# Aqua Regia Mess -help!



## JustMe

Ok so I have successfully used AR many times, without issue. Normally I use SMB to precipitate. But recently I was trying for the first time a few other methods. That's where I got in trouble.

I read that using Ferrous Sulfate did not require neutralization of the nitric, a plus as far as I was concerned, so I attempted it but didn't get gold to precipitate out of the AR. I then neutralized the nitric (with urea) and still no precipitation. So I set this aside for a bit to ponder what to do next. (The source of the gold was black sands which were also present, however all the magnetic materials had been removed. I have done this successfully many times before.)

So then I saw the Butyl Diglyme solution to collecting AuCl from the Aqua Regia then precipitating with hot oxalic acid. Got myself some BD and gave it a shot. For some reason after shaking it all up and mixing it the BD did not form an upper phase. :? So I put that aside too to ponder.

Then finally I attempted another batch of the black sands, and used the normal SMB method of precipitating it, and that didn't work this time!! So I got p***** off and just poured the whole mess (all 3 batches together) and decided to just evaporate it all down and start over ... then I thought ... ooops!

I took the 1 liter of liquid with gold, other minerals and SMB, BD, Oxalic Acid, Urea and Ferrous sulfate (I am sure that these are in excess in solution), as well as some precipitates and some fine sediments, and evaporated it down to just 150 ml and stopped there when I realized that I was not sure just how to go about finishing this process off. I was going to just toss in a bunch of zinc powder and filter it and take the precipitates and start all over with the AR, but now I'm not so sure. Also, if I do use zinc, I am really not sure how much I need to put in to be sure that all the gold has dropped. All in all there isn't that much gold as these were just tests I was doing on some ores to check out their content rather than using a fire assay. So somewhere between 1/2 to 1 gram probably in gold is in solution.

Ok after screaming and yelling at me is over ... does anyone have any suggestions as to recovery the mess here?
This is a first, because I have successfully used AR 30 or 40 times without a hitch.


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## its-all-a-lie

Have you used the search bar in the top-right corner of the screen?


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## JustMe

its-all-a-lie said:


> Have you used the search bar in the top-right corner of the screen?



Yes. I didn't find anything that showed me how to undo a mess with aqua regia that included Butyl Diglyme as well as the other stuff.

Note: Depending how I search I get 435 hits or more. So far nothing that applies. Anyone else able to find a relevant post to my issue here?


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## butcher

JustMe, 
I suggest you do several things, the main thing would be to forget what you think you know now, and begin re-learning, from what you have posted it sounds like you have read a few things on the intranet or watched a few videos, but it does not sound like you have a good grasp on recovery and refining of precious metals.

Using or adding the Butyl Diglyme to the mess you have on your hands now, being a carbon based compound C12H26O3, which could burn like a fuel may be the biggest problem of getting your gold back out of this solution, (that is if you actually do have any gold in solution), if you have verified gold is in solution after testing for it, you may have luck cementing it out of solution using copper.

Although I would not doubt if all you have in solution at this point is iron.


http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9923094


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## bswartzwelder

I know this post is most likely not needed, but have you tested your solution with Stannous Chloride? It could be that you overestimated the amount of gold present and even if it did precipitate, there might be so little that it is almost invisible to the naked eye. I've made my share of mistakes, had my share of unexpected results, so I can completely sympathize with your present predicament. Keep plugging away at it and please, keep us informed. I have learned a lot from other peoples mistakes, but I sure have contributed one heck of a lot for others to learn from me.


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## JustMe

Stannous chloride test shows almost black. Dark and inky. It looks to me that there is plenty of gold in solution. At least enough that I am not going to miss it when or if it precipitates out.
The odd thing is that I can not find the butyl diglyme upper phase, even now that I have eliminated most of the liquid. It's possible that it has evaporated, but I'm not certain of that. I don't know offhand what it's vapor pressure is.
Well adding copper is simple to do so I might as well give it a shot. Can't really muck things up much more unless I blow myself up I suppose :shock: 
Will precipitate with copper then filter out the precip and then test with stannous to be sure I got all the gold out of solution.


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## Geo

when using the BDG and oxalic acid, did you heat the solution? try adding 20 ml's of sulfuric acid and then evaporating the mixture (well away from everything, outside preferably) down to a syrup and then adding enough hcl to re-hydrate it and start over with just SMB (after removing the BDG of coarse).


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## JustMe

Geo said:


> when using the BDG and oxalic acid, did you heat the solution? try adding 20 ml's of sulfuric acid and then evaporating the mixture (well away from everything, outside preferably) down to a syrup and then adding enough hcl to re-hydrate it and start over with just SMB (after removing the BDG of coarse).



Yes, I heated the oxalic acid and the aqua regia solution. I attempted to use copper to cement it all out and it did nothing. There was no reaction. I added a small amount of zinc powder to the solution, and it appears to have worked, and now the stannous test shows only a slight coloration change when added instead of a dark inky purple-black look so most of the gold is now out of solution.

Not sure how to go about removing the BDG at this point. Now I do see an upper phase which amounts to a few oily looking patches on the surface of the solution. Certainly nowhere near the original 30ml I began with. Maybe just a couple ml now. I suppose I can soak it up with a cotton ball and discard that way.

I am certain that the cause of the problems with precipitation in the beginning were due to some chemistry in the raw material. The source of this material was new to me and there is a mine not too far from there, which I have heard, has a hard time getting the gold out of it's ore, but I am not sure what the cause is. I am thinking sulfides perhaps, but it should have all been roasted off when i prepared it for the AR as I usually do.

Whatever it is in there apparently caused the BDG to go into solution too, and only after the zinc was added did it separate.


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## Harold_V

JustMe said:


> I read that using Ferrous Sulfate did not require neutralization of the nitric,


Perhaps you now understand why I keep telling you guys to *read Hoke's book*. 

Harold


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## JustMe

Ok let me correct myself about Urea and neutralization of the nitric acid... I suppose I meant to say "drive off the free NO2".
Also
I searched Hoke's book, 365 pages and found nothing about Butyl Diglyme, or Butyl Carbitol or Diethylene Glycol Butyl Ether, etc.

Update on what's going on here:
BDG is gone now. Tested the solution several times after adding the zinc powder and it was virtually free of gold.
Used a buchner filter, and re-tested the liquid which is now a nice lime to light emerald green (used to be a deep golden yellow). The liquid tests positive for a lot of gold, but prior to filtering it was free of gold for the most part.

But at least now the BDG is gone and the sediments are gone. Now maybe I can get somewhere.
Sulfuric acid now and boil it down?


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## Geo

the BDG has the gold locked into its matrix. thats what its used for. you dissolve the material, no matter how much free nitric is in solution, the BDG will absorb the gold chloride. after stirring the solution plus BDG together, stop stirring and let the BDG separate from the solution. the BDG now contains all the gold chloride (in theory) if you did everything correctly (which it sounds like you did nothing correctly) you will have a barren solution and gold impregnated BDG. you will add the oxalic acid to water and heat until it dissolves. pour this mixture into the BDG and stir while heating. at around 75 degrees C, the gold will precipitate.


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## JustMe

Black sands were processed. Magnetics were removed with rare earth magnet. Hydrochloric acid used to dissolve away additional materials. Roasted to remove sulfides. Remaining sands were placed in a beaker and nitric acid and hydrochloric added in a ratio of 3:1. Was let set for a few hours. Liquid was filtered then put into a separatory funnel. 30 ml of BDG were added and it was shaken vigorously for several minutes, and allowed to sit. Upper phase never showed up. I decided to separate the top portion anyhow, feeling that maybe it's coloration was too similar and index of refraction too similar to see easily. Then took the top 30ml or so and put in a separate beaker, mixed oxalic acid in distilled water and heated, and heated the AR as well and mixed the two. No precipitation. Let set for a few days to see if separation would happen and it did not either in the top liquid I added the oxalic acid to or the bulk of the liquid that was set aside. That's when I put it on the shelf for later study.

