the colors are no guarantee, example copper can look blue or green in solution, but iron can also give a green color in solution, gold chloride can give a yellow color to a solution, but iron can also give a yellow color looking like gold in solution, so if we cannot go by color how do we determine what we may have, one thing knowing what went into solution gives us a clue, but even that is not always the best way to determine, testing is the best way, we can test for metals in solution when we need to determine what we actually have in solution.

When you dissolve everything into solution, especially electronic scrap, we can really make a mess, the boards can have dirt, oils, organic compounds, epoxy glues, and other unwanted materials.
they will also contain other troublesome metals, tin, lead, aluminum, iron...

we can dissolve these metals together and the solution can contain a mix of these metals, competing for a place in the solution, the metals higher in the reactivity series of metals will take priority in the solution, shoving other metals out of solution, like gold, but even then some gold may stay in solution as a reduced gold colloid, this is a real problem and a big reason we can loose a lot of value in solutions, and without a way to test for the colloidal gold we may not know how much gold we have lost, or left in a solution we dump into our waste bucket, the gold can also plate back out of solution onto any remaining metals like copper, with circuit boards the copper can be under solder mask, or even in layers between the fiber glass, much or your gold could plate back out into these hidden areas where it is very difficult for acids to reach, some metals do not go into solution very well and can precipitate as chlorides like lead and silver, if the solution is saturated with metals and acids are consumed other metals can also precipitate out in the sludge, organics oils and other trash can hold metals in solution also making it harder to precipitate them when we wish.

we can keep describing the problems caused with trying to dissolve everything in aqua regia or other solution, but the one thing we need to understand is it just makes a big mess and we lose our values.

Do you have any gold you could recover from this mess, maybe, maybe not, will you lose value in this, yes, can you recover some of the value maybe, How, by understanding Hoke book is a good start, and studying the forum, what this can also do besides helping you understand this mess is to understand how not to get into these types of messes when you do not have to.


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## skorpyun812 (May 17, 2013)

Geo said:


> you cant test powders with stannous but you can test solutions. dissolve a small sample of the powder in hcl and bleach. a few drops of hcl and a few drops of bleach. test the solution that comes from this test. then test all the other solutions you have.



So I did what you said and performed a stannous test on the solution that was formed from the powder, bleach and HCl. Stannous tests negative. My Q-tip turns white however, I've been screwing around with the bottle full of black stuff, adding SMB in small amounts every day for the past few days and I've noticed somewhat appear to be, gold flakes and stalacmites sitting on top of the white powder. Is it gold? Won't know for sure until material stops dropping out of the solution. Once it does, I will neutralize, dilute and extract both the powder and the flakes. Knowing already that this mystery powder will dissolve in HCl, I will run the material through some HCl and see if the gold flakes stick around. If they do, I will run it one more time through HNO3 and see if it still continues to exist.


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## skorpyun812 (May 17, 2013)

Update - the flakes and stalacmites dissolved very easily when I started swirling my containers around. So, given up all hope for recovery, I started rinsing down, pouring off and whatnot. The water began to turn a brown color but not dark enough to be gold, however, I continued to rinse and pour off over and over and over, getting darker and darker until I noticed some very heavy and rather large granules of brown sand. (Could this be? Has it been hiding here this whole time?) So I finally got all the "sand" into a filter and took a small portion and tested it in HNO3 by itself and wouldn't ya know, it turned black and disappeared. Copper, I presume. Disappointed, I left the filter on my bench to dry overnight and surely enough, the brown color that had been present the night before, had turned green supporting evidence that it was just copper.

I have one more crazy idea I'm going to try. Seems someone in an Alchemy forum had my exact problem and by mistake, found gold in the form of oils on top of the water. He claims the sun had something to do with it. Should I even waste my time?

Link to the forum where I read this....stretch of info is below. These guys seem a little D&D'ish but, I figured I'd run it through trustworthy minds before I disregard it as nonsense.

http://forum.alchemyforums.com/showthread.php?1151-Aqua-Regia


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## skorpyun812 (May 17, 2013)

butcher said:


> Colors of solutions can be somewhat of indicators as to what may be in solution, but the colors are no guarantee, example copper can look blue or green in solution, but iron can also give a green color in solution, gold chloride can give a yellow color to a solution, but iron can also give a yellow color looking like gold in solution, so if we cannot go by color how do we determine what we may have, one thing knowing what went into solution gives us a clue, but even that is not always the best way to determine, testing is the best way, we can test for metals in solution when we need to determine what we actually have in solution.
> 
> When you dissolve everything into solution, especially electronic scrap, we can really make a mess, the boards can have dirt, oils, organic compounds, epoxy glues, and other unwanted materials.
> they will also contain other troublesome metals, tin, lead, aluminum, iron...
> ...



Thank you for this input. Kinda makes me feel better. I'm my own worst critic.


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## butcher (May 17, 2013)

skorpyun812,

if you had gold in any of those powders, and you put any nitric acid with them you would not only dissolve any copper, but you would also have dissolved any gold, what you had was powders that were treated with hydrochloric acid, this left chlorides in the powders, mixing this with nitric acid is making a form of aqua regia, table salt and nitric acid will dissolve gold, if you wished to use nitric on the powders they should have been incinerated first to remove the salts and previous acid.

I did not waste my time with the alchemy link, that stuff is nothing but a whole bunch of nonsense, not worth even reading.

If you wish to learn how not to loose your gold, begin with Hokes book. 
Forget about trying to process until you get a little more understanding under your belt, this will also give you time to collect more material, I feel if you keep trying these things without more study you will just have more problems, be sure you read the safety section dealing with waste to treat the toxic waste you have generated making this mess.
I feel you had such a small amount of gold, you had a chance of getting it back before your last steps, but at this point, I do not know if would be worth going after, although when you get the copper powders (from treating your waste as instructed in the safety section, you could save it, your gold will be there).


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