# Above Top Secret's (website) process



## nōnāgintā trēs (Dec 7, 2012)

"Above Top Secret" is a websie I frequnt every now and again came up with an interesting way of scraping e-scrap. Since I'm in a good mood I saved it and will share the process here with all of you. If you are familiar or don't like the way this is done thats fine. I'm simply passing on info. 

"To dissolve the metal contaminants, we need to use a 50/50 mixture of nitric acid and water. The amount of nitric acid required will be approximately 20 mls mixed with approximately 20 mls of water. Using the plastic pipette, the water is added first followed by the nitric acid. 


To help speed the reaction along, the entire glass tube is placed in a bath of boiling water. Periodically, as it cools, replace the bath water with fresh boiling water to keep the reaction going. 
There is an immediate strong reaction as copper contaminants immediately start turning the liquid a blue colour. 
Also notice the release of brown nitrogen dioxide gas. At this point, walk away from the reaction and do NOT inhale the gas. The reaction can proceed unattended until there is no more bubbling visible. 

When the reaction finally stops, add an additional very small quantity (a few mls) of nitric. If bubbling starts up again, then not all the contaminant metals have been dissolved yet and once again, allow the process to continue on its own. If adding further nitric does NOT result in bubbling, then all metal contaminants will have been dissolved leaving behind relatively pure gold. 
At this point, you can dilute the blue liquid with water, wait for the gold to settle to the bottom, then carefully pour most of the liquid into another container. Just be careful and don't pour away any of the gold !! 
Add some more water to the settled gold to dilute even further any remaining liquid, then let the gold settle again, then carefully pour most of the liquid into another container ... again, DON'T pour away any of the gold. 
After repeating the dilute/pour procedure a few times (basically "washing" the gold), we end up with something like this: 

The above is the gold obtained from those computer motherboard pins and memory edges. 

Note: If you use gold jewelry or any kind of gold/silver mixture, then chances are good that the blue liquid that you've been diluting/pouring off will contain reasonable amounts of dissolved silver. In that case, the silver can also be recovered by using the method I described in my earlier Dummies Guide to EASY silver bullion refining at home as a long term precious metal investment thread. 


Having successfully removed almost all of the contaminants leaving the gold in an "almost" pure state, we're now going to process the gold one last time to remove any minute stubborn contaminants and end up with essentially 99.9% pure 24k gold ... woohoo !! 


In this final step, we're going to do some "alchemy" ... just like the Ancients used to do ! 


One of the marvelous properties of gold, and what makes it so sought after and desirable, is that its a metal that that will never tarnish or rust or corrode. 
Thats because gold is an extremely nonreactive metal. And because its so nonreactive and stable, non of the common acids will touch it ... not nitric, not hydrochloric, not sulphuric, etc. 
So how DO we get the gold to dissolve ? 
We'll take advantage of the Ancients knowledge of applied alchemy when they somehow discovered that a mixture of 1 part nitric and 3 parts hydrochloric performed the seemingly impossible ... it dissolved gold ! 
Because this combination of acids had the "power" to dissolve gold, which they considered to be the most "regal or noble" of metals, they gave it the special name of "Royal Water" ... or as they called it in Latin ... "Aqua Regia". 


So, transfer the "washed" gold into one of the glass tubes and add a 1:3 mix of nitric and hydrochloric acids. 
With the quantity of gold in this tutorial, using the plastic pipette, I added 5 drops of nitric and 15 drops of hydrochloric making a 1:3 mixture of Aqua Regia. 

Immediately the gold starts to dissolve and the liquid starts to bubble and turn a nice yellow colour. This is a good sign that almost all contaminants have been removed previously. If the liquid has a blue or green tinge, then that means some copper must still be present with the gold. 

Again, to speed up the reaction, we'll place the glass tube into a bath of boiling water. 
Allow the reaction to continue until all the gold has dissolved. If the reaction stops and some gold still remains, then add a further small quantity of "Aqua Regia". 



Ok, all the gold has dissolved leaving a yellow liquid behind ... for all intents and purposes, this yellow liquid is "liquid gold" ... so be very careful and DON'T spill any ! 

