# gold will not precipitate



## angel0o (May 24, 2014)

hi, im new to recovering gold, I read, watch videos, get the acids and safety gear. I got my hands to nitric acid 42 Be 68%, hydrochloric acid 20 Be 32%. I separate gold pins from CPUs and cell phones as cleaned as possible, in a glass coffee containet with the gold pins I added nitric acid 42 Be 68%, I waited until there was no more reaction, collected the remaining gold flakes with a filter wash it with purified water, in a clean glass container with the gold flakes filtered and clean as possible I added 
aqua regia one part nitric acid, three parts hydrochloric acid, I let it react overnight, then I will add urea to neutralize the nitric acid until there is not more reaction, I added purified water and then when I add sodium sulfite, it starts foaming and a red orange foam starts forming but it disolves into the solution again, then I'll add more sodium sulfite and I get the same reaction, red and white foam, I followed the same directions as it's described and I get the same reaction, what I noticed the nitric acid changed to yellowish color, I used stannous chloride to detect gold and I get a light purple color in a cotton swab, this is my firs post and my first fail in gold refining, any help will he greatly appreciated. by the way, im a cell phone and computer tech and I love to collect stones and gold and silver and other precious metals, im aware of the money currency and from time to time read about the money market.


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## butcher (May 24, 2014)

angel0o,
Welcome to the forum.

You have made the same mistake most of us have, before we found this forum, (and spent many hours to learn this science of how to properly recover and refine precious metals).

It sounds like you found a little information on recovery and refining, and believe this science is easy, all you had to do is follow a few simple instructions and the chemistry experiment would give you back your gold.

You most likely have way too much nitric acid, and by now I suspect way too many other chemicals, and contaminates involved, trying to recover your gold from this batch can be done several ways, I think the easiest for you at this point is to cement the values with copper, rinse and dry the powders recovered, and store them in a glass jar and label them, so you know what the jar may contain when you are ready to recover and refine the values.

First on the list of things to study is dealing with waste found in the safety section.
So that you can safely deal with the toxic solution you have now.

While in the safety section, you will learn how to keep yourself and others safer from the deadly fumes and solutions, how to safely recover and refine with the dangerous chemistry involved.

Then study the forum to learn how to properly recover and refine precious metals.
Learn the proper way of using aqua regia, and the other methods used in recovery and refining.

Down load Hoke's book, (found in the book section of the forum), reading it and doing the getting acquainted experiments will help tremendously to be able to understand much of what we discuss, and help you to get a better understanding of recovery and refining. 

Forget what you learned on the World Wide Web; begin to learn the finer points of this complicated science.
Some other places to begin learning is with the forums guide to the forum, spend some time taking the tour, , and the general reaction list, both found in the general chat section.

The search function on the forum will be very helpful, you can find thousands of posts that deal with the very problem you have right now, and explain how get out of the problem, or how not to get into the problem in the first place, most any question you can think of concerning recovery or refining can be found by using the search, it can be a very helpful tool with your studies.

I suggest learning how to use nitric acid wisely, when using it in aqua regia, so that after its job is done you have little or no free nitric left in solution to deal with, learn better de-NOxing methods.

Forget using urea, if you need a chemical use sulfamic acid, there are several other methods that will work well, to remove nitric acid when you have added too much, evaporation method see Hokes book for details, using gold to consume excess nitric...

The use of Urea can be dangerous, and the danger may show up in your waste stream also, Urea does not work that well, and many times will contaminate your solutions (if this was fertilizer grade urea it was meant to be put on dirt, not in a clean solution during refining gold in solution.

Learn how to properly prepare your scrap, and recover the gold, before trying to refine it, so that you have removed most all of the non metals, organics and base metals so that you do not dissolve them with your gold.

Study it is the best way to learn, to become a precious metal refiner.


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## angel0o (Jun 17, 2014)

Hi! Im sorry it took so long to reply this post, i lost my password and due to my job schedule, expending time with my wife (mandatory), friends and things that need to be done i have very little time to get into gold refining, sometimes i found my self reading or making experiments at 2 am, really exited with a huge felling of challenge, fail and accomplishment, I have never feel this way, just hopping to get home, read and execute Hoke's book directions but sometimes i cant do it and i get kind of frustrated, its really hard to find time and now i realized how profitable my days could have been in the past before i found this forum, now i fully understand this words: "knowledge is power".