I can see now that I did it all wrong ... right? Problem is I can't figure out where, but it is clear by what you said that you know. So tell me, where did I go wrong.

NOTE: If you notice my last post, I said that the BDG is all gone now. It showed up after the zinc was added and I removed it, and now the solution without the BDG is testing positive for gold very strongly. If there was any gold gone with the BDG, then it wasn't much.


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## Harold_V

JustMe said:


> Ok let me correct myself about Urea and neutralization of the nitric acid... I suppose I meant to say "drive off the free NO2".
> 
> Also
> I searched Hoke's book, 365 pages and found nothing about Butyl Diglyme, or Butyl Carbitol or Diethylene Glycol Butyl Ether, etc.


But you'll find more than enough information about the use of ferrous sulfate for the recovery of gold from solution. That was my point. 

Harold


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## niteliteone

JustMe said:


> (snip)
> Not sure how to go about removing the BDG at this point. Now I do see an upper phase which amounts to a few oily looking patches on the surface of the solution. Certainly nowhere near the original 30ml I began with. Maybe just a couple ml now. *I suppose I can soak it up with a cotton ball and discard that way.*



*DON"T DO THAT*
Doesn't your Aqua Regia contain Nitric Acid ???
Not to mention carbon and probably sulfur compounds.


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## Platdigger

What's the matter niteliteone? Don't like a little gun powder? 8)


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## Harold_V

JustMe said:


> and boil it down?


Please *refrain from discussing evaporation by using the term "boiling"*. You are, with the careless use of terminology, undoing all the hard work we've tried to accomplish on this board in teaching the proper method of evaporating. 

It would pay you to do some reading on this board before posting, so you get an idea of how things are discussed. While I can't speak for other moderators, I am very picky about how things are said, as readers who are careless tend to absorb everything that's destructive, and little of what is good and proper. I'd sooner ban a reader who doesn't cooperate than to work endlessly trying to correct the damage done by making comments that are not acceptable. 

Harold


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## JustMe

Well, I used cotton swabs and just touched the bit of butyl diglyme puddles on the surface and absorbed it up. Most of the nitric is gone already due to the fact that I EVAPORATED it all down before if you noticed in my first post when you read it.

So where to go from here ... again ... sulfuric acid time as one person suggested? Carefully evaporate it all down to dry? Wonder if that would get me some gold fulminate at this point??

Maybe I can add some alcohol or ammonia and see what that gets me??  Just kidding ... don't do that... don't need to make it any worse than it is.

But at least now I am rid of some of the problem with the BDG gone.


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## JustMe

Harold_V said:


> JustMe said:
> 
> 
> 
> and boil it down?
> 
> 
> 
> Please *refrain from discussing evaporation by using the term "boiling"*. You are, with the careless use of terminology, undoing all the hard work we've tried to accomplish on this board in teaching the proper method of evaporating.
> 
> It would pay you to do some reading on this board before posting, so you get an idea of how things are discussed. While I can't speak for other moderators, I am very picky about how things are said, as readers who are careless tend to absorb everything that's destructive, and little of what is good and proper. I'd sooner ban a reader who doesn't cooperate than to work endlessly trying to correct the damage done by making comments that are not acceptable.
> 
> Harold
Click to expand...


Please note the use of the ? which is a query. And by boil it down I meant to eliminate all liquid whatsoever.
You might also want to note that in the posts prior to *and* after your admonishment, I used the term evaporate. But I'm glad your keeping an eye on things. I guess it was a misunderstanding of how I used the term boil.

Also note that I had 3 experiments combined into this mess, only ONE of which had used ferrous sulfate. It is a bit disturbing that I get advice on how to post on this board properly, and yet those giving me advice on how to resolve this problem in chemistry that they insist is so dangerous, are not reading what I actually wrote.

But I do know now to:
Use the search bar.
Not use the term boil.
That I might be overestimating the gold present in the solution.
That I can be insulted with impunity without a whit of evidence that I have done anything incorrectly ...


Geo said:


> ... the BDG now contains all the gold chloride (in theory) if you did everything correctly (which it sounds like you did nothing correctly)...


I described the process I used and asked where it was I made some mistake ... no answer to that yet.

That I might make some explosives with nitric in solution which is GONE because it has been evaporated off because people 'helping' here are not reading what I wrote.

Communication is a 2 part process. One initiates a communication the other perceives it. Requiring people to phrase things properly may be important in chemistry, in which I would agree. But how do you monitor the perception and comprehension part of the communication process? Obviously by the responses here, there were some giving advice or making assumptions that could be just as dangerous as my use of the term boil. Perhaps more dangerous because these people are supposedly reading and understanding the issue I have presented and are giving 'knowledgeable' advice on how to resolve it. And yet in the responses it is clear that assumptions are being made without asking first for clarification where there may be some question, or not reading what was written and fully comprehending it.

Therein is the problem in all communications ...right?

So at this point I think that I am not able to get the answer that I seek here. I apologize for upsetting your applecart, you can go back to what you were doing. I do not need this kind of help as it could be dangerous. You have the final say as to what will show or not on your forum, as you can delete it or censor it as you wish.

Oh and I solved the issue but I bet you guys knew all along that that film on the glassware was causing the issue ... right? So what exotic film that might be almost imperceptible on glassware might cause this to happen AND affect butyl diglyme.

I cleaned the glassware with an appropriate solvent, then repeated each of the previous gold precipitations and they worked flawlessly. BDG separation occured just fine, gold precipitated fine using copperas. That'll teach me to be sloppy in my housecleaning chores but what do you expect ... I'm a bachelor  

Good day gentlemen.
Now I have to be about getting this mess figured out and getting that gold back out of this green stuff that is still all mixed up!!

Oh, and not everyone appreciates being a public example for others to learn from. One might keep in mind the old saying 'Compliment publicly and admonish privately' as a bit of wisdom that might be applicable. PM's would help to accomplish much of what you desire.


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## niteliteone

JustMe said:


> (snip)
> That I might make some explosives with nitric in solution which is GONE because it has been evaporated off because people 'helping' here are not reading what I wrote.
> 
> Communication is a 2 part process. One initiates a communication the other perceives it. Requiring people to phrase things properly may be important in chemistry, in which I would agree.
> (snip)


As a correction to your wrong assumption on the "Nitric", it *is* still their. 
Only the ""excess"" nitric was removed by "evaporation", which means my earlier post is still correct. If you had a decent understanding of "Chemistry" you would know this, Hence my pointing it out for those who don't know.
It will remain in solution even after you have dropped the gold with your precipitant of choice, so keep any cotton products away from any solution that has *ever* contained nitric acid.

This follow up post is for those who come later and might try to follow your mistaken knowledge.


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## Geo

JustMe, almost all new members goes through this to some extent. if you start a process that you do not fully understand and nothing happens the way you thought it would, its because you didnt do it right. i described (in short) how BDG is used. if you didnt do it this way, its not going to work. much to learn. everything you want to do has already been spoken about and you will learn much of what you missed by reading. if you have gold in solution, its not going anywhere until you do something. it wont evaporate away. 

speaking of evaporation, you cant remove the nitric from a solution by evaporation. even if you dried it completely out, nitrates will still be present. learn what you can mix and what is dangerous to mix. cotton soaked in nitric acid is a crude form of gun powder (gun cotton) which is cellulose and nitric acid.


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## JustMe

niteliteone said:


> JustMe said:
> 
> 
> 
> (snip)
> That I might make some explosives with nitric in solution which is GONE because it has been evaporated off because people 'helping' here are not reading what I wrote.
> 
> Communication is a 2 part process. One initiates a communication the other perceives it. Requiring people to phrase things properly may be important in chemistry, in which I would agree.
> (snip)
> 
> 
> 
> As a correction to your wrong assumption on the "Nitric", it *is* still their.
> Only the ""excess"" nitric was removed by "evaporation", which means my earlier post is still correct. If you had a decent understanding of "Chemistry" you would know this, Hence my pointing it out for those who don't know.
> It will remain in solution even after you have dropped the gold with your precipitant of choice, so keep any cotton products away from any solution that has *ever* contained nitric acid.
> 
> This follow up post is for those who come later and might try to follow your mistaken knowledge.
Click to expand...


