# SubZero Method



## Anonymous (May 15, 2007)

Guys,

I'm new in goldrefining , and i am looking for the best method to refin motherboards, cpu's etc.. I found the Subzero method and according to them it is the best way ! Is this method something you could recommend ? Or does somebody has experience with this company ? any help would be appriciated.

http://shorinternational.com/refining.htm#Subzero 

thanks 

Ruud


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## firedan525 (May 15, 2007)

Hello Rudd,

I would like to say hello and welcome to this great forum. There are many very knowledgable people here freely sharing years of experience. You said you are using ishor's subzero. Aqua regia is just one of many recovery techniques. One added bonus of using AR is that it refines the gold it recovers. If you are not familiar with this process, throw away the directions, they suck. A couple of things, aqua regia is an acid that dissolves noble metals, like gold and platinum. True AR is a combination of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid. Subzero is actually sodium nitrate, which combined with HCL still dissolves gold. Another Ishor product you probably recieved is Storm percipitant. Storm = sodium metabisulfate. First off surf the forum for different formulas people use. Catfish has a great formula doing AR with sodium nitrate. The way AR works is when both acids are combined gold is dissolved including all other metals in the batch. This is why it is important to clean up material going into acid. Garbage in garbage out is one important thing to remember. After all gold has been dissolved you have to adjust PH to 1 with urea. I have learned to dissolve urea in hot water and add slowly stirring after adding then giving a couple if minutes before checking PH. After PH is 1 it is time to filter then percipitate. Like I have said there are many forums with filtering techniques and ways to percipitate. When you percipitate you are dropping the gold chloride back into solid state. It appears as a brownish mud at the bottom of your container. After a bunch of rinses this mud once dried and all techniques followed properly will result in 99.95+ purity. Another important step not to leave out is smelting your gold. This is the process to melt your gold down. There are great tutorials Lasersteve has done that really have helped me. They i believe are in the tutorial section of the forum. All the information is here but if you have anymore questions put up a post and someone will get to you. I have asked plenty of question, some that I thought were pretty stupid but we all have to learn, it may even help somebody with the same problem. Have fun stay safe DAN


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## AuMINIMayhem (May 15, 2007)

firedan525 said:


> I have asked plenty of question, some that I thought were pretty stupid but we all have to learn, it may even help somebody with the same problem. Have fun stay safe DAN



yeah.. no more stupid than mine.. :lol: The great thing about this forum is the low frequency of "ribbing"... everyone here is here because they have a passion for this stuff and us "newbies" are treated with the kind of respect, courtesy and patience not found very often in the hobby commnities in general.. This is a great group here.. Welcome aboard!

Derek


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## Destroyer (Jun 4, 2007)

Hello Guys,
My name is Gary and I am a Goldaholic, I have been just fascinated with Gold and have made a few very funny mistakes in the process of obtaining some Gold and still have no Gold to show for it.....yet. I do have 100 ml of brown mud and a broken and melted crucble that I went to town on with my torch. I used the Ishor method followed it to the letter the second time I did it anyway(My first attemp I hit the pretty green acid while still hot with the Storm percipatant and my Gold jumped out of solution and boiled over the Pyrex and down the side good thing I was using a pan to do my work in). I washed and washed my brown mud still it tested impure. I have a Keene gold water not spiral wheel hooked to a 750 GPM boat bilge pump sitting over a bucket I added the mud to this and let it run all night at a slow feed rate. The Mud while still impure after a test with Aqua Ammonia did for the most part collect in the Gold wheel with very green water seperated out above it. I have found that just letting it evaporate seems to have cleaned it up better as the green salts stick to the side of the container then the mud tested pure.
If someone could help me with the following. I have about three gallons of Acid that has been stripped of gold, do I dispose of it?
If so how? 
Can it be reused?
One gallon continues to test as Gold bearing do I just keep slaming Storm to it?
I will look up LazersSteves smelting method, but what can I do with my broken crucible and what happened to the Gold did it melt into the crucible? Or do I give it up and start over.
Thx Gary


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## aflacglobal (Jun 4, 2007)

Shor :shock: :shock: :shock: I am going to leave that subject alone.   

I recall some one here having a crucble and furnace problem here a awhile back. Hang around for a minute and someone will be right with you. If theirs gold in your acid, then someone here will know how you can get it.

Heres something that will help them help you.

Type out a little more info on how you got from point a to point b, ( process ) and the method you used or tried along the way.
step by step.
What was the orginal material that contained the gold ? Computer parts, rings, gold ore ?


Ralph


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## lazersteve (Jun 4, 2007)

Destroyer,

Welcome to the forum! I really enjoyed your profile post!



