# Poor Man's AR for Ceramic CPUs



## lazersteve

All,

This is just a place holder for a post with the complete poor man's AR process.

Poorman's AR Process

Steve


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## hoardpm

Sounds like regular AR is just a little easier to use. Do you have any data on the cost advantage...if any?


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## lazersteve

hoardpm said:


> Sounds like regular AR is just a little easier to use. Do you have any data on the cost advantage...if any?



Hoard,

The real difference lies in the ease with which the fumes and nitric additions can be controlled. I suppose there may be a cost savings relative to liquid nitric acid as you are not required to pay hazmat shipping costs on sodium nitrate.

As for the actual required mass of sodium nitrate verse 70% nitric acid here's the data on that topic:

Nitric vs Sodium Nitrate

Steve


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## OMG

Are there any other common nitrates people could use for poorman's AR?
I'm specifically interested in ammonium nitrate.


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## Platdigger

Sodium, potasium, ammonium, they all work.
Randy


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## samuel-a

Steve, i would like to point out a basic subject which collide with my general understanding.

you presented the recipe for poor man's AR, which is' in short, dissolving gold along side with the base metals tha are on/in the CPU's, this contradicts with the ongoing preaching for dissolving base metals first and then the gold...

is there something i didn't understand in the process the you introduced?
it that process can be done with HCL+Cl ? on fingers... pins (tryed that BTW), flat packs, black IC's etc'...

generally i prefer not to introduc nitric acid to my workshop

Thank you for your answers.
SAMUEL


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## lazersteve

Sam,

In this step wise process you will notice that the gold foils do not remain in solution while the process is proceeding. Instead the base metals, when present in large proportion to the gold, always keep the gold (both in powder form and foils) out of the solution. This is because the HCl to nitrate ratio is much greater than in normal AR and the base metals saturate the solution acting as a precipitant. The nitric is consumed by base metals as it is produced once the gold foils are penetrated.

In essence this reaction is slowly producing nitric acid 'in situ' (in solution) which dissolves the base metal's and not the gold. As the reaction progresses and the base metals saturate the HCl solution, you will pour off the saturated HCl and nitrate solution (always test for dissolved gold) and start with fresh HCl.

If you only add small portions of sodium nitrate in each addition, the NOx fumes will be minimal.

On the last cycle of this process (three to four cycles with kg quantities of scrap) you will finally dissolve the gold along with the last of the base metals. Filter out all particulate, then add SMB, followed by HCl wash cycle and finally redissolve, filter, precipitate, and wash a second time for high purity gold. 

HCl-Cl is not as aggressive as nitric acid or AR towards base metals and therefore is not suited to this step wise style of reaction.

If you want to avoid NOx fumes then you should look at the reverse plating cell with a copper basket or the AP reaction for larger batches of pins.

Steve


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## samuel-a

Thank you steve for clearing that out for me.

now days i'm using Ap for fingers and unpopulated boeards that contains foils.
also for pins, but come to a conclusion that it's just not effective to do so... so now, i'll use this method only for the very small scale pins and left over from the dismantling.

i just finished up sturate my CELL.
diluted yesterday (1:2.5 ratio)' i'm gonna wash with water 3x and then HCL 3x
would you recommend hot HCL wash?

i don't have at the moment ammonium hydroxid or nitric acid to add to the washing phase...
i understand i'm risking having silver in my powder? correct?

should the powder from the cell be dissolved (HCL+cl) or just wash and melt?


Thanks 
SAMUEL


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## lazersteve

sam said:


> diluted yesterday (1:2.5 ratio)' i'm gonna wash with water 3x and then HCL 3x
> would you recommend hot HCL wash?


Sam, Wash with water, then let settle until the color of the wash water is no longer blue. If you want to be extra clean test a few drops of the rinse water with a drop ammonium hydroxide (3% unscented household ammonia will do), a blue color indicates coper is still present and you should wash some more. After the water rinses hot HCl and water rinses are good.



sam said:


> i don't have at the moment ammonium hydroxid or nitric acid to add to the washing phase...


See note above about 3% ammonium hydroxide, you should be able to get it in any grocery store. I personally don't wash with nitric any more at all.



sam said:


> i understand i'm risking having silver in my powder?


Yes, cell powder may contain some silver.



sam said:


> should the powder from the cell be dissolved (HCL+cl) or just wash and melt?


Depends on your goal:If you want pure gold then dissolve, filter free of particulate, and precipitate with SMB. 

If you don't care about the purity, just melt the powder. If you just melt the gold you may find it has a dark crust or other odd appearance. This contamination is not just a crust even though it appears to be such. If you sand it off and remelt the gold, the crust reappears.

Here's a link to a previous post on cleaning up the powder from the cell:

Cleaning Cell Powder

Steve


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## samuel-a

Thanks steve... you just have everything ready in your sleeve 

i'm looking for pure gold as i can create, but afraid i'll mess it up...
i understand that the more pure the gold is the more closer to the spot i'll get... isn't it?

well, i have rinsed the main bolk of black powder from the cell only with distilled water until 'clear', the filtration gone well and the water came out without any powder (whatman filters are the best).
i'll let it settle for tonight in water.

the second bulk (much smaller of course) came from the washing vessles of the pins and baskets.
rinsed 3x with water until clear, then 3x with HCL at room tmp", the last wash i let settle for 20 minuts, boy, that's a stinker... any way, the hcl wash came out pretty clean and clear, though it did got a little goldish color to it, i have yeat to test it for gold presence.

the two bulks of powder were combined and sit in water as mentioned above for the night.
the powder contains a few non PM very tiny objects (pices of pins and silicon waffers)

next steps:

1 - boiling with HCL ----> 3x water rinses
2 - Incineration
3 - dissolving with HCL+Cl -----> filter
4 - droping with SMB

i'm sorry for digging your mind for my gold, just... i wnat to be sure with my next steps so i'll present a few more questions


1- can i rest assure that boiling in hcl will not dissolve any gold?
2 - about the Incineration, should it be done by a turch directly on powder or in a pan above a flame? (generally, whay to Incinerate)
3 - i have no way of knowing how much powder is in there, according to my mesurments, there is around 80 grams of black powder... but, this does not sound reasonable to me, as i prosseced 1 Kg of medium grade pins and 20 or so CPU's... anyway, after dissolved and filterd, how much SMB should i add.... (40% SMB solution)? 
5 - i have for now only less then a liter of an allready prepared 40% SMB solution.... this means that i don't need to dilute the AuCl3 before droping ?


many, Thanks again
can't wait to show here my final results.
SAMUEL


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## lazersteve

The next steps you posted are good.