I know how to make nitrocellulose and have. Nitrocellulose is not a primary explosive and requires a spark or flame or some other external cause to detonate. Nitrocellulose is sold as flash paper and lacquer for guitars. You might also note that the original 'failed' experiment with BDG contained 30ml of BDG of which later I stated that a few ml of BDG had appeared after the zinc was added. I also said I mopped it up using some cotton swabs (7 to be exact), and I used capillary action to suck the bdg off the solution and likely got none or extremely little on the qtip at all. So if you would like to make a general statement to others reading the thread regarding the safety of using cotton with nitric acid containing solutions, do it. But don't make it sound like I just made a batch of high explosives here that my neighbors (which I don't have) should be concerned about! With as much potential nitrocellulose as could possibly be made with the cotton on 7 qtips if it had all been converted, I would be lucky to blow up a plastic zip lock bag with it!

A potential fulminate product would be a much more serious consequence of all this. Fulminating gold anyone??


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## JustMe

My solution to the problem:
I dried the mixture out and then added BDG directly to it, capturing the auric chloride, put it through a filter to remove the particulate matter and then dropped out the gold as powder using hot oxalic acid (also having heated the BDG. I left out a few of the other obvious steps too.)

Just to make sure I didn't get anything but gold, I re-dissolved it with AR and re-precipitated it with SMB.

Recovery was 2.3gm of heavy shiny yellow stuff, happily, quite a bit more than I expected.

Thanks for your help. It was the statement of the obvious (well obvious to me anyhow) that I was overlooking. "... if you have gold in solution, its not going anywhere until you do something. it wont evaporate away." ... but like the nitrates, it's not gold ... it's chloride of gold. Auric chloride, the thing that BDG has such an affinity for.


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## Platdigger

Just a few things of note. First off congrats for recovering the gold from this mess of chems!
One is I have not heard of adding BDG to dried salts like you did, nice.
Also I am curious if you instead of using urea and by evaporating down a few times if the ferrous sulfate would have worked at the beginning of this.
The last being that, that was a good find about the BDG somehow not working because of some type of film on (in) the glassware. I think this may have been stated on the forum (by Steve I believe) but is good to be reminded of.

Oh and, one of the reasons some of the responses to your posts may have seemed harsh is the fact that this forum has had "AR mess-Help!" type of threads posted here soo many times. And usually by folk that do not have a clue to what they are doing.


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## JustMe

Ferrous sulfate was used in one of the three failed batches that got mixed up in this mess. I am sure there was some excess in that batch and adding to the rest of the mess and evaporating down did not precipitate anything. Urea and SMB was used in only one batch. And BDG and oxalic acid was used in only one batch. Ferrous sulfate the third. After letting the evaporated solution sit a day, I mechanically removed all the crystalline solids that i found in it.

I didn't want to add more ferrous sulfate as it had already failed me once in the mess and I was convinced that it was some complex ore chemistry that was causing all the problems. In a way it was. That film was from some OTHER ore and chems that were used to extract a different type of metal, that is a bit exotic (well at least for me).


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## butcher

JustMe, 
You keep asking where you went wrong, and wanting us to point them out, where do we start, it sounds like you combined 3 problems into one big mess You keep getting the answer to read Hoke's...
I see several things that were done wrong, but it would do you no good to try and point them out, at this point you needed to try and get the gold out of this solution safely, and get it melted into metal, then you can spend the time needed to study to learn to do these processes right.

I think you can see where you made most of your mistakes, by studying and practicing what your learning you will learn better methods and you will not make these same mistakes.


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## JustMe

butcher said:


> JustMe,
> You keep asking where you went wrong, and wanting us to point them out, where do we start, it sounds like you combined 3 problems into one big mess You keep getting the answer to read Hoke's...
> I see several things that were done wrong, but it would do you no good to try and point them out, at this point you needed to try and get the gold out of this solution safely, and get it melted into metal, then you can spend the time needed to study to learn to do these processes right.
> 
> I think you can see where you made most of your mistakes, by studying and practicing what your learning you will learn better methods and you will not make these same mistakes.



*sigh* ... did you happen to notice that I have solved the problem AND already got the gold melted down into a cute little nugget?
I think a few of those "where did I go wrongs" were rhetorical. No?

Did you happen to notice that I made mention of the fact that people were giving advice without reading all I wrote first and that that can be as dangerous as anything I might have done/do? Especially if they missed the fact that I mixed anhydrous ammonia with the stuff before I dried it out?? Any alarms go off when you told me to smash all the dry stuff up with a hammer to make sure it's good and powderized?

NOO NOOO! I DIDN'T. Was just to make you look. 

Did you happen to notice that I knew it was a mistake and that I did it simply because I got p***** off and didn't think first?

OH, NOW THERE IS A LESSON! NEVER MIX CHEMICALS WHEN YOU ARE P***** OFF AS IT CAN BE VERY DANGEROUS!


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## solar_plasma

I am glad you solved your poblem. I did not read the whole thread again and can't remember all of it. But I think I know, what happened here between the lines.

You wrote:


> Ferrous Sulfate did not require neutralization of the nitric


 in one of your first sentences. Using the word neutralization is not correct, even misleading, which shows, we at this point do not use the same language. The mods often pointed out, that reading Hoke also important to establish a set of terms and concepts that is common to all and everyone understand it the same way. I you are repairing the breaks on your car, you willl be able to so, even if you call your brakes "Otto", but talking about repairing your "Otto's" nobody will understand you.

Even worse, people get easily the impression, that you don't have a clue and then they react like to someone, who is a danger for himself and others. Esp0ecially, when your description is loaded with different methods used in one process.

This may be an example to all of us: Use (and learn) the right and proper terms.


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## butcher

I did read this:
"I re-dissolved it with AR and re-precipitated it with SMB.
Recovery was 2.3gm of heavy shiny yellow stuff, happily, quite a bit more than I expected.

They way I read it you had some heavy yellow shiny stuff, so I assumed you had gold or a yellow powder, salt, or something that was yellow.

I do not see where you have solved any of the problems, even if you recovered gold from this batch, as many of your problems came from not having a good understanding of the recovery process and the refining processes, these were where the problems began, and what we have been trying to help you with, by telling you to study Hokes book and read more of the forum.

I did not see where people were trying to help you, and give advice without reading.

I sense you do not like hearing the advice, and think you know better, which it is obvious to me you think you know more than you do, so my main advice for you is to spend more time learning better procedures for processing.

Why would anyone ask for advice then not want to accept the advice given, thinking they know more and do not need it, or to bite back at those trying to help? If you already know more than they do why would you need to ask for help, if the suggestion for help were not suited to your problem or the advice was off, why not just say thank you.

I do not find your jokes or attitude on the safety funny, you had many different chemicals in that mix, speaking of ammonia (urea can break down to ammonia), and with all of those chemicals mixed up, there is not much telling of how dangerous that mix could have become, or in what conditions it may have become dangerous.

Not only is it dangerous to mix chemicals with a bad attitude, but that attitude here on the forum makes it harder to learn from those trying to help you, and it can also cause a member who has a chance to learn from others here, to lose that right.

JustMe, I am glad you got that gold back safely, and hope you understand how to treat your waste, if not we have a good thread on that in the safety section "dealing with waste".
I also hope you lose what seems to me to be an attitude, and join us in our search to learn more, we all make mistakes, and non of us know it all, and we can all help each other to learn more.