Ok, now getting into refining i got my hands into lab glassware, copperas, fine silver, 24k pure gold which im afraid to refine it with acids, sulfuric acid, Hoke's book reading and some other protective tools.
first i depopulate the cell phone boards as clean as posible, put in a glass container outdoors added nitric acid 42 Be 68% and let it react until next day, filter and wash the gold flakes with pure water, i was not able to separate the gold flakes from the board impurities like PCB and plastic flakes so i washed it with plenty of pure water. In a clean container with the gold flakes i added hydrochloric acid 20 Be 32% just enough to cover the gold flakes batch, then i added nitric acid 42 Be 68% little by little until there was no more reaction, I did not added premix aqua regia, the mixture got really hot so i let it work over night, next day i filtered the mixture and wash the paper filters with pure water, 10 mil sulfuric acid and let it work over night, next day i found a white sand like on the bottom of the reaction flax i was exited because i was following Hokes book directions and everything was going the right direction until i wanted to used baking soda to kill the nitric acid because i live in a apartment complex and i cant have a fuming hotplate in there so i decided to kill the the nitric acid with baking soda after adding baking soda the mixture turned cristal clear, gold did not dropde so i have to go back and read again Hoke's book, some how i convince a friend to let me use the hot plate in his backyard, i boiled the aqua regia in a reaction flask on a sand bed, i let the water evaporate and the mixture returned to clear yellow color, i added sulfuric accid as indicated some white and black sediments set on the bottom of the flask re filter, keep adding copperas and i saw red fumes coming from the nitric acid and copperas reaction, i kept adding copperas until there were no more red fumes coming out, the mixture biled until there were not more water vapors and no more red fumes from nitric acid, i kept adding hydrochloric acid 20 Be 32% as described in Hoke's book, and i added some sulfuric acid, the mixtures turned reddish orange color but no gold will dropped, when i added copperas there is a t reaction and bubbles forming while the mixture is hot almost boiling. This is what i have done so far, once more any help will be greatly appreciated.

About the bad aqua regia that i have i had to put that part in hold until i find a place to boil it, one thing that i dont understand is if i have to neutralize the hydrochloric acid as well and how do i neutralized, i put a piece of copper in a test container but id dissolved into the aqua regia, luckly it was a little test container. until now this is all what ia have done on refining. I really appreciate your help i hope i can do this all day but my job schedule dont allow me. this have become really interesting to me, learning a new totally new science.

Best regards: Angel0o


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## yar (Jun 17, 2014)

Stop, stop , stop everything you are doing. Why are use using nitric acid in an apartment complex!?!?!?! You received a reply to your original posting from one of the most knowledgable people here. He guided you in a direction which if you would have followed you could be on your way to recovering and refining precious metals. Instead you seem to have disregarded his advice and continued down your own path. 

Please follow the advice given before you hurt yourself or someone else.


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## necromancer (Jun 17, 2014)

angel0o said:


> i live in a apartment complex and i cant have a fuming hotplate in there
> Best regards: Angel0o




where are you doing all this science & chemistry ?
i am a little confused by some of the things you talk about


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## angel0o (Jun 18, 2014)

Im not doing it inside the apartment, as I said, I cant have a fuming hot plate inside my apartment. what I posted here last time I did it in a backyard, outdoors.


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## necromancer (Jun 18, 2014)

angel0o said:


> Im not doing it inside the apartment, as I said, I cant have a fuming hot plate inside my apartment. what I posted here last time I did it in a backyard, outdoors.



and how far are you from others while in the backyard ? can vapers get into others windows ?

safety is always a big concern, along with everyones health.
i dont want to have to send over my wife to tell you about the dangers of breathing in those fumes, she's not very nice sometimes :!:


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## angel0o (Jun 18, 2014)

Its a big backyard next to the railroad, so I do the chemistry all the way to the back at my friends yard.

When I use nitric acid I put a thick wet towel on top of the container to minimize the fumes


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## butcher (Jun 18, 2014)

angel0o,

Take time to study, collect your scrap, the time you put into learning will pay off later, like putting gold in your bank, trying the chemistry before your ready is a good way to lose those values, and hurt yourself or others trying.

Be careful, gold or precious metals do have value, but are not as valuable as your health.

The more you study the more successful you will be, and the safer you will be working with these dangerous procedures.

Have a great time educating yourself, the education can be as valuable as your gold.

Have fun and work safe.


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## heliman4141 (Jun 18, 2014)

angel0o said:


> hi, im new to recovering gold, I read, watch videos, get the acids and safety gear. I got my hands to nitric acid 42 Be 68%, hydrochloric acid 20 Be 32%. I separate gold pins from CPUs and cell phones as cleaned as possible, in a glass coffee containet with the gold pins I added nitric acid 42 Be 68%, I waited until there was no more reaction, collected the remaining gold flakes with a filter wash it with purified water, in a clean glass container with the gold flakes filtered and clean as possible I added
> aqua regia one part nitric acid, three parts hydrochloric acid, I let it react overnight, then I will add urea to neutralize the nitric acid until there is not more reaction, I added purified water and then when I add sodium sulfite, it starts foaming and a red orange foam starts forming but it disolves into the solution again, then I'll add more sodium sulfite and I get the same reaction, red and white foam, I followed the same directions as it's described and I get the same reaction, what I noticed the nitric acid changed to yellowish color, I used stannous chloride to detect gold and I get a light purple color in a cotton swab, this is my firs post and my first fail in gold refining, any help will he greatly appreciated. by the way, im a cell phone and computer tech and I love to collect stones and gold and silver and other precious metals, im aware of the money currency and from time to time read about the money market.