HCl-Cl will require some heating and lots of stirring to get the gold into solution.

Diluting the AuCl3 is not required, but helps force any traces of silver chloride out of the mix. If you see a cloudiness after diluting, be sure to filter out the sediment befroe adding SMB.

Using SMB is not rocket science, just add it in small increments with stirring. When the gold powder settles test the solution with stannous. If positive add a little more SMB and stir. I use it dry, but a concentrated solution is fine also.

Incineration is performed in a large melting dish or rectangular silica dish.

Judging from the amount of scrap you processed you should expect more than 2 grams and less than 10 grams of gold.

Steve


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## samuel-a

well.... a little update

i apparently miss the part which u said HCL+Cl will require heat also... i did stirred alot with my magnetic stirer though, and got a real nice rich golden color to it, so i guess i managed to saturate the solution.

Q. - what's maximun ratio between HCL to Cl would you recommend?

it finally dissolved completly after 3 re-fills and ended up with 2 liter (0.528 galon) of AuCl3 without diluting.... ( is this reasonable amount? )

after dissolving all of the gold, i was left with quite a few impurities in the form of gray powder, cement like texture...

the SMB wasn't even near to enough , and i ended up adding 800ml of 40% SMB solution, which, after alot of stirring and setteling, precipitated only a bit of gold powder.... and the solution is still dark yellow-green.
now i'll have to wait for next week until i get some more SMB, because back here, i cannot find it in kmart like stors... ( maybe some brand name that i don't know of? ) only at chimicals dealers which is far away....

BTW, what are the fumes (and terrible smell) that is coming out whan addind the SMB ?

next update , next week.
Thanks, SAMUEL


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## Harold_V

samuel-a said:


> BTW, what are the fumes (and terrible smell) that is coming out whan addind the SMB ?


My money says its SO2, but I wonder if it's possible to create hydrogen sulfide by this process? Could prove deadly if you breath much if it is. 

Seems to me you must eliminate any free chlorine in order to achieve a fast and good precipitation of gold. Could be wrong, however, considering I never used this particular process. 

Harold


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## lazersteve

Harold,

You are correct, the free chlorine levels must be lower with gentle heating before adding the SMB. Alternately one could let the solutoin sit in the sunshine to destroy the free chlorine.

Steve


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## samuel-a

thanks... next time it will be out doors...


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## samuel-a

Steve... Im in big truble here...
the gold doesn't drop...

i finally got a hold of SMB (Molecular formula - na2s2o5), 55 pound for 27$
i have dissolved 100 grams of SMB in 250 ml of distilled until saturated or very close to it.... (by wiki - 54 gr to 100 ml)
dump it to the AuCl3 which was splitted dou to the lack of space in the main vessle, and.... nothing but nasty sulfor gas.... the solution remains the same rich golden color, positive for gold naturally, and just a little bit of black powder on the bottom

i'll review my steps:
1- collected the powder from the CELL
2- rinsed with water 3x and hot HCL 3x
3- again with water 3x
4- dissolved with HCL+Cl which i needed to do 3 times over in order to completly dissolve all of the gold and ended up with 2 litre of AuCl3 without any water dilution. (i have decided not to Incinerate, because i don't know how... and more important, don't know whay?)
5- filterd (left behind a lot of gray paste like matirial... some of it is silica i know, but the rest i have no idea)
6- let sit for the night in hot water bath
7- added 800 ml of 40% SMB solution, got me only a small precipitation (again, the AuCl3 was not diluted with water).
8- split the AuCl3 to two parts 1.4 +- litre each
9- added 250 ml 0f saturated SMB = nothing , added more 250 ml = still nothing.... same as with the other half of the batch...


i have gone almost comletly by the book... what is wrong?
i think 200-225 grams of SMB should drop a few grams of gold... isn't it?


i would really appreciate any help from any one
Thanks
SAMUEL


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## samuel-a

in top of every thing, i tried to dilute and then drop....

200 ml of AuCl3 + 200ml of water + 100 ml sturated SMB solution

5 minuts over magnetic stirer, as usual... nothing happend...


here is the stannous chloride test of that dilute solution after SMB and stirring:

came out brown to orange like in color and faded away complitly after a minute or so.
View attachment 1


i might add, that after dossolving the gold, the stannous test was perfecly purple/black indicating a lot of gold...
here it is:


the initial 40% solution is actually just sodium bisulfite (NaHSO3) that did the actual first small dropping from the gold... any way, the function is the same as far as i understand... introducing SO2 to AuCl3


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## lazersteve

Sam,

Evaporate the solution down to 1/3 of it's volume or unitl you see salt forming.

Let us know what happens and the results of your stannous test after that.

Have you recovered any gold at all from the batch ?

Steve


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## samuel-a

not yeat... i do have some black powder on the bottom, but still didn't treated it.

i still need to get my hand on some electric hot plate and big enough payrex vessle, so until then i'm stuck with it.
i'll let it sit until sunday.
then siphon and collect the black powder that did precipitated and update here.

this is an extremly odd case... 
i took a small smple of the AuCl3 and exploded it with SMB... all i get is far more brighter yellow color to it....

beside that... do yu have any more suggestions based on my findings?


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## qst42know

samual-a

Are you using the dilute HCL 10% you mention here?

http://www.goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=5830&p=52103#p52103

If I remember correctly SMB reacts in an acidic solution. 

