# Suitable copperas?



## Nauticamark (Apr 14, 2016)

Greetings all! 
I have taken my first step in using copperas. I have searched the forum using key words and did not find any info on this product in particular. I have seen a video with one of the very well known mentors here, using I believe, this same bag or brand. Question is, is this product suitable to use to precipitate AR like Hoke describes in her book? I am going to add the pics of this bag I purchased on line. Any feedback would be very appreciated, and thank you as always for reading my post!

Always grateful,
Nauticamark


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## Anonymous (Apr 14, 2016)

Copperas is a brand name. What you are actually looking for is anhydrous Ferrous Sulphate (or sulfate as they call it in the US.)

Drop that into google- look at the pictures and you're looking for a green crystalline compound. It's pretty easy to find in the UK, and I hear that it's easy to find in the US in its raw form too. 

Jon


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## Nauticamark (Apr 14, 2016)

Jon,
I am very grateful for your reply! Thank goodness I have only added a very small amount of this to my test beaker and AR, (40ml) and will wait for the results in the morning. Do you believe that this addition will be a failure in precipitating the test AR batch? I have found a local supplier for what you described to order, and I will do so first thing upon waking.

Again, many thanks!
Nauticamark


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## butcher (Apr 14, 2016)

Nauticamark,
All you need is some dilute 10% sulfuric acid, an old or unwanted transformer (for the iron) from your electronic parts bin, and the materials you already have in your lab, and you can make your own copperas (ferrous sulfate).
Search for it on the forum, there are many posts on making and using it.
Here is one:
http://goldrefiningforum.com/~goldrefi/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=14026
Try different key words in your search.


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## Anonymous (Apr 14, 2016)

Butcher it's about £1 per Kg over here, so unless it's more expensive in the US and not readily available it's probably simpler to buy it unless of course it's only to precipitate a couple of grammes of gold per month? 

I've made it myself using the method you described, and it works perfectly but it worked out far less effort to buy it.


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## upcyclist (Apr 15, 2016)

butcher said:


> Nauticamark,
> All you need is some dilute 10% sulfuric acid, an old or unwanted transformer (for the iron) from your electronic parts bin, and the materials you already have in your lab, and you can make your own copperas (ferrous sulfate).
> Search for it on the forum, there are many posts on making and using it.
> Here is one:
> ...


As much as I don't want to double post, I posted this a while back on a different thread, but didn't get an answer: That means the leftover solution from tumbling my silver chloride with dilute sulfuric & nails (a la Lou) would also work, correct?


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## FrugalRefiner (Apr 15, 2016)

upcyclist said:


> As much as I don't want to double post, I posted this a while back on a different thread, but didn't get an answer: That means the leftover solution from tumbling my silver chloride with dilute sulfuric & nails (a la Lou) would also work, correct?


I can't really answer your question, but the nails will not be just iron, and the chloride could cause a problem. Once you add other ions to the system, you can get different results than what you might expect. After you've gone to the effort of eliminating as many contaminants before dissolving your gold, you'd probably be better off keeping your precipitant as clean as possible rather than adding contaminants back into the mix.

Dave


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## butcher (Apr 16, 2016)

Dave answered the question very well.
Reducing silver chloride with steel (iron) nails, the remaining solution will be a mixture of iron chloride and iron sulfate, and any contaminates from the steel nails.

With refining of your gold you would not want to use it. As Dave stated why add trash to the gold solution you worked so hard on to remove the trash from.

If you were mining ore and were you were precipitating gold from a dirty solution, you possibly could be use this for a dirty solution of ferrous sulfate to precipitate gold from a chloride solution in a recovery stage.

It may be helpful in a stock pot, or could be used in a recovery process to dissolve some base metals. 

Looking at the solubility of iron chloride and ferrous sulfate, I do not think trying crystallization as a way of separation, would work very well for separating the salts in this mixture, the solubility's are not real far from each other. although it probably could be done with several re-crystallization steps. 
But you could make a fresh batch of copperas in less time and have a purer product.

Nails are hardly ever pure iron,anymore, they are steel. I am not sure, but horse shoe nails may still be made of iron? They also seem softer than the steel carpentry nails. 
Silver will not mix with iron (steel) in a melt, And the silver will need refining after the conversion if purity was desired anyway.

Ferrous sulfate is simple to make you can make a fairly large batch at once, as long as you store it properly it can also be stored for a long time.


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## g_axelsson (Apr 16, 2016)

Recrystallization would work quite well to separate different salts but not with simple filtration. When salts crystallizes it prefer strongly to go with it's own kind. Every different kind of salt creates it's own crystals. The only trick is to recognize the correct crystals from shape and only collect the right ones, picking them out manually. Slow evaporation produces the largest crystals and creating nice crystals is a craft in itself.

But if it will work or not with the remaining solution from converting silver chloride I don't know. It is nothing I have ever tried. It also depends on if the iron is ferrous or ferric in oxidation state. One works, the other not. (Compare brown oxidized copperas with green fresh copperas).
It's a slippery slope chemically speaking, there is potential energy in the ferrous sulfate that is used to reduce gold chloride into metallic gold while the ferrous sulfate turns into ferric sulfate and some iron into iron chloride.
A redox equation, iron is oxidized while gold is reduced into metallic gold.

Göran


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## Shark (Apr 17, 2016)

Hi Yield will work. The way I use it is 5-6 ounces of hot water, dissolve as much of the copperas as possible into the water. It will form a milky white, very fine sediment that I have never been able to filter out. Filter the coarse sediment out, and allow the fine stuff to settle, usually over night and decant the clear greenish solution off for use to drop your gold. It took me a long time to finally try it, but after I did I will always keep some on hand for those dirty type solutions. If you happen to get the milky sediment into your drop, you can carefully remove it with water washes until the water comes off clear. I have never tried to melt powders with out washing it out, so I don't really know what problems it may cause in a melt.


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## upcyclist (Apr 18, 2016)

Thanks--the contamination issue makes perfect sense. I'm not even sure I want to try to reuse it for silver conversion, because I'm guessing the sulfuric acid pretty much consumed as much iron (steel) as it could even after the AgCl was fully converted. I like to reuse my solutions where practical and reasonable. I wouldn't bother trying to repurify it, as y'all said, because it's cheaper to buy another pound of fresh copperas than it costs in man-hours & materials to attempt purification of a waste product. Into the iron cementation bucket it goes!


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## butcher (Apr 19, 2016)

Copper/Iron chloride solutions can be used in recovery processes.

http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/search.php?keywords=reusing+copper+iron+chloride&terms=all&author=Butcher&sv=0&sc=1&sf=all&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&st=0&ch=300&t=0&submit=Search


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