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## solar_plasma

I consider it as essential never to swap from one method to another. When the choosen precitpitation method not is working, then there is a reason for it. This reason has to be solved or we should go over to clean up the mess. Recover the values and start again at the beginning. It is not only in refining the fact, that focusing on the problems and trying to fix them with fix ideas, just create new problems, that even may be harder to solve. I have learned in my short time, and you may correct me, there is only one method of choice, which leaves no space for trial and error. Doesn't it work, go back to the start.


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## Geo

getting my values from solution was never really a problem for me. aside from months spent studying on the process i intended to try, i knew that no matter what i did to get the metal into solution, i could always cement the values out with copper if my preferred method didnt work. too much free nitric or too much heat or not enough heat, too much chlorine or bad SMB. it didnt matter, i knew that with a little time and patience, i would still get my gold. in the words of Kevin James "why sweat the small stuff"?


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## JustMe

butcher said:


> I did read this:
> "I re-dissolved it with AR and re-precipitated it with SMB.
> Recovery was 2.3gm of heavy shiny yellow stuff, happily, quite a bit more than I expected.
> 
> They way I read it you had some heavy yellow shiny stuff, so I assumed ...**snip**
> 
> I do not see where you have solved any of the problems, even if you recovered gold from this batch, as many of your problems came from not having a good understanding of the recovery process and the refining processes, these were where the problems began, and what we have been trying to help you with, by telling you to study Hokes book and read more of the forum.
> 
> I did not see where people were trying to help you, and give advice without reading.
> 
> I sense you do not like hearing the advice, and think you know better, which it is obvious to me you think you know more than you do, so my main advice for you is to spend more time learning better procedures for processing.
> 
> Why would anyone ask for advice then not want to accept the advice given, thinking they know more and do not need it, or to bite back at those trying to help? If you already know more than they do why would you need to ask for help, if the suggestion for help were not suited to your problem or the advice was off, why not just say thank you.
> 
> I do not find your jokes or attitude on the safety funny, you had many different chemicals in that mix, speaking of ammonia (urea can break down to ammonia), and with all of those chemicals mixed up, there is not much telling of how dangerous that mix could have become, or in what conditions it may have become dangerous.
> 
> Not only is it dangerous to mix chemicals with a bad attitude, but that attitude here on the forum makes it harder to learn from those trying to help you, and it can also cause a member who has a chance to learn from others here, to lose that right.
> 
> JustMe, I am glad you got that gold back safely, and hope you understand how to treat your waste, if not we have a good thread on that in the safety section "dealing with waste".
> I also hope you lose what seems to me to be an attitude, and join us in our search to learn more, we all make mistakes, and non of us know it all, and we can all help each other to learn more.



Ok one last attempt to explain my position:

There are no 'ratings' that I can see here as to how 'expert' of advice I am getting from a member. One of you could be the world's foremost chemists with a nobel prize under your belt. Another could be a whack job from New Jersey who just happens to know how to speak chemicalese. And another could be a malicious person intent on teaching lessons to idiots.

So if you are right and I know nothing, and you wanted to help me, it would seem that allowing ME to choose amongst a set of solutions provided by varying degrees of expert advice, could be dangerous. After all, who am I to judge who here is best suited to advise me and the 'most right' on how to go about the fix for the problem I presented, especially if I know nothing as you suggest.

And multiple solutions were presented.

One solution offered was to introduce sulfuric acid to the concoction, one was to read Hokes book, (which in itself could have been a problem because I might still not have understood the solution given in the book if in fact I am such a novice), and another was to cement it down using copper. I tried copper and it did nothing. No answer was ever given to my question about using zinc, and that ended up being what worked instead of copper to cement the solution down.

And as I stated before, the problem appears to have been due to a film on the glassware, not the processes I used. How did I find that film? I kept trying to see if I could see an upper phase using all kinds of different lights and lighting angle, and finally noticed above the solution line a silverish-tanish-yet-clear looking coating on the glass. Since fully cleaning the glassware, I have successfully repeated all 3 processes, and all have been successful. (They were 3 separate batches that ended being mixed together, not one that I kept using different chemicals trying to get the gold out of like Solar seems to think).

The glassware had been used in a process of separating Nb from a complex ore. And a few custom chemical approaches to simplify it's removal, one of which was cyclohexanone (yes I know that is used commonly for that purpose, I meant that it was one of the chemicals used and probably what was in the film that may have helped cause the problem with the BDG, not the novel approach I was attempting. And although intriquing, I simply don't have the time to sort out what exactly that film was that did this or if it was the alignment of the moon and jupiter)...

I was not the only one to joke, and it's true, some people do not have a sense of humor.


----------



## Geo

JustMe, have you ever heard of a "stock pot"? if you read Hoke's book, you would have. a stock pot is a container that you place all of your spent solutions you have precipitated from. believe it or not, you cant get it all on the first go around. this pot is a mixture of just about everything or at least everything you have worked on. its a big mess of chemicals and compounds. Hoke teaches us how to use and finally recover values from the stock pot that would have been tossed out otherwise.

what you were dealing with may resemble what might come from a stock pot. a mix of all the chemicals you worked with that still contained values. gold chloride is acidic and will cement out of solution on copper. it may have been slow because of everything mixed with it but it will cement out. notice where i said "with patience" before. it takes time. sometimes weeks to cement all the values out of solution. if you dont see an immediate reaction doesnt mean that its not happening. when you tried to cement on copper, did you heat the solution? it makes the reaction speed up.


----------



## JustMe

If it is of any value, the copper immediately turned black AND got an oily coating on it, then the reaction stopped. Obviously the BDG. Not really any way for it to react further. Essentially it was working in a similar fashion to a chelate (that the right word ... preferential wetting?), gold trying to coat the copper, pulling the BDG with it and covering the surface of the copper, keeping any further solution from coming in contact with it. Did I get that wrong?

At least to me when I saw it happen, it was fairly clear what was going on.

The solution was hot (about 85C if I recall).

Yes, I have heard of a stock pot. My 'problem' and it's similarity to a stock pot somehow didn't make connection in my brain for some reason though.


----------



## Geo

then you had the answer to your problem all along. BDG is an organic compound. by evaporating to a syrup after adding sulfuric acid would have removed the BDG from the mix. re-hydrating with hcl would have left you a cleaner solution to work with. BDG is messy and oily and should never be used in equipment used for other processes. lesson learned on that one. after re-hydrating, the BDG would be carbon and would need to be filtered out before precipitating. preparation of materials is key. knowing what you have in solution is step one, knowing how to deal with them is step two. you knew you had an organic compound in solution so you should have known it had to be removed before precipitating. point is, study the process you are going to attempt, even (especially) if you have done it before and it didnt work right. from the way you described it, you had three failed attempts in a row. did you have any refines that were successful? 

the 30 ml's of BDG that you put in the mix should have settled out given enough time. did you filter the solution of all the sand before you mixed the BDG with the solution? this may sound funny but the sand will hold the oil. if you left the sand in the mix, did you put the material in a graduated cylinder and vibrate?


----------



## JustMe

Well, as I stated earlier, the BDG never separated (even after a week) on that (1 of 2) failed trials of a new process.
What was perplexing was the fact that a process I have repeated probably 40 times at least, my normal method of using AR and SMB to recover gold, also failed just prior to the ferrous sulfate attempt and the SMB attempt. I was convinced it was chemistry complexities in the ore sample that was from a different source than normal. After all, ores can have all kinds of stuff in them! I have been lucky for the most part all along, that I have been able to recover gold from black sands and ores using AR without much difficulty prior to this.

And yes ... as I said, 40 successful (without any failures) refines prior, and 3 successful since I cleaned the glassware. The film on the glassware was NOT however BDG.

The balck sand/crushed ore particles had long since been removed from all these batches. There were a few small particles that I got in there, but that was probably contamination that occurred somehow since it's been sitting around in the shop while I pondered my next step. The sand in the solution would have amounted to a few mg.