Steve is it possible his HCL is depleted? or possibly buffered in some strange way?


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## butcher

samuel do you think there is sulfuric from cell in this batch? from reading seems this batch is from cell, washed, without inceneration, do you have a way to check PH? 

the brown color of your stannous test fading away sounds to me as the gold may be dissolving back into solution. 

an old pyrex coffee pot can work for heating vessel, and a hot plate, an old automatic coffee pot can work for a heat source (not as hot as a hot plate but will evaporate solutions), or an old electric crockpot, do you have acess to these or a second hand store?


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## samuel-a

qst42know - i'm using lab grade HCL 32% , that stuff that i bought was a fake and not pure. i learnd my lesson with this type os suppliers...

butcher - 
i don't belive any sulfuric acid left in there. i rinsed with water 3x and then 3x with HCL the last HCL wash was in hot bath, poured it of and refreshed the HCL for dissolving. on the last addition of frsh HCL i didn't got the small of solfur like in the first time.... much much much less.

i just got hold on a new hot plate and will use it on sunday to do what steve has suggested... (evaporate to 1/3 of the volume)


i also belive that i used an exessive amount of chlorox, maybe the heating will help police all of the chlorine out of the solution.
the reasone that i think so also that there to much chlorine is that i see on the bottom small bubbles, indicating (to me, maybe i'm wrong) that the little powder that did precipitated is dissolving back to the solution...
also, the SMB does absorbed in the solution without droping anything.

i'll update in sunday.

Thank you all for your help


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## samuel-a

Update

steve, i did what that you suggested, took 300 ml of the AuCl3 and reduced it to 130 +- ml, that was when i noticed the salt crust on top.
no black powder droped, just salt (SMB?)
here it is:
View attachment 1



tested for gold... seem's negative:


and what's even more amazing is... that my still golden AuCl3 (main batch, the vassle behind the filter),after left sit for 2 dayes, actually tested also negative for gold, exactly like the tested solution above....

but it doesn't add up... the color, the very small precipitated powder... is there a chance the solution to be yellow/gold without containing gold?

does solfuric acid rsidue, maybe causing this behavior?

i'm completly lost...

Thank you very much...
SAMUEL


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## shyknee

hello samuel
can i have you clairify that you used an Electrolitic deplating cell to get the gold powder .
OR are you treating powders from the bottom of your AP reaction vessel ?


> [now days i'm using Ap for fingers and unpopulated boeards that contains foils.
> also for pins, but come to a conclusion that it's just not effective to do so... so now, i'll use this method only for the very small scale pins and left over from the dismantling.
> 
> i just finished up sturate my CELL.
> diluted yesterday (1:2.5 ratio)' i'm gonna wash with water 3x and then HCL 3x
> would you recommend hot HCL wash?
> /quote]
> 
> it is not really clear what you mean when you say "CELL" samuel
> 
> Steve if he is treating an AP reaction of gold plated pins he maybe treating the copper colliodes and gold powder and thinking its all gold and more should of dropped out of solution
> copper colliodes produce yellow like solution in hcl/cl
> 
> lets get this clear samuel here you say
> 
> 
> 
> 3 - i have no way of knowing how much powder is in there, according to my mesurments, there is around 80 grams of black powder... but, this does not sound reasonable to me, as i prosseced 1 Kg of medium grade pins and 20 or so CPU's... anyway, after dissolved and filterd, how much SMB should i add.... (40% SMB solution)?
Click to expand...

one kilo of what you call medium could be low grade and 20 cpus means not a thing because 20 fiber cpus is not the same a pentium pro cpu
So tell us again what prosses did you use from the start and be clear

just trying to help


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## samuel-a

shyknee 

the starting powder came exlusive from a deplating cell, added to it 0.2 g of allready droped and rinsed gold powder came from AP fingers process and HCL+Cl dissolving.

i wellcome your suggestion that maybe i dissolve an amount of copper that havn't got out with the HCL washes.
but, wouldn't it suppose drop with the gold while addind the SMB?

Thank you for your replay

SAMUEL


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## qst42know

Your stannous test on known solution is so very faint. 

Is your standard gold solution very weak or has your stannous gone bad?

Have you tested your rinse solutions?


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## samuel-a

yes, my stannous was a bit inactive when i tested and pictured.
when i'm adding a bit more tin and heat, i jump strat it again and get a better reaction to the gold... i was just rushing to get it done....

my gold solution is also not the strongest there is, but enaugh.

the rinses ware nagative.

BTW, most of the CPU ware ceramics P1 and fiber celerons

thanks, you guys.


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## shyknee

samuel _a
if its from a stripping cell and it was saturated then I'm lost as to what happened to it some thing is not clear.
So dissregard my post I'm lost?

do you have pictures of the pins before and after deplating?


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## samuel-a

i can upload tomorrow the pictures

as far as how saturated the cell was... well i might be also wrong about it... this is my first time...
but i did had current without any plating... my be i was wrong?

i'll upload also the remnants that was left after i'v dissolved the gold from the cell, maybe someone can help me identify it, or tell me how to test it for PM's...

Thank you.

SAMUEL


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## butcher

I think you should start over, when you mixed all this stuff and without inceneration no telling what you have there or where, do you have zink, it will get your values out of solution as long as it is somewhat acidic, let settle, rinse, INCENERATE, then start over, eliminating base metals before going after values.
your gold may not be in the solution, as you seem to have had base metals in mix, your gold can still be with them.
and if you explain step by step not leaving out details you can get good help here, a detail not mentioned can make it hard for those trying to assist you.

sorry its hard to tell exactly what you have done. so help here is hard to advise.


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## samuel-a

OK

so, i have recoverd the powder that did precipitated from the main batch.
treated it with 3x water washes , 2x HCL wash , 1x hot HCL wash , 3x water wash.
turnd out to be 1.4 g.

here it is:
i had some loss dou to the heat evaporation process, some of the powder stuck to the beaker, i'll save it for next time when i dissolve some gold.
View attachment 2



here is a before and after of my pins:
low & medium quality
View attachment 1



and here is the gray left over in the filters:
all of that stayed behind after HCL+Cl treatment (and maybe coned me to think i have alot of gold in my cell, Maybe it is silver?)