This yellow liquid may or not look slightly cloudy but either way, it won't do any harm to filter it. 
So create a filter as shown here: 


We're going to pour the yellow liquid through the filter and into a clean, empty glass tube. 
Now I can't stress this part enough ... make sure that you have scrubbed and washed this glass tube until it's absolutely squeaky clean. The reason being that shortly, we'll be causing the dissolved gold to be "dropped" out of solution as a dark brown material that will settle on the bottom of the jar. 
If the jar is NOT squeaky clean, some of the gold, as it drops out of solution, could stick to the sides of the glass jar giving it a very fine gold coating, similar to the fine silver coating on the back of a mirror. Then you'll waste time and effort in scraping this layer off to recover the gold in it. 

After all the yellow liquid has been poured into and passed through the filter, using the water spray bottle, spray the inside of the filter to ensure that every last bit of yellow liquid containing the gold has been washed through the filter and into the glass bottle. 
Ok, now dilute the yellow liquid with an equal volume of water. 
We should be looking at something like the following: 



We're now almost ready to precipitate or "drop" the gold back out of the yellow liquid but just before we do that, we need to completely neutralize any remaining traces of nitric acid that may still remain in the yellow liquid. The reason for this is simply that if we start to "drop" the gold in the form of a brown sediment, as soon as any of it appears, it will be immediately attacked by the remaining nitric/hydrochloric acid in the yellow solution and dissolved once again. So to prevent the "gold sediment" from going back into solution, where we don't want it to go, a simple way to prevent this is to first use urea to neutralize the nitric ... then successfully "drop" the sediment where it will eventually settle at the bottom of the glass jar. 

I recommend using just a pinch of urea at a time. When added to the yellow liquid, you should notice bubbles being created by the urea. This is a sign that nitric acid is being neutralized. As the urea is used up, continue adding smaller and smaller amounts until there is no more bubbling to be seen ... at this point, the remaining nitric acid has been completely neutralized and we can proceed with "dropping" the gold back out of solution as a brown sediment."


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## butcher (Dec 7, 2012)

nōnāgintā trēs,

Thanks for information, be sure to keep your tin solder out of the nitric process.

I was unsure of the link (top secret website) or what it lead to, so the link has been edited out.


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## Pantherlikher (Dec 7, 2012)

Excuse me if sounding "novice" or ignorant. But it seems you extremely important steps...LIKE SAFETY! which is well discussed in this forum.
Bs.


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## MMFJ (Dec 7, 2012)

> In this final step, we're going to do some "alchemy" ... just like the Ancients used to do !



Haven't many people been banned from this site for such statements?


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## scrappile (Dec 7, 2012)

Merlin did come to mind when I read it or Animal House , Double secret Probation, 





8) What Happened sure turned out well,.. 8)


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## goldsilverpro (Dec 7, 2012)

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread812741/pg1

We have discussed this before. I read it awhile back and although it wasn't that bad, I remember there were a few things I didn't care much for, especially the melting in a potato. I would suggest you get your information from our forum. Much more reliable.


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## butcher (Dec 7, 2012)

Thanks GSP for finding the web site, and replying here, when I clicked on the link I ended up in a commercial, then back to some weird pictures, I did not spend enough time on that website to find the process you posted on the website,.


I have not read the process very closely, but from its surface, it did look like a workable process, if done to right, it could use some details to improve the process, and we here on the forum do learn the finer details of recover and refining, we also learn principles of why things work, so when they do not work, we understand why, and can get out of a problem, we also learn what causes problems so we understand how to avoid them.