The filtered clear solution was placed in a separatory funnel, BDG added, and shaken for a few minutes to collect up the gold chloride. It was then left to sit ... and sit ... manifest any emulsions or upper phase. It was as if it just vanished into solution. The original solution was AR, 3parts HCl and 1 part Nitric. So the things that were 'unusual' in that batch were:

New and unknown ore chemistry (sulfides, tellurides, arsenic, etc., possibly in it)
Film on glass discovered later
BDG that was not BDG or perhaps watered down somehow by someone unscrupulous trying to make more profit. Never used BDG before so I am not 100% sure that it was. It's what I paid for and bought and that is what the label on the bottle said, but do I really know it was BDG or 100% BDG? No. If it was somehow diluted down, that could explain that in the end I only had a few ML to soak up and not 30ml. Who knows.

So where did the rest of the BDG go anyhow? - 30ML originally there, sopped up around 2 or 3, nothing left in there now and solution was evaporated down to 150ml or so from 1000ml. No liquid was removed otherwise.


----------



## solar_plasma

> Never used BDG before so I am not 100% sure that it was. It's what I paid for and bought and that is what the label on the bottle said, but do I really know it was BDG or 100% BDG?



I think I've read about bad BDG before on the forum. Sorry, if I misunderstood you earlier. It is also my fault, that I didn't see, you have posted under "
Board index ‹ MINING & METAL DETECTING ‹ Prospecting, Mining, Ore Concentrates & Geochemical" and just wondered when you said "minerals". I have no clue about ores and thought, you were processing e-waste. If someone gets such a mess with e-waste, he just do not know, what he is doing.


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## Harold_V

butcher said:


> Why would anyone ask for advice then not want to accept the advice given, thinking they know more and do not need it, or to bite back at those trying to help?


That's real simple, my worthy friend. He isn't seeking advice, he's seeking endorsement, an attempt to display how *clever* he is. That, in my estimation, is a big mistake. I have little patience with *clever* people. 

*To JustMe*---serious up, and show due respect. Take your attitude far from here, or quietly remove yourself from the board. There will be no further warnings. 

What the hell is wrong with some of you guys?

Harold


----------



## JustMe

I have been reading these forums for years, and have searched your site many many times. I have a copy of Hoke. In all that time, I had never needed to post here. I am fully aware of how you work Harold. I have seen it over and over in numerous posts on your site. It is unlikely that you will allow this thread to remain, since rather than slink away as you preferred, I make this post.

I take offense at being made a fool publicly, or used as an unwilling example fitting into your private agenda or the brunt of a thinly veiled insult. It's called being a man Harold, sometimes we do have to stand up and be a man. If you wished to use my posts to set examples for others, you might have consulted me and asked if I could help you to do that and was willing to play along for the benefit to others.

This entire thread is unlikely to remain, so I have taken screenshots of the entire thread and will most likely post it on my mining related site with an interesting discussion of it there at some future date. There is something to be learned here.

I have already demonstrated here that many people are making assumptions, do not read fully and/or do not understand fully the question asked of them, and do not fully ask the appropriate questions required to get important missing information before giving advice. You're right. Someone will get hurt. You are going to hurt someone. And unfortunately you will blame them and not give it another thought. Also, CM Hoke is not a valid source for safety, either, so perhaps you could focus more attention in the advice you give on that. Tell the fool that he might blow himself up and what to have on hand in case he does!

Harold, as much as you hate to hear it ... you're wrong.

In fact, it might be possible that I did as much or more to contribute to the safety of novices, fools, beginners and others by pointing out the problem that you apparently have overlooked, being myopically focused on terminology and amateur psychiatry.

READ AND UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO GIVE ADVICE ON AND IF YOU DON'T HAVE ALL THE INFORMATION OR FACTS, ASK QUESTIONS TO BE SURE YOU GET IT AND ONLY GIVE ADVICE ONLY WHEN YOU ARE SURE. ASSUME NOTHING.


----------



## galenrog

I'm still trying to figure out why one would attempt gold recovery from heavy sand concentrate with AR. I know it can be done with success, but for me smelting is much easier. Later refining, if desired, seems more straightforward, with fewer complications.


----------



## jimdoc

JustMe said:


> I have taken screenshots of the entire thread and will most likely post it on my mining related site with an interesting discussion of it there at some future date.




Any chance of a link to this website? I may want to check it out at some future date.

Jim


----------



## JustMe

galenrog said:


> I'm still trying to figure out why one would attempt gold recovery from heavy sand concentrate with AR. I know it can be done with success, but for me smelting is much easier. Later refining, if desired, seems more straightforward, with fewer complications.



Because of the nature of the tone in this thread, I will not name my site. However, suffice it to say that I have developed a device which recovers gold much finer than people are used to dealing with, in significant enough quantity to be economically important. Generally the gold is recovered from placers, but some people using the device have hard rock mines.

Some of these people, although praising my device, have come to me asking "but how do we get the ultra fine gold out now?..."

I am trying to find an easy way for people to separate this ultra-fine gold without using mercury. Standard mechanical methods do not work well.

I have been fairly successful at simply eliminating as much iron as possible from the sands, roasting off the sulfides and using vinegar and drug store generic hydrogen peroxide to eliminate any lead. AR then seems usually to work quite well. All simple steps without much inherent dangers. If they will at least follow standard acid handling precautions and do the work in the great outdoors in a safe location.

Or do you prefer that I suggest they use:
Mercury
Cyanide
or buy a furnace, crucibles, tongs, flux, etc., THEN smelt and THEN use AR (and inquartation most likely)

Simplest option is for them to send it in and pay to have it recovered. But there seems to be a perception among many that a lot of refiners are not honest and will steal their gold.

Trivia note: The word boil, boils, boiled, etc, is used hundreds of times in CM Hoke's book.


----------



## Geo

it seems to me like this has happened before. JustMe, are you a former member? its a weird coincident that another new member would lay into Harold like that when there were much easier targets to take on. it seems that Harold was baited into making his presence known, and then, JustMe ambushes him and tears into him like it is something personal. 

for any new member following this thread, Harold and any other moderator has put in his time here and deserves respect from the members because they gave their time with no gain to share their knowledge. helping to keep us safe, instructing us on how to do the things we love so much. when another members attacks one of the moderators, it should be insulting to all of us equally. unless some proof is offered up front for all to see, any accusations should be treated as rumor and dismissed just as quickly.


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## solar_plasma

Justme.....do you sometimes feel like:


> characterized by unwarranted feelings of self-importance. They have a sense of entitlement and demonstrate grandiosity in their beliefs and behavior. They have a strong need for admiration, but lack feelings of empathy for others. These qualities are usually defenses against a deep feeling of inferiority and of being unloved. (wikipedia)


 ??

If this should be your problem, and I say if....then nobody here can help you and you will not find, what you are looking for. And if you find, what you are looking for, you will still not feel better.


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## JustMe

Geo said:


> it seems to me like this has happened before. JustMe, are you a former member? its a weird coincident that another new member would lay into Harold like that when there were much easier targets to take on. it seems that Harold was baited into making his presence known, and then, JustMe ambushes him and tears into him like it is something personal.
> 
> for any new member following this thread, Harold and any other moderator has put in his time here and deserves respect from the members because they gave their time with no gain to share their knowledge. helping to keep us safe, instructing us on how to do the things we love so much. when another members attacks one of the moderators, it should be insulting to all of us equally. unless some proof is offered up front for all to see, any accusations should be treated as rumor and dismissed just as quickly.



Not even going to respond to this gibberish. You are more than welcome to remove my account. Good-day gentlemen.


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## butcher

Sigh,
I would not delete this thread, as it does show you do not know what you are talking about, you do not have much knowledge in the processes you attempted, it also shows that you believe you know things you do not, while it does sound like you have learned a little about the processes, you do not understand them well enough to be successful, You make a big mess that anyone who has studied Hokes book would not have made in the first place, then ask for help, when you get suggestions that could help you, you begin to get argumentative, and begin attacking members, when you are brought to light on this, you begin to attack on of the forums most knowledgeable member who could give you the best advice, it does sound like you have maybe been banned from this forum before, if so probably for this same behavior.