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## shyknee

looking at the type of pins you have there ,1.4g is about all there is from one kilo.
you have done good
next time let the cell hold more powders by trying to remove pin before the nickel deplates


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## Anonymous

Hello i am new to this site and i notice that everyone is obsessed with using AR to dissolve gold . Frankly most modern electronic scrap just has a small amount of gold with lots of base metal (iron and aluminum) so why spend money on nitric acid when all it does is supply oxygen and it is used primarly for fineness assays or final refining. There are cheaper oxidizers like hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) . Just use hydrocloric acid purchased from local retail , you dont need high purity or USP and use off the shelf hydrogen peroxide. put your cpu, jewelry ect in a pryex coffe pot or beaker and add just enough acid to cover it but leave room in the container to add H2O2. Save electricity heat the acid only to 130F you dont have boil the SHIQ out of it Add small amounts of hydrogen peroxide and look for hydrogen bubbles coming off the metal this means it is reacting and dissolving. When done let settle overnight and pour off into another clean glass container. Add distilled water and settle overnite two more times. Place a length of #14 clean bright copper wire in liquid of second container (just the end of wire in liquid not 3 pounds of it) stir slowly with glass rod (no metal or wood) once a day for 3 days . The black coating on the wire is gold and platinum group metals PGM only. save liquid from this and other runs and leave copper in it to recover any trace left in it (common practice) . If there is alot of gold the liquid will turn dark and a gold film will float on suface if this happen add more water and sink the film by whipping with small diameter copper wire acrross it and if you filter it you must burn the filter to recover the fine gold particals.


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## Barren Realms 007

packrat said:


> Hello i am new to this site and i notice that everyone is obsessed with using AR to dissolve gold . Frankly most modern electronic scrap just has a small amount of gold with lots of base metal (iron and aluminum) so why spend money on nitric acid when all it does is supply oxygen and it is used primarly for fineness assays or final refining. There are cheaper oxidizers like hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) . Just use hydrocloric acid purchased from local retail , you dont need high purity or USP and use off the shelf hydrogen peroxide. put your cpu, jewelry ect in a pryex coffe pot or beaker and add just enough acid to cover it but leave room in the container to add H2O2. Save electricity heat the acid only to 130F you dont have boil the SHIQ out of it Add small amounts of hydrogen peroxide and look for hydrogen bubbles coming off the metal this means it is reacting and dissolving. When done let settle overnight and pour off into another clean glass container. Add distilled water and settle overnite two more times. Place a length of #14 clean bright copper wire in liquid of second container (just the end of wire in liquid not 3 pounds of it) stir slowly with glass rod (no metal or wood) once a day for 3 days . The black coating on the wire is gold and platinum group metals PGM only. save liquid from this and other runs and leave copper in it to recover any trace left in it (common practice) . If there is alot of gold the liquid will turn dark and a gold film will float on suface if this happen add more water and sink the film by whipping with small diameter copper wire acrross it and if you filter it you must burn the filter to recover the fine gold particals.



Welcome pacrat, AP is what is suggested mostly here. Do some searching and a lot of reading. Good post you had there.


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## goldsilverpro

packrat said:


> Hello i am new to this site and i notice that everyone is obsessed with using AR to dissolve gold . Frankly most modern electronic scrap just has a small amount of gold with lots of base metal (iron and aluminum) so why spend money on nitric acid when all it does is supply oxygen and it is used primarly for fineness assays or final refining. There are cheaper oxidizers like hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) . Just use hydrocloric acid purchased from local retail , you dont need high purity or USP and use off the shelf hydrogen peroxide. put your cpu, jewelry ect in a pryex coffe pot or beaker and add just enough acid to cover it but leave room in the container to add H2O2. Save electricity heat the acid only to 130F you dont have boil the SHIQ out of it Add small amounts of hydrogen peroxide and look for hydrogen bubbles coming off the metal this means it is reacting and dissolving. When done let settle overnight and pour off into another clean glass container. Add distilled water and settle overnite two more times. Place a length of #14 clean bright copper wire in liquid of second container (just the end of wire in liquid not 3 pounds of it) stir slowly with glass rod (no metal or wood) once a day for 3 days . The black coating on the wire is gold and platinum group metals PGM only. save liquid from this and other runs and leave copper in it to recover any trace left in it (common practice) . If there is alot of gold the liquid will turn dark and a gold film will float on suface if this happen add more water and sink the film by whipping with small diameter copper wire acrross it and if you filter it you must burn the filter to recover the fine gold particals.



I know you are just trying to help but the method you are talking about, HCl/H2O2, commonly called AP on the forum, has been covered 100s of times. It is the standard method used by many members. You really need to spend some time reading what's here


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## patnor1011

I can see that crock pot or AP might be much better than AR for pins but lets not forget about tumbler cell - that is even better method. It will not require that much of acid as AP does.


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## Anonymous

Thanks for the replys guys, I just found this site two days ago and there are alot of posts to read. I have been using solar electric power to make H2SO4 that is used in a saturated salt (NACL) with H2O2 solution to extract AU and some PD from dishes, drinking glasses ect in a green house that sometimes reaches a temperature of 120F. My best scarp gold recovery has been from very old eye glasses that were 12K gold fill (12k GF). I bought some modern jewelery marked GF but it had very little gold content. I recovered AU from a brass ingot that someone had melted electronic scrap into by making it the anode + and a stainless steel plate the cathode --- with H2SO4 and water as the electrolite ,all the base metal collected on the cathode and the residue on the anode was gold of course. but unless you had a source of cheap fuel i dont think this would pay off.