Destroyer said:


> I have about three gallons of Acid that has been stripped of gold, do I dispose of it?



If you are sure all of the precious metals are dropped out here's how you properly dispose of it:

First place some old scrap iron in the spent solution. I use old pc case parts ( railings, drive bays, backplane supports, etc. )

This will drop out the copper as a spongy sludge which will settle into a powder form as seen here:

Dropping Copper

Pour off the copper free solution and rinse the copper as shown here:

Rinsed Copper

Next you should neutralize the acid to pH 7 that is still in the solution. I use soda ash for this, but any base will do. The iron should drop out as iron oxide or iron hydroxide at this stage. The solution should be clear.

Now you should take this solution to your local dump on amnesty day to let them get rid of it properly. You could alternately evaporate it to dryness and then take it to your local dump.



Destroyer said:


> Can it be reused?



Once the AR is spent and prepared for disposal it can't be reused.

Steve


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## Destroyer (Jun 5, 2007)

lazersteve said:


> Destroyer,
> 
> Welcome to the forum! I really enjoyed your profile post!
> 
> ...



Thanks Steve can the Copper be recovered as well?
I like your Avatar is that how you should heat your Gold? Not sit there like I did flame on yelling come on Daddy needs a new pair of shoes? Just nice easy strokes?


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## Destroyer (Jun 5, 2007)

I followed the instructions to the letter. But find my self shoving the Storm Percipatant to the AR and testing over and over that it is positive for Gold.

The same stroy with rinsing I must have ran 15 gallons or more over this mud only to have it laugh at me over and over and turn blue with the Aqua Ammonia.

Where am I now after evaporating the mud it now tests pure, I have some AR still showing Gold content. I almost want to point my grand dads gun at it to scare the gold out because pound after pound of Storm just does not get the job done or make sense as it is supposed to drop out the Gold pound for pound as it was explained to me.

I have plenty more boards to do and alots of SubZero and Storm to use
up but I am not looking forward to it. I only have about 55 more pounds of boards to go, I have the stuff all sealed up and locked up but at what point does it become a superfund site?
Make your aqua regia solution: 

In a glass or plastic container, add 1 lb SubZero to ½ gallon of muriatic or hydrochloric acid. Do not use a metal container. 

Before refining: 

Cut off those portions of the board that have gold. Discard the rest. Chips, which have gold inside as well as outside, must be broken open. On a small scale, one tap with a hammer should suffice. With lots of chips, you might want to use a cement mixer. 

Dissolving the gold: 

The acid should be at room temperature. Place your boards into 2 identical glass or plastic container. Square or rectangular plastic tanks are generally the most practical for boards.

Cover your boards with the aqua regia solution that you made. The metal will begin to fizz and give off an invisible or slightly brown fume. You can cover the container, but do not seal it tightly because you don't want a built up of gas pressure. You can speed up the process by heating your solution, but this creates added hazard- hot acid fumes more rapidly and is more corrosive. Additionally, make sure that the Pyrex container in which you are heating the acid is designed for the stovetop, not the oven. 

When the fizzing stops, then all the metal should be dissolved. At room temperature, dissolving time is usually between ½ hour and 2 hours. Check the boards to make sure all the gold has been removed and dissolved into the aqua regia acid. 

Taking great care not to spill any solution, pour the acid into the other glass or plastic container. The aqua regia is not used up yet, so you can use the same acid to dissolve the gold off the second set of boards. You can continue to use this acid to, several times, to dissolve the metal off additional boards until it is no longer effective.

After the acid has been pour from the first container into the second, it is time to remove the boards. Remove the boards, one by one. If there is are any brown particles clinging to the boards, rinse them off into a plastic bucket or other similar container. These brown particles may be gold that has prematurely precipitated during the dissolving process. This is a result of the iron and steel in the boards. You can recover these particles later and put them in a future refining. 

Adjusting the pH & Precipitating the pure gold: 

When the aqua regia is no longer effective (no long dissolves the gold on the boards), it is time to recover the pure gold from the solution.

The acid will be a dark, emerald green color and should be clear (not murky or cloudy). If the acid is murky, it may contain particles and should be decanted again or filtered.

Add a pinch of urea to the acid. If it fizzes, add additional urea until it no longer fizzes. When there is no longer any fizzing, add 1½ tablespoons of Storm Precipitant for every ounce of dissolved metal (dissolved metal content, not just dissolved gold content). Immediately, the acid will change to a muddy brown appearance as brown particles of gold form in the acid. This brown "mud" is, despite its appearance, pure gold. If you want to speed the precipitation process, you can add the precipitant to very hot water before adding to the acid. This technique will precipitate the gold in only about 5 minutes (30-120 minutes is normal when not using this technique), but be aware that hot precipitant has a very strong, pungent odor.