The one thing that I see is when someone who is trying to learn finds processes like this on the internet that make it look so easy, may also give the reader a few bad habits in refining, it is hard to explain how hard recovery and refining is when they come here to the forum to learn, and explain to them why they need to read and study so much material, and do that for years, when they seen it done in one video or one simple pictured process, why cannot we just give them a step by step process to recover and refine their gold or platinum group metals, these simple processes may work but make it look simple, do not go into the more important details, can lead to bad habits if learned, yes some of the methods out there can work to some extent, or may have some details with part of the facts, but once you spend a few years studying here on the forum you see where the information out on the web process is either faulty or lacks details or just leaves out important information.


nōnāgintā trēs, 
You can lean better methods and get a better understanding of recovery and refining of precious metals from the forum, and by reading Hokes book, and also learn how to do it much better and safely for yourself and the others around you. 

nōnāgintā trēs, I apologize for editing out the website link above in your post, I did not spend enough time to find out what the website was about, with work and so many post to read, I do not always have much time to spend on researching these things, and thought it better to disable the link, I hope you understand, welcome to the forum, I hope you enjoy learning on the forum as much as I do.


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## Marcel (Dec 7, 2012)

Putting your vessel in a waterbath is not such a good idea, if you dont cover it up very well. The fumes will go out with the water steam and condense in your enviroment, corrode your pot, your heating plate and form new- weak but still- nitric acid everywhere where they drop and condense.

Marcel


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## TheBullionBoys (Dec 7, 2012)

I'm a TOTAL noobie, both on the forum & to refining but out of all the vast, varied & all to often wrong information out there on the internet regarding the various processes available to the "Small-time Refiner", imho this is the most concise, easily understood & comprehensive guide to refining from scrap that I've found so far.
I've noticed all the comments regarding safety not being mentioned but realistically; If you've gotten this far with your quest for knowledge regarding refining, it's pretty much a "given" that acid is corrosive, fumes are toxic etc
PLUS: If you've obtained the acids, it's clearly stated on their bottles that they're dangerous to handle & what precautions to take.
*Thanks for the information folks!*


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## patnor1011 (Dec 7, 2012)

TheBullionBoys said:


> I'm a TOTAL noobie, both on the forum & to refining but out of all the vast, varied & all to often wrong information out there on the internet regarding the various processes available to the "Small-time Refiner", imho this is the most concise, easily understood & comprehensive guide to refining from scrap that I've found so far.
> I've noticed all the comments regarding safety not being mentioned but realistically; If you've gotten this far with your quest for knowledge regarding refining, it's pretty much a "given" that acid is corrosive, fumes are toxic etc
> PLUS: If you've obtained the acids, it's clearly stated on their bottles that they're dangerous to handle & what precautions to take.
> *Thanks for the information folks!*



Perhaps, but then we still see people even here asking where they did mistake while they dissolve their gold foils, drop gold and evaporate gold chloride solution on kitchen hob in their apartment.


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## butcher (Dec 7, 2012)

A lot of times the safety information written on the bottle is written with the impression you will be using the chemical or acid for its intended purpose, not using the chemical recovering gold or dissolving ore, so the label (or MSDS) will not necessarily mention the many danger's we may run into with the reactions we do.

I never seen a bottle or MSDS of household ammonium hydroxide with a label that said if you mixed it with solution of silver or gold to be careful that you can make an explosive compound, the manufacture is assuming you are buying it for household cleaning purposes not to refine metals it may say something like reactive with metals.
MSDS:
Incompatible with other Substances: Avoid contact with alkali metals, brass, copper, 
Hypochlorite’s, iron, metallic mercury, silver, strong acids, strong alkalis, strong mineral acids.

Well here we are doing exactly what the MSDS warns us against doing, when we refine with this chemical, this is where we need more education for our safety, and here is where studying can help to keep us safe
.


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## alexxx (Dec 7, 2012)

goldsilverpro said:


> ...I remember there were a few things I didn't care much for, especially the *melting in a potato*.



really ? :|


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## TheBullionBoys (Dec 7, 2012)

butcher said:


> A lot of times the safety information written on the bottle is written with the impression you will be using the chemical or acid for its intended purpose, not using the chemical recovering gold or dissolving ore, so the label (or MSDS) will not necessarily mention the many danger's we may run into with the reactions we do.
> 
> I never seen a bottle or MSDS of household ammonium hydroxide with a label that said if you mixed it with solution of silver or gold to be careful that you can make an explosive compound, the manufacture is assuming you are buying it for household cleaning purposes not to refine metals it may say something like reactive with metals.
> MSDS:
> ...