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## Traveller11

Hello packrat
I've been asking some questions about the HCL/H2O2 process you mentioned and I have been unable to get the answers I was looking for. You seem to have a straightforward way of talking so I will ask you.
Will the HCL/H2O2 process remove blacksand, pyrites and other free base metal particles from a placer concentrate screened to -100 mesh?
If the placer gold in this concentrate is only 90% gold, with the rest silver, copper, etc., will the HCl/H2O2 process leave pure gold in the concentrate, to be leached by another process?
Bob


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## dtectr

Traveller11 said:


> Hello packrat
> I've been asking some questions about the HCL/H2O2 process you mentioned and I have been unable to get the answers I was looking for. You seem to have a straightforward way of talking so I will ask you.
> Will the HCL/H2O2 process remove blacksand, pyrites and other free base metal particles from a placer concentrate screened to -100 mesh?
> If the placer gold in this concentrate is only 90% gold, with the rest silver, copper, etc., will the HCl/H2O2 process leave pure gold in the concentrate, to be leached by another process?
> Bob


most black sands concentrates tend to have a large quantity of sulphides, which tend to interfere with recovery. a good roast in an oxidizing flame (a cheap mild steel skillet is ok) until cons reach red hot or so, some reccomend up to an hour, will convert sulphides to oxides, & sometimes causes pyrites to "pop" exposing values that may be trapped inside. At this point extreme caution is advised, this process should only be performed outside or under an effective fume hood, as roasting arseno-pyrites releases arsenic, a deadly gas.

Your placer gold is never pure gold, regardless of how pure it looks. It is always alloyed with some other metal. The Acid-Peroxide (AP) seems to work best on exposed base metals, at least in my limited experience, such as the copper underneath fingers, and the copper/brass/nickel alloys in pins, the silver/tin/gold of the solder. On fingers & pins, you will be left with the foils, flat or pin-shaped tubes, as the exposed base metals are exposed. However, the alloy of the gold plating, if any, won't be broken down. it can be dissolved, if you add too much oxidizer &/or heat the solution, which would likely be counterproductive.

Though i have not performed such processes, Poor Man's AR, which is NOT HCl-H2O2 (AP), but heated 50:50 HCl/H2O with incremental additions of a nitrate, either sodium or potassium. I use Gordon's Stump Remover, 99% Potassium Nitrate, from a farm supply store. here in US they are named Tractor Supply, Orchlyns, or Runnings. 
http://www.pbigordon.com/pdfs/StumpRemover-MSDS.pdf?zoom_highlight=stump+remover#search="stump remover" 
It should dissolve your base metals, leaving you with elemental gold as a brown or black powder. once rinsed, the gold should be able to be leached with HCl-Clorine Bleach, allowing sand residues to be filtered off, then dropped with Sodium Metabisulphite (SMB) or Ferrous Sulphate.

Some may reccomend the use of Nitric Acid for such a process, but it is expensive, & produces much nitric Oxide, also a deadly gas.

If I could make a recommendation, search in the "Prospecting, etc...." topics. Go to lazersteve's signature line & use his google-enhanced search engine & use keywords, like "black sands", "placer gold", "concentrates". There isn't a one post answer to your question, I fear, & in the right section you have access to prospectors, miners, from the world over whose real-life experience & suggestions would carry more weight than mine, I believe.

Sometimes, (I paraphrase from hitchhiker's guide to the Universe series), the "answer to the puzzles of the universe is easy, but asking the right question is hard. 

Just my dos centavos, amigo. I hope some of the more experienced members of the forum will chime in on this. They may be more likely to if they find the post under "Prospecting".

Good luck & hang in there.


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## Anonymous

Most black sands are already oxidized and mostly the sulfites have already naturally been converted to oxides now I am just talking about the black sands that are loose in creeks and earth near the surface, if they are deep or locked up in rocks were moisture and air can not get to them the will not be oxidized already.

I grind my black sands to a super fine dust. I then dampen them with water, note I said damp, like barely wet clumpy. I put them in a 5 gallon bucket that I have a lid for, I add in 1/4 cup HCL (in a container) placed so it will not spill (until I tip the bucket), next to this I place some (evaporated down to concentrate) chlorox 1/3 cup also in a cup so it will not spill.

I only fill the bucket 1/4-1/3 with the black sand concentrate.

I have a lid that I drill a 1/2 hole in to put on to seal the bucket when all of this is ready, I get a cotton ball or q-tip and dip it in ammonia, then I tip the bucket to spill the HCL and chlorox together the set level, this will release large amount of chlorine which I test for by putting the ammonia swab near the hole it it shows white fumes, I know that the bucket is full of chlorine gas. I put a cork in the hole (not to tightly, as this is also a make shift pressure relief valve).
I then roll bucket around tipped to a 45 degree angle to mix the chlorine gas and the left over HCL with the ground up material. I mix it several times for the next day or two.
when done remove the lid to vent left over chlorine. Then add enough water to cover the material and allow it to become liquid in consistancy, stir for about 5 minutes. Let this set for a few ours then pour off the water, it will contain any gold that reacted with the chlorine. reuse the rinse water to concentrate more gold into it.
I am terrible at explaining, but if you look up Plattners chlorination process you will get much better details.

Jim


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## dtectr

james122964 said:


> Most black sands are already oxidized and mostly the sulfites have already naturally been converted to oxides now I am just talking about the black sands that are loose in creeks and earth near the surface, if they are deep or locked up in rocks were moisture and air can not get to them the will not be oxidized already.
> 
> I grind my black sands to a super fine dust. I then dampen them with water, note I said damp, like barely wet clumpy. I put them in a 5 gallon bucket that I have a lid for, I add in 1/4 cup HCL (in a container) placed so it will not spill (until I tip the bucket), next to this I place some (evaporated down to concentrate) chlorox 1/3 cup also in a cup so it will not spill.
> 
> I only fill the bucket 1/4-1/3 with the black sand concentrate.
> 
> I have a lid that I drill a 1/2 hole in to put on to seal the bucket when all of this is ready, I get a cotton ball or q-tip and dip it in ammonia, then I tip the bucket to spill the HCL and chlorox together the set level, this will release large amount of chlorine which I test for by putting the ammonia swab near the hole it it shows white fumes, I know that the bucket is full of chlorine gas. I put a cork in the hole (not to tightly, as this is also a make shift pressure relief valve).
> I then roll bucket around tipped to a 45 degree angle to mix the chlorine gas and the left over HCL with the ground up material. I mix it several times for the next day or two.
> when done remove the lid to vent left over chlorine. Then add enough water to cover the material and allow it to become liquid in consistancy, stir for about 5 minutes. Let this set for a few ours then pour off the water, it will contain any gold that reacted with the chlorine. reuse the rinse water to concentrate more gold into it.
> I am terrible at explaining, but if you look up Plattners chlorination process you will get much better details.
> 
> Jim


sounds like you got it all figured out.