Your attitude and attack on Harold has sealed it for me You will be banned from this forum, not only do you not wish to learn, you are just creating trouble here, on this forum.

P.S. read Hoke’s book again, you do not know what it say’s, she did not boil solutions she evaporated, yes she used the word boil, but she used a steam bath heat source that could not reach a temperature that would boil the solution, in fact she even warns against boiling the solution, read the chapter about losses and why you should not boil a solution (page 227) is one example in her book.


----------



## eeTHr

Geo said:


> it seems to me like this has happened before. JustMe, are you a former member? its a weird coincident that another new member would lay into Harold like that when there were much easier targets to take on. it seems that Harold was baited into making his presence known, and then, JustMe ambushes him and tears into him like it is something personal.



Now that you mention it, there are a couple former members with similar MOs, that I can think of.

One was, I think, a couple years ago. He would come on like he was a super chemist, suggesting various kinds of "new" processes which he at first claimed to be wonderful. Then when it was pointed out to him, by some of the more experienced members here, that even if his suggested processes worked, that they were way over-consuming of time and materials to do them. And there were also several safety hazards with his suggestions.

He then backpeddled to the position that he wasn't trying to find better processes, but just experimenting to see what was technically possible.

Soon it was discovered that there were parts of his test "proofs" that could not have actually succeeded. It became apparent that he was not actually doing the processes which he was describing, but rather was merely theorizing, either with good intent or not, and yet stating that he had actually performed them and stating their _imagined_ results.

Number two was last year or so. He claimed to be a doctor, I think.

Anyone please correct me if I am wrong about these two, but I think they were both eventually banned, after much commotion among board members.

Do either of these personas seem similar to the subject user?


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## Palladium

You know we try and not be judgmental here on the forum regardless of how it may look, but damed if folks ain't making it hard.


----------



## NobleMetalWorks

If you do not understand how to use BDG properly, you have no business using it. Why you thought after using BDG you would be able to precipitate anything from your solution is beyond me.

If you successfully extracted Au from your Ar solution using BDG, but did not wash your pregnant BDG, you might not see a full reduction of Au by Oxalic Acid. This is a step I find many people skip or ignore all together when using BDG. BDG will collect other impurities, these other impurities are easy to remove but must be removed before you attempt an oxalic acid reduction.

In your pregnant AR solution you should be adding 2-3 times the amount of AR solution, again in DI water. After adding the correct amount of BDG you should agitate for at least 1 minute. After agitation, pour into a separatory funnel and allow the BDG to accumulate on the top of the solution, you should be left with a solution of AR on the bottom that is now barren, and BDG which will be gold in color unless it has carried over a lot of other impurities from your AR solution. I have seen the color range from gold, to light green but have been told that some people see other color. In any case your BDG needs to be washed now. I know that sounds strange, but in order to get a good oxalic acid reduction, you should remove all other impurities from the pregnant BDG solution. 

I do this by mixing a 50/50 solution of HCl and DI water. Add the solution of HCl into the BDG and again agitate. Pour through a separatory funnel again and allow the BDG to once again separate from the HCl solution, you will now notice that some color has transferred from the BDG to the HCl. These are the other impurities that carried over into the BDG when you agitated it with your AR solution. Retain this, and test for values accordingly.

Your pregnant BDG solution should now be gold in color, if there is still other color wash again with your HCl solution until it is gold in color.

Heat the BDG but DO NOT BOIL, heat the Oxalic Acid you dissolved in DI water, but again DO NOT BOIL. Try to keep both at the same temperature, once all the Oxalic acid is dissolved, slowly pour into the pregnant BDG solution and again keep on heat, but DO NOT BOIL. Using a stir bar is a good way to insure you are getting good exposure, if you do not stir the solution the gold will reduce between the BDG layer and the Oxalic Acid solution and stay there. Precipitation will start almost Immediately but can take several hours to complete.

The important thing here is to wash your pregnant BDG solution with a solution of HCl, and to agitate while reducing the Au from BDG, and to keep the solution on heat, but not to boil.

Scott

Edited, there seems to be a lot of mis-information about BDG in this thread.



JustMe said:


> The odd thing is that I can not find the butyl diglyme upper phase, even now that I have eliminated most of the liquid. It's possible that it has evaporated, but I'm not certain of that. I don't know offhand what it's vapor pressure is.



I have been using BDG to good effect, and have not yet encountered any evaporation, but I don't think a pregnant solution of BDG would do so anyway. It's an oil based solvent, this is the reason it floats, and it is not very soluble in water, I see very little loss and use it over and over.



JustMe said:


> Yes, I heated the oxalic acid and the aqua regia solution. I attempted to use copper to cement it all out and it did nothing. There was no reaction. I added a small amount of zinc powder to the solution, and it appears to have worked, and now the stannous test shows only a slight coloration change when added instead of a dark inky purple-black look so most of the gold is now out of solution.



I'm a little confused at this point, are you saying that you had BDG in solution, then added oxalic acid to the BDG/AR solution? Before you add Oxalic Acid to BDG, you have to separate the BDG from the AR solution, clean it, and then heat it, add the heated oxalic acid solution, etc. If you had BDG in an AR solution and then attempted to cement out the Au with Cu, it would do NOTHING because the Au would be in your now pregnant BDG which should be floating around on top somewhere.



JustMe said:


> Not sure how to go about removing the BDG at this point. Now I do see an upper phase which amounts to a few oily looking patches on the surface of the solution. Certainly nowhere near the original 30ml I began with. Maybe just a couple ml now. I suppose I can soak it up with a cotton ball and discard that way.



If you soaked up your BDG that was floating around on the top of your solution, and threw the cotton swabs away, you just discarded your Au. BDG does a wonderful job of extracting Au from AuCl solutions, even if dirty.



JustMe said:


> I searched Hoke's book, 365 pages and found nothing about Butyl Diglyme, or Butyl Carbitol or Diethylene Glycol Butyl Ether, etc.



You are not going to find anything in Hoke's book on BDG, it wasn't even discovered to be effective in extracting Au from AuCl until the 90s I believe. Hoke was long dead and buried before BDG was ever used. BDG is an organic solvent, Hoke deals with Inorganic Chemistry, not Organic Chemistry.



JustMe said:


> Update on what's going on here:
> BDG is gone now. Tested the solution several times after adding the zinc powder and it was virtually free of gold.
> Used a buchner filter, and re-tested the liquid which is now a nice lime to light emerald green (used to be a deep golden yellow). The liquid tests positive for a lot of gold, but prior to filtering it was free of gold for the most part.
> 
> But at least now the BDG is gone and the sediments are gone. Now maybe I can get somewhere.
> Sulfuric acid now and boil it down?



If you had a solution with BDG, and removed the BDG, dropped everything lower on the reactivity scale with Zinc Powder, you would have NOTHING in solution. Not only that, but whatever powder you dropped with Zinc, would have NO Au, you threw your Au out, whatever there might have been, with your BDG.

Have you tested your Stannous Chloride against a known standard solution of AgCl? Because if you did not, it seems your Stannous Chloride is giving you false indications. 



JustMe said:


> Black sands were processed. Magnetics were removed with rare earth magnet. Hydrochloric acid used to dissolve away additional materials. Roasted to remove sulfides.



You should roast prior to using any acids!



JustMe said:


> Remaining sands were placed in a beaker and nitric acid and hydrochloric added in a ratio of 3:1.



You should be making small additions of HNO3, not making up a solution at 3:1. If you didn't roast before using HCl, you could have all kinds of things going on, then if you made up a mixture of Ar according to 3:1, you possibly could have used up all the HNO3 in secondary reactions before ever dissolving any Au that may have been present. When you have an excess of HNO3, your secondary reactions burn the HNO3 faster than if you made small additions over a period of time. As well, you would have added enough HNO3 to dissolve whatever metals you had in your material, and not needed the Urea later.



