# Question about acid peroxide method



## southatl (May 15, 2011)

I'm new to this and have been reading everything i can about gold recovery. I watched steve's video on using ap and thought i could follow along. The ap worked great on the terminals and pins, i filtered out all the loose gold foil, rinsed it off well, then following the video it showed a method of dissolving the gold in acid and chlorine, that also worked well for me, all the foils dissolved and i was able to strain out the last bits of debris from the ap method. My probem now is according to the video, you add some smb dissolved in distilled water and the gold will come out of solution. Well my batch started off as clear bright yellow liquid, and after i added the smb all it did was fizz and turn the solution a dirty brown color with no precipitation. My guess is maybe there is still chlorine present preventing the gold from coming out? What should i do to salvage the mixture now?


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## dub8 (May 15, 2011)

i think the brown is ur gold its gonna be a very fine powder


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## Claudie (May 15, 2011)

You should let the solution with the Clorox set for 24 hours to evaporate the Chlorine, then dilute it with 3 parts clean water before adding the SMB. The brown color is probably the gold precipitating. Let it set over night and it should settle to the bottom of the container. Then proceed with siphoning the solution off. 
How much material did you process?


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## southatl (May 16, 2011)

It settled as a brownish powder, but the acid is still a little cloudy. Tested with stannous and it showed a little color, so i think i will let it settle a little longer (it sat overnight) and try the smb again. I didn't have too much foils, maybe a teaspoon full when i started. I was expecting more of a reaction like in lazersteve's video and the gold as a black precipitant.

Curious though, i read that raising the ph of an acid solution causes all metals to precipitate out, couldnt you just add backing soda to the acid chlorine and cause the gold to come out instead of using smb?

The whole point of dissoving the gold was to further purify the impurities left from the acid peroxide stripping method, but i always seem to have problems with smb.

I mixed up a batch of aqua regia and dissolved some mother boards and memory chips down to bare plastic, which was per the instructions i recieved with the batch of chemicals i received from everyones favorite supplier, and ended up with a bright emerald green solution. Neutralized it with urea, ran it through a strainer to get all the trash out of it, then added storm to it and made a 5 gallon bucket of brownish black fluid. Tests possitve with stannous. After much reading on this forum i can see the error of my ways, as most of you selectively pick off the pieces with gold and discard the rest. I threw some scrap copper pipe into my bucket and i'm waiting to reclaim my gold as black powder. 
Would it be quicker to just neutralize the whole thing with baking soda, or throw a chunk of aluminum in it and collect all the powder after it settles, then use either nitric acid or acid chlorine to clean the by products out of gold precipitant?

So far i like the acid peroxide method for fingers and terminals, but i will probably have to use AR for the chip sets and everything else.


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## qst42know (May 17, 2011)

The copper is going to be as selective as it gets from where you are, leaving much of what you want to avoid in solution. Allow it time to do it's job and don't try to rush it. An aquarium air pump or regular stirring help it along.


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## southatl (Jun 4, 2011)

The copper worked great on the AR, dropped most of the PMs as black pieces. Does anyone know what Pms are dropped with copper? gold, silver? I rinsed them in water, but i'm trying to figure out the best way to get the gold out of the black pieces. I figured soaking them in acid peroxide would dissolve off most of the unwanted metals like residual copper. Now I'm left with a batch of non metallic greyish black pieces around 1/16 of an inch in size. Now i will use acid/chlorox to dissolve the gold as auric chloride, and later drop the gold with SMB. Anyone have any idea what is left, i tried melting some of it down and it looks like a light grey metal. Silver? It takes a lot of heat to melt it, so i figured it wasnt residual solder. I may try to dissolve the pieces in nitiric, then use salt to get it back out if it is silver.


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## Claudie (Jun 4, 2011)

I think you need to do some more reading. Start with this: 
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=63&hilit=reactivity+chart
This post has the answer to your question.