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## Anonymous

dtectr said:


> james122964 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Jim
> 
> 
> 
> sounds like you got it all figured out.
Click to expand...



Not me, some guy named Plattner figured it out about 100 years ago. I just changed the wooden vat to a bucket.

jim


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## Traveller11

dtectr & james

Okay, I think the proverbial "light bulb" just went off in my head.

If the iron in my placer is in the form of oxides (magnetite, Fe3O4 and hematite, Fe2O3) and the pyrites are converted to oxides by roasting the ore, are you saying none of these oxides will be leached by the "Poor Man's AR process" or the "Hydrochloric Acid/ Clorox process"?? Just on the off chance there are unoxidized base metals in trace amounts in the placer, would it still be good to remove these with the Acid/ Peroxide process?

If there is up to 10% silver alloyed with my placer gold (this is from reliable sources here) will it interfere with the leaching and precipitation of the gold flakes? Is there anything to do that will "get around" the silver?

Bob


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## butcher

Un-oxidized iron (elemental iron) in a roasting process (or smelt), of pyrites can be very beneficial at removing the sulfide that traps your values, the elemental iron has all its electrons, and readily chemically gathers the sulfides from the ore, on the other hand, the oxide of iron, or Ironsulfides, will not help in this conversion.

When smelting ore the chemical make up of ore is important to know if possible, and how flux and additives react chemically.

When I roast or incinerate ore, ore a recovered salt from one of my leaching or recovery processes, I actually go through a fusing phase, 

say I have a damp salt or an ore, putting it on low heat till it dries out keeping heat low and a cover over it, it can create gasses that bubble up and pop splashing my values all over the place, during this drying process a chemical reaction can be occurring, more volatile gasses and may vapor off converting some of the salts in solution, once it dries, it will get hard and can form like a rock, I usually break it apart and crush it before completely dry,

now I can raise my heat without the gasses splattering my values all over the place, although I will still have metal salts with gasses that will evolve, now under this higher heat, and uncovering to expose to air I will still drive off gasses some of the less volatile ones, these gasses are from the acids that formed my rock salts, or metal salts, as these gasses leave the metal salt the metals become oxidized by the oxygen in the air, 

Also any carbonous materials will break down and start to give off carbon dioxide gas, the ore, or recovered salts are still making chemical changes, and the oxides usually darken or go towards a blackish color, depending on their makeup they can take on several colors during these processes.

then these fusing salts (remember METAL + ACID = a salt of that metal), they will seem to start to melt again, the more volatile gasses escaping and forming acids or bases in this fusing stage (looks like melting to me but is not), here again allot of chemistry is going on, it can get liquid again and start bubbling and splattering so a cover may again be needed. 

with ore or even recovered salts, making additions of chemicals (like flux or metals), can help you change your ore or recovered salt chemically, at this fusing stage and even before the smelting stage of recovery, or the leaching stage of your recovery process, example I may be wanting to leach this ore with a chlorine leach (and know it is low on silver content) so I may cover this ore with table salt bring up heat and stir and keep heat for awhile, this can convert some of my fusing metals into chlorides, helping me save chemicals in my later leaching stage and also help to convert some of the harder to convert metals, heat can be a big part of the chemistry equation.

a note here during this fusing stage I can also be volatilizing some of my metals, and they can be vaporizing off with these acidic gasses, if I see a yellow gas or a yellow acid like syrup on the cooler portion of my fusing dish, I may be vaporizing off my gold, here I would lower my heat, also many of these acids and metal vapors coming are very deadly to breath, and we do not want to change the chemistry of our lungs and end up on a respirator in the hospital, or buried 6 foot under in a pine box, cannot get much use out of gold that way.

Now my fusing salts will give off most of their gasses, and these salts will start to dry out again, still chemically changing, and more metals exposed to air have a chance to oxidize.

roasting or incineration or fusing can convert our product chemically, and by adding and controlling conditions we can get metal values that would otherwise be lost or not recovered in our later recovery and refining processes, Why else would one of the master refiners on this forum spend his time preaching this to us?

I am not saying James is wrong about the black sand being oxidized already, and the sulfides converted by exposed back sand, but I would always roast any ore or black sands. Sulfides can lock up metals chemically, and these crystals can be very hard to convert or oxidize even if exposed to the elements in the environment for millions of years, I believe the sulfides can still be locked up in their crystal structure.

fluxing and these pre processing (with heat) measure are almost a chemistry in themselves, as a hobbyist just learning I do not completely understand them, and may or may not be correct in how I see what little I do in this, but for the mining communities around the world for since man has made things from rocks they have also tried to learn it, and have known that it can mean the success or failure of getting metal out of that rock, it does not matter how much gold is in that rock if you cannot get it out cost effectively it will still only be worth rock. 

and even today most any professional miner will tell someone who asks what flux do I use he will tell him to experiment their is no magic formula, I think learning as much as we can about the type of ore we have, and how metals and flux react chemically in these heated stages, can help us make better judgments on how we experiment. But pre-roasting, incineration or fusing is almost always practices in professional mining.

looking into assaying can also help us learn from the proceedures they use, and improve our ore or metal recovered salt by pre-treating them before leaching or smelting processes.