JustMe said:


> Was let set for a few hours. Liquid was filtered then put into a separatory funnel. 30 ml of BDG were added and it was shaken vigorously for several minutes, and allowed to sit. Upper phase never showed up.



You should have added 2-3 times the amount of AR solution, in DI water, If the solution was shaken vigorously for several minutes in an AR solution that was no diluted, and contained Urea, and the BDG was fractionated into small beads of oily solvent, the thick solution that has a totally different PH than what normally it should, would take an extended length of time to accumulate and float to the top. You simply didn't wait long enough.



JustMe said:


> I decided to separate the top portion anyhow, feeling that maybe it's coloration was too similar and index of refraction too similar to see easily. .



The BDG is an oily solvent, you can plainly see when it separates. Just as easy as you can see oil in water.



JustMe said:


> Then took the top 30ml or so and put in a separate beaker, mixed oxalic acid in distilled water and heated, and heated the AR as well and mixed the two



You didn't remove any BDG unless it was a very small amount, you didn't wash the pregnant BDG, you added your Oxalic Acid solution into your AR which is not going to reduce any Au in your solution because you only have, if any, a very small amount of BDG in your 30 ml of AR solution. Not only that, but by adding your Oxalic Acid solution to your AR solution you have diluted it's effectiveness.



JustMe said:


> No precipitation. Let set for a few days to see if separation would happen and it did not either in the top liquid I added the oxalic acid to or the bulk of the liquid that was set aside. That's when I put it on the shelf for later study.





JustMe said:


> That I might make some explosives with nitric in solution which is GONE because it has been evaporated off because people 'helping' here are not reading what I wrote.



Yeah, you don't have anymore HNO3 left, and could have converted SOME of it to Urea Nitrate, which is not something you want to be doing. If you did make Urea Nitrate, you wouldn't have any free HNO3 left, duh...



JustMe said:


> Oh and I solved the issue but I bet you guys knew all along that that film on the glassware was causing the issue ... right? So what exotic film that might be almost imperceptible on glassware might cause this to happen AND affect butyl diglyme.



I think your failure with BDG lies strictly with how you used it, not in how it might have reacted to any minute amounts of some exotic film not cleaned off your lab glass, that you seem unwilling to express what it might have been. If you claim it was unknown I will loose what little respect I may have had for you. Arguing your point while pointing a finger at an "unknown" is not factual evidence, is not empirical data, is not good chemistry and certainly not good science. I'm going to stop right here I have heard enough. You are either outright misleading people because you are embarrassed by what other people consider mistakes that could be easily avoided, or utterly without the experience and self education required to be using the methods you have mentioned. You should not be assaying by dissolving material into any solution, you should be assaying properly. You shouldn't be using BDG because it's painfully obvious that you have no clue how it's suppose to be used. You should be processing your material correctly, not digesting in acid, then roasting, that makes no sense. You shouldn't be adding unknown results with unknown results and then adding more to create complex solutions, specially when you have no clue about the potential risks in doing so, SPECIALLY when you could be unknowingly creating volatile and explosive solutions.

I cannot even imagine a situation where you would feel justified for people pointing out your mistakes, and not giving you the answers you are looking for. Not when you have not been clear about what exactly you have done, or how you have done it, and it's painfully obvious that you are not processing material correctly, and combining things you shouldn't be. You want someone to hold your hand and tell you what to do, and expect them to guide you, when you don't even know how to properly conduct yourself on this forum, nor how to properly process the material you are attempting to.

BDG works amazingly well, but before you go skipping off to attempt using BDG again, I would suggest learning a lot more about the more common ways of processing material. Educate yourself so you can effectively communicate with people on this forum.

I'm disgusted

Scott


----------



## its-all-a-lie

JustMe said:


> Geo said:
> 
> 
> 
> it seems to me like this has happened before. JustMe, are you a former member? its a weird coincident that another new member would lay into Harold like that when there were much easier targets to take on. it seems that Harold was baited into making his presence known, and then, JustMe ambushes him and tears into him like it is something personal.
> 
> for any new member following this thread, Harold and any other moderator has put in his time here and deserves respect from the members because they gave their time with no gain to share their knowledge. helping to keep us safe, instructing us on how to do the things we love so much. when another members attacks one of the moderators, it should be insulting to all of us equally. unless some proof is offered up front for all to see, any accusations should be treated as rumor and dismissed just as quickly.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Not even going to respond to this gibberish. You are more than welcome to remove my account. Good-day gentlemen.
Click to expand...


What happened here? The definition of respond is as follows: 

re·spond 
/riˈspänd/
Verb: Say something in reply.
Noun: A half-pillar or half-pier attached to a wall to support an arch, esp. at the end of an arcade.
Synonyms
verb. answer - reply - react - rejoin - return
noun. response - reply - answer - replication - rejoinder


----------



## JHS

Hello,
This is exactly what makes the search so hard to
find the information that is required to further
one's education on the subject of this discussion.
one page of value,and two pages of soap opera.
name calling is not part of refining.
I AGREE THAT HAROLD WAS CORRECT IN CORRECTING BOILING.
HE SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ATTACKED FOR THIS.
But the rest of all the non esental comments, makes it that much harder to
find the information we seek

john


----------



## Harold_V

Needless to say, I'm late getting back to this post, which has been handled more than adequately by other readers and our trusted moderator, butcher. Still, I have comments to add. 



JustMe said:


> I have been reading these forums for years, and have searched your site many many times. I have a copy of Hoke. In all that time, I had never needed to post here. I am fully aware of how you work Harold. I have seen it over and over in numerous posts on your site.


Interesting, but the facts betray your claim. If you had been reading for years, you'd know this is NOT my site, nor do I lead anyone to believe it may be. I am but a moderator on this board, assigned to ensure that it operates without problems. 



> It is unlikely that you will allow this thread to remain, since rather than slink away as you preferred, I make this post.


If you had the slightest idea of what I expected, you'd know that I would not delete this thread, nor should it be deleted, as it stands as a perfect example of how new readers should not behave---assuming they have any hopes of remaining on the board, which operates exceedingly well without the likes of you, and has for many years. You, sir, are akin to a mindless child in junior high school, proven through your posting on a subject about which you know very little, and lack the wisdom to be advised by those who do. As for slinking away, only you can determine if this board has value to you, or not. Wise individuals who hope to learn quickly understand that this board, unlike the vast majority of them on the internet, does not tolerate rudeness, nor do we allow misinformation to stand. We expect that if a new reader hopes to profit by the ability to post here, that said reader will be on his best behavior and appreciative of those who spend their valuable time trying to assist others. Clearly, none of that is shown in your responses. 

Does anyone need to be reminded that being on this board is not a right? It is a privilege extended to you by the rightful owner, and it is my job to ensure that that privilege is not abused. It is a job I take seriously, as if the owner was my own son. 



> I take offense at being made a fool publicly, or used as an unwilling example fitting into your private agenda or the brunt of a thinly veiled insult.['quote]
> Then you should have considered the old addage, "it is better to be though a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt". You, sir, are a fool.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It's called being a man Harold, sometimes we do have to stand up and be a man. If you wished to use my posts to set examples for others, you might have consulted me and asked if I could help you to do that and was willing to play along for the benefit to others.
> 
> 
> 
> We do not beg readers to cooperate. If they cherish their presence on this board, they willingly cooperate. What they don't do is "stand up like a man", which is a sure sign of your childish mind. You have chosen your ego over your opportunity to be a member of this board. Not a problem. We've dismissed many like you, and I expect many more will, likewise, be dismissed. The board is better for your discharge, and our life goes on. You, by sharp contrast, can seek information (or display your lack of knowledge) elsewhere. However, you'll come to understand that you have just killed the goose that lays the golden eggs, as there is no other source of reliable information at your disposal. You won the battle, but you lost the war.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This entire thread is unlikely to remain, so I have taken screenshots of the entire thread and will most likely post it on my mining related site with an interesting discussion of it there at some future date. There is something to be learned here.
> 
> Click to expand...
Click to expand...