Point well made!! 
As I say, I'm a noobie to both the forum & to refining/smelting so haven't really had a chance to take a good look around at some of the issues people have had RE safety when mixing/using various chemicals.
I should've known though, the bounds of human beings disregard for their own safety never ceases to amaze me!
The very worst I've managed to do to myself in my various "test batches" is end up with silver nitrate splatter on my hand....nasty black stains that took over a week to "wear off"!
That was enough for me... now when handling ANY chemicals, corrosive or not, I always use gloves, a mask & ALWAYS do so outdoors.
I'm currently in the process of building a home made "fume-hood" so I can carry out my refining in my workshop.
Better to spend a little extra $$ and live to refine another few oz's....no pockets in a shroud as they say!


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## AndyWilliams (Dec 8, 2012)

TheBullionBoys said:


> PLUS: If you've obtained the acids, it's clearly stated on their bottles that they're dangerous to handle & what precautions to take.



Here's my nitric, just bought for the first time a few weeks ago. Not many precautions listed, not nearly enough anyway. Thankfully for me, I found this site before I found the nitric.


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## Palladium (Dec 9, 2012)

TheBullionBoys said:


> is end up with silver nitrate splatter on my hand....nasty black stains that took over a week to "wear off"!



:twisted: :twisted: :twisted: 

I absolutely hate silver processing. Hate everything about it. I know how to do and everything, in fact i'm quiet good at it NOW, i just love my gold more! I was messing around about two weeks ago with my silver cell for a limited run. I had some silver nitrate on my glove and obviously didn't think but sometime or another i must have reached up and rubbed my nose. The next day and for a week after that it looked like some punched me right in my nose. I had several people comment on it. I had meetings that week and it was an interesting topic of conservation to say the least. I had to explain how old photos worked and then apply that principle to my nose. :mrgreen:


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## butcher (Dec 9, 2012)

Rudolf the red nose reindeer, poor guy.
:lol:


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## nōnāgintā trēs (Dec 10, 2012)

Pantherlikher said:


> Excuse me if sounding "novice" or ignorant. But it seems you extremely important steps...LIKE SAFETY! which is well discussed in this forum.
> Bs.




I believe the chemicals come with fact sheets, labels, and plenty of warnings in multiple languages.


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## nōnāgintā trēs (Dec 10, 2012)

MMFJ said:


> > In this final step, we're going to do some "alchemy" ... just like the Ancients used to do !
> 
> 
> 
> Haven't many people been banned from this site for such statements?





All I did was copy and paste from the ATS website. Notice the " " quotation marks at the begining and end of the info posted. That said, if that's true about being banned, you had better not ask me the origins of my user name...

93


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## MMFJ (Dec 10, 2012)

nōnāgintā trēs said:


> MMFJ said:
> 
> 
> > > In this final step, we're going to do some "alchemy" ... just like the Ancients used to do !
> ...


Using the 'fact' that all you did was "copy and paste from XYZ website" doesn't, in my opinion, excuse the language. 

What if, for instance, I did a copy/paste from some religious, political and/or pornographic website? Would that be OK as well? Of course not and I still think that the wording and referenced site should be removed from here (frankly, I'm surprised it has lasted this long). From my time on this forum, I've seen many try to tout other sites/works that spew misleading statements and nothing else - those folks don't last long around here...

You have made some posts that have some value (though show obvious signs of 'newbie that hasn't done much searching on the forum'), so it is pretty clear you are not a direct spammer. Though, from your writing, I'm not convinced you are here only to learn and/or contribute facts you have discovered yourself, and have worthy conversations about them. This includes the comment about origins of your username and the use of the '93'..... - which in/of themselves are not an issue to me, until/unless you begin spouting such as "right" - which is why religion, politics, etc. are not allowed here.


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## patnor1011 (Dec 10, 2012)

nōnāgintā trēs said:


> MMFJ said:
> 
> 
> > > In this final step, we're going to do some "alchemy" ... just like the Ancients used to do !
> ...



Everyone here knows what 93 means.
It is Afghanistan country code. 8)


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