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## southatl (Jun 4, 2011)

The chart listing all the various metals in their order definitely helped. Looks like it will be easier for me to use nitric to dissolve the silver out. I hate making it though. Ar didnt work out like i thought it would either, I guess i fell into the hype of the companies that sell the chemicals on how easy it is to process gold out of scrap computers. I've been reading Hoke's book online, but it reads like it was written in the 30's. Personally i find that using the acid peroxide method to loosen the gold foils works the best, I just keep adding more parts to the mix and once in awhile run it though a strainer to collect the foils. Its funner to look at the foils in a cup rather than the black or brown gold powder. The end result is that same though.

Has anyone tried grinding up flat packs and rinsing them with water to collect the gold, like in that youtube video? I tried it on a few but i didnt find any gold, must not be gold in every flat pack.


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## Barren Realms 007 (Jun 4, 2011)

southatl said:


> The chart listing all the various metals in their order definitely helped. Looks like it will be easier for me to use nitric to dissolve the silver out. I hate making it though. Ar didnt work out like i thought it would either, I guess i fell into the hype of the companies that sell the chemicals on how easy it is to process gold out of scrap computers. I've been reading Hoke's book online, but it reads like it was written in the 30's. Personally i find that using the acid peroxide method to loosen the gold foils works the best, I just keep adding more parts to the mix and once in awhile run it though a strainer to collect the foils. Its funner to look at the foils in a cup rather than the black or brown gold powder. The end result is that same though.
> 
> Has anyone tried grinding up flat packs and rinsing them with water to collect the gold, like in that youtube video? I tried it on a few but i didnt find any gold, must not be gold in every flat pack.



Continue with Hoke's and read more on the forum. You are loosing gold at every turn.


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## Palladium (Jun 4, 2011)

Something i would like to point out. I don't know what kind of filters everyone is using. Some use lab grade, others use coffee filters. Now this won't apply to everyone. Well maybe it will, maybe it won't but you will get the jest. When i process i use a whole lot of air. By doing this i blow my gold plating into almost microscopic pieces. I see some people post pictures of large foils and only wish mine was that easy. lol Now everyone doesn't have that type of agitation so some may not worry, but if you using coffee filters or as the gentlemen above said " A strainer " then chances are your losing gold and don't know it. Refilter it through a Charmin plug or better filter before you take for granted that's all there is. Of course you have not really lost it if you’re following proper procedure; it will just show up down stream in your reclamation and disposal procedures. Like your stock pot. But the point is to catch it early. The other procedures are a fail safe.


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## southatl (Jun 5, 2011)

Let me explain in detail. by strainer i mean coffee filter. I like the idea of a chamin plug though, i'm going to try that. I let most of my dirt settle and use a small siphon to get rid of most of the clear fluid like in steve's video.


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## Harold_V (Jun 6, 2011)

southatl said:


> Looks like it will be easier for me to use nitric to dissolve the silver out.


This material came from a solution that will dissolve gold, right?

Did I hear a "right" in response?

If you've done your homework, by now you understand that you can NOT have gold and silver in solution at the same time, when processing with acids. The sole exception to that is the trace of silver that behaves like gold (well documented). So then, when you use copper to recover gold, palladium and platinum from solution, you should not expect to recover any silver. 

The exception to that idea is if you have dissolved with nitric alone, at which time you can have silver and palladium in solution, and, under some circumstances, even a trace of platinum. Never any gold. If you do recover gold, it wasn't in solution, but finely divided and in suspension. 

Read Hoke. 

Read Hoke again. 

Read Hoke until you understand the things I just talked about. 

Harold


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## southatl (Jun 6, 2011)

It was my understanding that aqua regia dissolves everything but platnium unless heated, so any silver and gold would have been dissolved in solution. I dropped the whole batch with a few copper pipes, and ended up with a big batch of black flakes, when i added nitric acid the flakes turned an off white/light grey color. They wont dissolve in sulfuric, hydrochloric, or in water. mystery to me.