Once precipitation is complete, test the acid for the presence of dissolved gold with Precious Metal Detection Liquid. 

Testing to make sure no dissolved gold is discarded: 

Precious metal detection liquid will detect the presence of dissolved gold down to 4 parts of gold per million parts of acid )detecting the presence of about 1/1,000th of 1 gram of dissolved gold. Testing for the presence of dissolved gold is absolutely necessary to insure that no dissolved gold is thrown away with the waste acid. 

To test, first immerse the end of the stirring rod in the acid. Remove it and touch that end to a paper towel to make a wet spot. Put a drop of gold detection liquid on the wet spot on the paper towel. If any gold is still dissolved in the acid, the wet spot will turn a purple-black or a purple-brown. If you see this color change then give the precipitant more time to work and/or add more precipitant.

Rinsing the pure gold: 

The acid should now be a clear, amber or a green color with a brown mud at the bottom. Pour off the acid into another container. If you have a filter, you can use it. Do not pour off any of the mud. The mud is pure gold.

When all the acid is poured off, add tap water to the mud. Stir and let the mud settle. Pour off the water into the container with the acid. If you have a filter, you can use it. Do not pour off any particles of brown. Repeat this rinsing 3-4 times or more.

Testing to insure purity: 

Test with aqua ammonia to insure high purity of your gold. Place a drop of aqua ammonia test liquid on the wet gold mud. If you see any change in color to blue, even a very pale blue, rinse and test again.

Give the mud a last rinse, this time with distilled water.

Drying and melting: 

Rinse the mud into a beaker that is made to be heated or into glass coffee pot. Put the beaker or pot on a hot plate to dry the mud. Do not preheat the hot plate or thermal shock may cause the beaker to break.

Melt the dried mud (now a powder). If using a torch, first wrap the powder in tissue paper and then soak that in alcohol. Also, use a Burno crucible. This will keep your gold from being blown away by the gas pressure from the torch. The gold will again take on the appearance of metal. If you've followed the instructions carefully, the gold will be 99.95 % pure with virtually no losses.


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## Destroyer (Jun 6, 2007)

lazersteve said:


> Destroyer,
> 
> Welcome to the forum! I really enjoyed your profile post!
> 
> ...


 Does that mean it can be reused if not prepared for disposal? Or is it a one time use?


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## lazersteve (Jun 6, 2007)

Gary,

AR is not reusable.

Steve


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## Destroyer (Jun 6, 2007)

lazersteve said:


> Gary,
> 
> AR is not reusable.
> 
> Steve


Okay thx my directions seemed to be saying that and I was like huh. Still makes a brutal acid. Shor told me to put a chunk of Aluminiuml in the waste acid still showing some Gold to drop out the rest of the gold but that it would drop everything out. I am going to try that after one more try with the Storm or Bisulfate as you call it. Saw your videos very good info. 

On the disposal dry concret would that work I have used it to clean up oil spills it worked pretty good. So I thought it would dry out the waste acid pretty good or is soda ash the way to go. I guess I have it in my head that maybe the calcuim in the concret would inert it .


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## lazersteve (Jun 6, 2007)

I guess any alkali metal ( group 1 ) hydroxide or carbonate would work to neutralize the acid. I'm sure concrete formulas vary quite a bit so I'm not certain how well that would work. Calcite (CaCO3) or slaked lime (Ca(OH)2) either one would be an acceptable neutralization base.

Steve


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## aflacglobal (Jun 6, 2007)

a wrong keystroke


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## Destroyer (Jun 6, 2007)

lazersteve said:


> I guess any alkali metal ( group 1 ) hydroxide or carbonate would work to neutralize the acid. I'm sure concrete formulas vary quite a bit so I'm not certain how well that would work. Calcite (CaCO3) or slaked lime (Ca(OH)2) either one would be an acceptable neutralization base.
> 
> Steve



aHH Lime I think I saw that at the Hardware store too Slake it huh nice drink for it before putting in the acid, and after the other step dry it out and it can go to the dump, It gets real hot where I live so it should not take long. Litmus paper should tell me where I am at with the Ph. I think most land fill can take anything dry if my Hazmat training serves me correct. It is liquids they don't like.

Thx Steve I have been very concerned with disposal after seeing what this stuff can do.


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## Paige (Jun 7, 2007)

I think newbies as we were all at one time, tend to use too much acid. See Harold's comments.

Paige


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## Destroyer (Jun 7, 2007)

Paige said:


> I think newbies as we were all at one time, tend to use too much acid. See Harold's comments.
> 
> Paige



Okay thanks.


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