Yes, there is something to be learned here, but I expect you'll not learn the lesson. Your type never does. 
Screen shots are of no value, as this thread will remain, and it will remain without being edited. We have nothing to hide, nor anything for which we owe an apology. It is you, sir, who is out of line, which will become clear in the future. 

It never ceases to amaze me how far some folks will go out of their way to ruin what is a good thing for themselves, all in the name of ego. Had this individual done some listening instead of endlessly running his mouth, he would have been rewarded with considerable assistance. Instead, he chose to rebuild the forum to one of his choosing. To that end, we, here, do not permit the monkeys to run the zoo. 

Harold


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## Harold_V

JHS said:


> Hello,
> This is exactly what makes the search so hard to
> find the information that is required to further
> one's education on the subject of this discussion.
> one page of value,and two pages of soap opera.
> name calling is not part of refining.
> I AGREE THAT HAROLD WAS CORRECT IN CORRECTING BOILING.
> HE SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ATTACKED FOR THIS.
> But the rest of all the non esental comments, makes it that much harder to
> find the information we seek
> 
> john


And it's the reason why we ban readers who do not heel. We have a strong policy on this board of not permitting behavior that causes disruptions. When a reader is corrected, the only acceptable response is one of cooperation. If that isn't forthcoming, you can assume the responsible party will be banned, as has been the case. 

Harold


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## Harold_V

JustMe said:


> Because of the nature of the tone in this thread, I will not name my site. However, suffice it to say that I have developed a device which recovers gold much finer than people are used to dealing with, in significant enough quantity to be economically important.


Right! You, who hasn't enough sense to not use AR for processing an ore, has developed a revolutionary device to extract gold when tens of thousands who have gone before you were not successful. 

I expect that device is akin to your web site. All in your mind. And you hope to punish us by not allowing us access! My, my, my, what will we do?

Harold


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## solar_plasma

> JHS wrote:Hello,
> This is exactly what makes the search so hard to
> find the information that is required to further
> one's education on the subject of this discussion.
> one page of value,and two pages of soap opera.
> name calling is not part of refining.



Whenever more than 2 persons interact, you will likely see 3/4 of the time soap opera: *forming, storming, norming,* performing. When you work together with people you know and have worked with before, the forming of the team, the storming who are they, who is me, what do we talk about, where do we stand and the constitution of norms are already done and you are mostly in the state of stable performing. 

I would say, this is almost not possible on a living forum with new members all the time. But the fact is, the soap opera itself has brought up some goldnuggets like among others noblemetal's long explaination of what went wrong in the process, something worth printing and put into the chapter about BDG. Also The way the mods and merited old members communicate and handle social problems and their rhetoric contains some goldnuggets, I at least learn from.

I agree, the soap operas make it hard to find the goldnuggets afterwards, but isn't it that what goldnuggets _a priori_ are, - hard to find?


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## Geo

JustMe said:


> My solution to the problem:
> I dried the mixture out and then added BDG directly to it, capturing the auric chloride, put it through a filter to remove the particulate matter and then dropped out the gold as powder using hot oxalic acid (also having heated the BDG. I left out a few of the other obvious steps too.)



for anyone still interested on why he failed with his recovery, its in this quote. he dried the solution completely and then added the BDG. i had to read the entire thread again to see if i could find some very obvious mistake that would account for the loss of the BDG and its inability to capture the gold. he added the BDG to a dry mixture and then poured that through a filter. he will never be accused of being too intelligent.

goodbye to bad rubbish.


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## Platdigger

I agree solar_plasma, NobleMetalWorks post about BDG makes this thread more than worth it.


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## JHS

Update on what's going on here:
BDG is gone now. Tested the solution several times after adding the zinc powder and it was virtually free of gold.
Used a buchner filter, and re-tested the liquid which is now a nice lime to light emerald green (used to be a deep golden yellow). The liquid tests positive for a lot of gold, but prior to filtering it was free of gold for the most part.

But at least now the BDG is gone and the sediments are gone. Now maybe I can get somewhere.
Sulfuric acid now and boil it down?Top Report this postReply with quote

why would the solution change to green?
If BDG lockes the gold in its matrix,how could removing the BDG allow the solution to test posative?
just trying to learn and understand.
john


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## NobleMetalWorks

JHS said:


> why would the solution change to green?
> If BDG lockes the gold in its matrix,how could removing the BDG allow the solution to test posative?
> just trying to learn and understand.
> john



It's really difficult to understand how the OP came to any of the conclusions he did, or produce any of the results because frankly, some of them are impossible.

However, if the solution was gold in color prior to whatever else he did, and he removed the BDG and the solution is now emerald green, it could be he removed the Au with the BDG, and is left with a solution of other metals like Cu for example, that would color the solution green.

Some people associate the color green with Au, but that's only because so much of the material that is processed has Cu associated with it.

He might have picked up on that somewhere on another post, and assumed it meant Au. It's obvious that he didn't test properly with Stannous Chloride, it's also obvious he didn't have a standard solution to test again, and it's further obvious that he either did not do what he said, and stated his process incorrectly on this thread, or is outright lying. 

As a reader you can snip away 99% of what he said, just leave his name and that would be the only value in everything he has posted, in this particular thread, other than a good solid lesson in what NOT to do, and what NOT to post, and what attitude is not accepted by the moderators.

After I got half way through his posts about what he did, and BDG, etc. I finally decided that it wasn't worth attempting to make sense of what he posted because it just simply wasn't possible for him to do what he claims he did.

Scott


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## eeTHr

I also noticed that there are several places in his posts, like the use of "boiling," which strongly contradict his claim of having read this forum for a number of years. I still think that he may have been one, or both, of the two previous member that I mentioned above. But who knows? 8)


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## Harold_V

If he's an ex reader, he has a new ISP.  
He thought himself clever in not disclosing who he was, but all individuals who post leave behind their identity. He's from Arizona, a known hot spot for scammers. 

Back in the late 1900's, one of the common scams to come from that area was the discussion of gold ore that was exceedingly high in content, but would not fire assay. It was reported that the gold was there, but it was "immature"--not yet fully formed as gold. 

Oh, hell yeah! That happens all the time. 

Anyone want to buy a bridge? I have a nice one for sale. Stone. Used to be in London. 

Harold


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## butcher

How could an ore that will not fire assay, be leached. if the chemical action in the flux melt can not extract gold, then a wet acid leach would have just as much or even more of a problem getting any gold.

If an assay does not show gold either the flux chemistry is wrong, or there is no gold.


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## Geo

well, you cant. remember David whats-his-name? he was talking about the same kind of crap. about gold that hadnt become gold yet. nano gold or phase shifted gold that appears from a different plane of existence. he said he could be a millionaire in a month a couple times over if he wanted to.


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## Harold_V

Geo said:


> well, you cant. remember David whats-his-name? he was talking about the same kind of crap. about gold that hadnt become gold yet. nano gold or phase shifted gold that appears from a different plane of existence. he said he could be a millionaire in a month a couple times over if he wanted to.


But he was much happier living in squalor, and being broke. Makes sense to me.

Harold


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## justme2

please note, just me and just me 2 are two different people. I'm (justme2) am a neofite and know it. I am taking baby steps here and study this forum almost daily, sometimes for hours.

If attacked unfairly I will respond, but, I respect this forum and i'ts learned members. I appreciate the knowledge here to the point I'm not sure, if I was the holder of it, I would be as free with it as the members of this forum are. 

On my other forum, ask me a reasonable half way intelligent question and I will give you the best answer I can. Ask me a stupid question that clearly indicates you have made no effort to study your craft and, you will get an answer very similar to those you would get here. just my .02. mcw


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## Long Shot

Jeez, all of this is pretty painful. I do agree with the initiating author - PM might be a better answer to all of this. Just sayin'. Cheers all, let's try to be happier. :roll:


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