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## Harold_V (Jun 7, 2011)

southatl said:


> It was my understanding that aqua regia dissolves everything but platnium unless heated, so any silver and gold would have been dissolved in solution.


You're not paying attention. You can NOT have silver and gold in solution at the same time in acid. 



> I dropped the whole batch with a few copper pipes, and ended up with a big batch of black flakes, when i added nitric acid the flakes turned an off white/light grey color. They wont dissolve in sulfuric, hydrochloric, or in water. mystery to me.


It's not to me. That's silver chloride. I told you, you can't have silver and gold in solution at the same time, so you didn't dissolve the silver---you converted the silver to silver chloride. My point was that you will not recover silver when you cement from a chloride solution, for it will have already been precipitated as a chloride. 

Remember what I told you----you can not have silver and gold in solution at the same time when you're using acid. 

Harold


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## rmi2416 (Jun 7, 2011)

I think if you read more on the forum you will find the step you are missing that might have created this tangled web. Most people from what I have read use a dilluted nitric bath at first breaking down the base metals and silver then strain and set that solution aside. Next they go to the AR breaking down the PM's that remain and drop the PM's from that solution.

Also if you read a lot more into the forum you will learn most people here from what I can see break there scrap down to a very low level removing connecter and pins, IC's and components, separating them into like material to tackle with the best processing application per material. By breaking down the whole motherboard at once your are asking for a lot of trouble you have 10 different types of components lots of different base metals, lead, tin the list goes on. The presents from even one of these metals creates a whole new problem when combining material like this unless your like a absolute pro the task becomes very hard.

Hope this sounds more helpful then scolding. I mean it in a helpful way and by no means am I a pro (I don't even have a button yet) just do a lot of reading here and can see some mistakes or hardships that others before you have had.

Take the advice of reading and research very close to heart not just about process or chemicals but one of the even more important things that can make it easy breezy is prep. So far I have spent more time on my own material prepping than actually refining.

Best Regards,
Ross


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## southatl (Jun 7, 2011)

This has been a learning process, to say the least. Unfortunatly when i started learning the process, i was given bad info from some other web sites on gold reclaiming and refining. As with most hobbies it was too good to be true, and not as fool proof as some website make it out. Ive refined my process to selecting only gold yeilding components, and not dissolving everything down into solution, which was what another web site was recommending. Hey, you have to start learing somewhere, and there has been some trial and error.


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## jimdoc (Jun 7, 2011)

southatl said:


> Hey, you have to start learing somewhere, and there has been some trial and error.



At least now you know that you found the right place to learn. The hard part will be forgetting all the bad info from the other sources. Take your time and know what you are doing, before you do it. You can never study too much, because all your scrap will accumulate until you are ready to do it right.

Jim


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## lazersteve (Jun 18, 2011)

Getting help with recovery and refining is a lot like cooking in that too many cooks spoil the dish.

Find a reliable source (like this one) and stick with it.

Steve


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## southatl (Jun 18, 2011)

I've been reading Hoke over and over. Initially i was missled to believe that aqua regia will dissolve all the royal metals (gold, silver, ect), but that is not the case. One question i havent been able to pin down in the book is when you take an acid solution that contains base metals and precious metals from computer scrap, and use copper to precipitate all the precious metals that are below copper on the Reactivity chart, exactly what metals are you ending up with, assuming you didnt heat your aqua regia, so platinum shouldn't be in solution, and silver shouldn't dissolve in AR?


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## butcher (Jun 18, 2011)

Any metal lower in series in the list below copper, that your solution contains, these are usually the values.


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## southatl (Jun 19, 2011)

I see most people are after gold, silver and platinum, but is it worth trying to reclaim any of the other metals below copper?


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## Harold_V (Jun 19, 2011)

southatl said:


> I see most people are after gold, silver and platinum, but is it worth trying to reclaim any of the other metals below copper?


I think you'll come to understand that it's not *commercially viable *to reclaim even copper at the small scale one operates in the home refinery. The idea of attempting recovery of lesser elements is noble, but likely not reasonable. 

Harold


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