Maybe someone else with more experience will comment and give us more clues on which flux and what chemical effects they create in these melts, who knows maybe someone has the secret to a magic flux recipe hidden in their back pocket?

James, I find your process of generating a chloride leach in a five gallon bucket an ingenious process, and would like to try it, but I still believe if you pretreated the black sand with a roasting or fusing process you may recover more value's, but then again I can be wrong it would not be a first for me, as most of the time I get things wrong before I learn, and even then I have alot more to learn.

Traveller, iron being higher in series will still have to be leached from your ore before gold will go into solution, and can also cause problems with your leaching of the gold, untill it is removed from the leach, it is always best to eliminate the base metals as much as possible before extracting the gold, whether in leaching or refining.

silver can always create problems in chloride base leaches, also keeping your gold locked up out of your reach, whether 10% will give you grief here I cannot say, in mining sometime's they preleach to remove silver before they attempt to get the gold, or they would get neither.


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## Anonymous

james I find your process of generating a chloride leach in a five gallon bucket an ingenious process, and would like to try it, but I still believe if you pretreated the black sand with a roasting or fusing process you may recover more value's, but then again I can be wrong it would not be a first for me, as most of the time I get things wrong before I learn, and even then I have alot more to learn

I have done some black sands from glacier deposits, they do not contain sulfides, if there is sulfides plattner recommends a salt roast to convert the sulfides to sodium sulfate, and the base metals to chlorides, which can all be rinse away before you go after the gold. This plattner guy had it all figured out, and it is a good read. The book is free on google books.
I have been using this process for the cheap IC chips, and it works well without roasting, and such, with a couple of mechanical process differences to get most of the base metals out before the start.

Jim


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## texan

This thread has gone a little off topic and title...but still great nontheless...

I have several gallons (10 +/-) of sand and black sand concentrates from the Llano river of Texas. This is one of the few areas that you can pan gold in Texas...The problem is most of it is microscopic. I have to take the black sand and put it under my microscope and suck up the gold with an eye dropper. I also believe that there are probably values locked away in the black sand particles themselves....There is more experimentation to do. I have known about some these processes but never taken my hands out of my pockets enough to try some of them..untill now 

I have also come to believe that the use of SMB to drop gold can leave a significant amount in solution if you are not careful. I have a large container of what should have been bare formerly gold chloride solution...after sitting on the bench for the last month a fair amount of gold has gradually appeared on the bottom. Obviously some chemistry was still going on.

I do plan on trying some of these procedures on my Texas black sand.

Texan


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## Traveller11

Hello

I'm still confused here.

Although I realize that many black sands and pyrites may harbour micron sized paricles of gold in a matrix, I am really not interested in this fact at the moment for two reasons:

1) The area I am removing the black sand from is so remote, I can only bring out as much black sand as one horse can carry in a packsaddle. With a specific gravity of 5.3, this is not very much black sand so concentration onsite is the key.

2) There is enough free gold in the placer, microscopic as it is, to make this venture profitable without having to unlock values in black sand and pyrites. The time may come when I can pack a small roller mill in but for now I am only after the free gold.

The question still remains, will oxidized forms of iron (magnetite Fe3O4, hematite Fe2O3 or iron pyrite FeS2 after it is oxidized by roasting) get dissolved in the leaching or electrowinning process? 

By leaching I am, of course, referring to the hydrochloric acid/clorox leach process.

I very much appreciate all the other info but, at the moment, I need this question answered before I can proceed.

Regards

Bob


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## butcher

black sands can have fine particles of flake gold within them not bound up chemically in the black sand structure, these can be separated, but it is Very difficult even with the best of technology, as fine gold can float away, although we are taught gold is so heavy it will not float (a myth maybe for myth busters?) also the fine flakes get lodged and trapped by the sand and difficult to separate, careful panning, blue bowls, shaker tables and so on work to an extent, magnetically separating sand (with plastic wrap or cup to let magnetic material fall off magnet) is another method but as we all know, pick up a bunch magnetic materials we also trap some non magnetic in clump of sand. 

if cannot pack out all the black sand concentrate it by panning and pack out what concentrate you can carry, as you know a man who believes his pack is full of gold can carry more than is humanly possible for long distances, unless your mountains are like mine here in southern oregon, even the deer find it better to travel sideway's to get up the mountain, going in circles around the mountain to get to the top.
lets look at leaching with chlorides of these sands, we will need to roast them to drive off SO2 gasses, and to remove sulfur and sulfides, as gold and values can keep some of the sulfides from driving off even at red hot ore temperatures, roasting in presence of Iron in form of nails or an Iron skillet is wise, in mining sometimes sulfur is added to a roast if the ore is low on sulfur or sulfides, this elemental sulfur burns helping to save fuel in the roasting process and help oxidize metals like iron, also an assay of these sands to determine if they are oxidizing (most likely) or reducing would also help us, we can do this with litharge, and see if how much lead we either oxidize (stay's lead oxide) or reduce (forms lead button of metal, this can help us determine what we may need to add to the roasting and fusing process of pretreatment of our ore before going to a leaching process, getting our ore close to neutral will assist us later, also I would fuse with salt to change as much of our ore to chloride with heat (if low in silver content), as you know any metals in our ore lower in the electromotive series will use up our leaching solution long before they will start to dissolve any values, pretreatment will help us oxidize the base metals and can assist us to chemically pre-treat them so we save on chemicals waste and have more success. 
leaching black sand for elemental gold or values without roasting or pretreatment, can get some free gold into solution , but it can also bind up some of that free gold into the matrix while you are using up your chemicals dissolving base metals, and plating back the free gold to that black sand you are trying to leach ( similar in our electronic scrap until we dissolve and remove base metals we lose gold to remaining metals or base metal salts), and here we can have some complicated base metal salts to deal with in ore.

I cannot say black sand are worth packing very far as if I have to crawl up that steep mountain with my dredge I aint gonna carry no sand, I will spend my time down there after the gold, now I will save a small bucket full of black sands from washing the sluice box, to bring home and pan save them and may roast and leach them with some other ore later, but cannot give any yields.
spend that horsepower packing out gold not black sand.