Everything stated above by the others you need to do & stop at this point.
After you recover your Gold from dissolving in acid & rinsing it you (MUST) dry it out in order to be able to weigh the PM so that you can figure out how much AR to make up. 
You have the ratio correct ie: 3 to 1 BUT, on the amount to use the standard norm is for every ounce of Gold you have you add 120ml of Hcl & 40ml of Nitric period............. no more. 
And even then, its best to measure out ea. acid seperatly, add the Hcl then only add about 3/4s of the nitric, watch it then add a few more drops of nitric till everything is dissolved. This way you don't over use nitric. One can't blindly just mixup a 3 to 1 AR without knowing exactly how much dry Gold there is. If you had say 10 dry grams then the AR mix would be only about 40ml Hcl & about 15ml of nitric etc...
Anyway, I think this is where you went wrong, you also want to add sulphric acid in the AR just before filtering it to remove lead & contaminants etc.
If I was you id stop everything, place some copper in it to drop all PMs & then re-do it all over again, this time weighing the Gold after its dried before doing the math on the AR to get it right.
Acid is expensive & you end up with way way too much waste to deal with so study & go minimual on all chemicals in the future bud.


Dave


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## angel0o (Jul 4, 2014)

Hi! I stopped everything what I was doing and started reading and pay more attention to hokes book, check posts with similar problems like mine and what butcher posted to help me to cement gold with copper. I figured out I screwed up again trying to neutralize the nitric acid with baking soda not knowing I will bring more problems to my self so I putted aside everything and start following directions.

in a container filled with 500ml of bad aqua regia I started adding copper wire I started adding a half oz at a time, the first piece was digested very fast, the second took a wile and the third oz I decided to leave alone for couple of days for the acid to digest de copper, this morning i went to check if all the copper had been digested by the aqua regia and i found little pieces of copper and some metal settle at the button, i filtered the the metal an add water while filtering to remove excess of acids, this is the picture i took this morning, i still have like a half of gallon to go hopefully it will be cemented this weekend.

butcher I really apologize for not following your directions and bring more trouble to my refining process, i have been reading the forum and for the moment the best thing for me is to read and practice with very small batches to get confident with the process after , i got three grams of pure gold from ebay to practice but i dont feel really confident to disolve the gold and not been able to recover it back so i better do it with scrap for the moment.

here is the picture after i filtered the metal, the white piece you see is a piece of plastic that came inside a chunk of copper and i was not able to remove it.


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## steyr223 (Jul 4, 2014)

Welcome to the form

Real quick look up Ap ,acid peroxide to recover 
And for your refining look up hcl/bleach or
Hcl/chlor 

These processes are much safer than using hno3

Also you had said something about profitable...

Understand as a home refiner this is more of a cost
Do this for the education or the love of science ,but unless
You can get a hold of literaly 1000's of cell phones
You wont produce much(or military stuff)

Everybody thinks there is way more than there is
Even after 100's of succesfull batches i still have to cut 
My estimated nugget to 10% of my origianal thoughts and then it is about right.
So if i think i did 3 5gal buckets of flashed boards and it was a lot of work i should get 4-5 grams i have to cut that
To .4-.5 grams then im pretty close.

Hope this helps
Steyr223 rob


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## ssendam (Feb 18, 2022)

Hi everyone. I'm dealing with the same problem. But what I use is HCL and potassium nitrate instead of nitric acid for making aqua regia. It is difficult for me to understand the ratio of potassium nitrate because I cannot purcase nitric in this country. I used 200 ml of HCL with several doses of potassium nitrate to 150 g of green fiber cpu pins. next day I have gold mud after precipitating and try refining the precipitate in 40 ml HCl with one little table spoon. Got a good reaction. Gold turned yellow/ green (not much gold from 55 cpu's). but when I tried to reprecipitate (after denoxing with ureea), I got a red solution, sodium metabisulfite made brownish bubbles in solution but no gold drop. I assume that I contaminated the solution. I am now tying to cement the gold on a copper bar..If I can get some help with this I would really appreciate. Thank you all!


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## FrugalRefiner (Feb 18, 2022)

I suspect you used too much nitrate.

Urea does not eliminate nitrate. It will react with NO2, but not any remaining NO3. What leads me to this conclusion is when you say "sodium metabisulfite made brownish bubbles in solution". Those brownish bubbles were probably the result of the metabisulfite reacting with remaining NO3 which create NOx (the brownish bubbles).

Once you cement out the values, you can redissolve them, but don't use as much nitrate. And rather than using urea to eliminate any excess, try sulfamic acid instead.

Dave


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