Just oxidizing an iron sulfide will use up our leach and precipitate the gold; we need to eliminate that sulfide from your oxidized Iron, to get anything of value and not waste time trouble and chemicals.

get Ammens book (Action mining, or RAR file download on forum)study it, that will be more helpful than some backyard hobbiest like me.


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## Anonymous

Traveller11 said:


> Hello
> 
> I'm still confused here.
> 
> Although I realize that many black sands and pyrites may harbour micron sized paricles of gold in a matrix, I am really not interested in this fact at the moment for two reasons:
> 
> 1) The area I am removing the black sand from is so remote, I can only bring out as much black sand as one horse can carry in a packsaddle. With a specific gravity of 5.3, this is not very much black sand so concentration onsite is the key.
> 
> 2) There is enough free gold in the placer, microscopic as it is, to make this venture profitable without having to unlock values in black sand and pyrites. The time may come when I can pack a small roller mill in but for now I am only after the free gold.
> 
> The question still remains, will oxidized forms of iron (magnetite Fe3O4, hematite Fe2O3 or iron pyrite FeS2 after it is oxidized by roasting) get dissolved in the leaching or electrowinning process?
> 
> By leaching I am, of course, referring to the hydrochloric acid/clorox leach process.
> 
> I very much appreciate all the other info but, at the moment, I need this question answered before I can proceed.
> 
> Regards
> 
> Bob



Hi Bob,

I would think that a pack horse could carry enough black sand to be worth the effort, fact is, if you are going to be leaching on site, you will have to pack in lots of chemicals.
I am not saying there is a lot of gold in the black sand, but there can be, reason is that in some pyrites there is gold layered in in the crystal lattice, when this pyrite is wet and oxygen is available it oxidizes to iron oxides with gold in them, the sulfide, leaches off as sulfuric acid.

I had some black sand that showed no gold, checked it with microscope, there was no visible gold. I took 1 tablespoon of this material and added some flux, melted and stirred this produced 3 clearly visible gold beads, this was gold released from the sand and was more gold than was showing free in the material before processing.

to summarize, processing your black sand on site is not the most efficient.

Run your material trough a sluice get all the free gold you can, take a sample of the black sand and have it assayed, that will tell you if pursuing them is worth the effort.
You also may be able to fine a buyer for the black sand as is with assay paperwork.

Jim


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## goldsilverpro

TO ALL MEMBERS!

Without exception, please post all discussions involving the processing of mining material, of any type, in the Prospecting, Mining, Ore Concentrates, and Geochemical category. This is a scrap processing forum. The Mining section was only added as an after thought.


I moved it, Chris. There should be a shadow listing at the original location directing readers to the thread. 

Harold


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## Richard36

goldsilverpro said:


> TO ALL MEMBERS!
> 
> Without exception, please post all discussions involving the processing of mining material, of any type, in the Prospecting, Mining, Ore Concentrates, and Geochemical category. This is a scrap processing forum. The Mining section was only added as an after thought.
> 
> 
> I moved it, Chris. There should be a shadow listing at the original location directing readers to the thread.
> 
> Harold



Thanks GSP/Harold.
Interesting reading in this thread.
I seldom go elsewhere on this forum, and this thread is a good read.

Sincerely; Rick."The Rock Man".


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## Acid_Bath76

packrat said:


> Hello i am new to this site and i notice that everyone is obsessed with using AR to dissolve gold . Frankly most modern electronic scrap just has a small amount of gold with lots of base metal (iron and aluminum) so why spend money on nitric acid when all it does is supply oxygen and it is used primarly for fineness assays or final refining. There are cheaper oxidizers like hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) . Just use hydrocloric acid purchased from local retail , you dont need high purity or USP and use off the shelf hydrogen peroxide. put your cpu, jewelry ect in a pryex coffe pot or beaker and add just enough acid to cover it but leave room in the container to add H2O2. Save electricity heat the acid only to 130F you dont have boil the SHIQ out of it Add small amounts of hydrogen peroxide and look for hydrogen bubbles coming off the metal this means it is reacting and dissolving. When done let settle overnight and pour off into another clean glass container. Add distilled water and settle overnite two more times. Place a length of #14 clean bright copper wire in liquid of second container (just the end of wire in liquid not 3 pounds of it) stir slowly with glass rod (no metal or wood) once a day for 3 days . The black coating on the wire is gold and platinum group metals PGM only. save liquid from this and other runs and leave copper in it to recover any trace left in it (common practice) . If there is alot of gold the liquid will turn dark and a gold film will float on suface if this happen add more water and sink the film by whipping with small diameter copper wire acrross it and if you filter it you must burn the filter to recover the fine gold particals.



Packrat, Hi there. I'm also new to this site and learning as much as I can from HOKE and those on this forum. It seems like almost everyone has a way of "tweeking" an already proven method. This is what made me want to comment on your posting. I just use acid peroxide to remove the gold foils and surface PM's. It's not hot HCL, but rather just room temp. I haven't tested my solution with SC either, and if what you say is true then I've sold myself short! Can you please clarify your process? You state that there are two containers. One with the used Acid Peroxide and another with the scrap metal plus sterile water. Can you please clarify after this point? Also, a couple pics of what you're doing would be even better!! I would rather do something like this than using the dangerous stuff. Until I finish HOKE and really grasp all the minutia, I don't want to bite off more than I can chew.


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## dtectr

Acid bath
While you're at it, see if you can get his used feedstock, as there is no good [non-cyanide] way of getting _all_ the gold with these methods.
The PMs will cement out on existing base metals, even without the addition of extra copper. These old prospector tricks were ok when gold was plentiful & only $380/oz & gas was under $2/gal. I'm not trying to be insulting, but there's no substitute for the proven winner.

Read Hoke, follow the links in lazersteve's signature line, & download the Gold Refining Forum Handbook. As an exercise, look up Harold_V's responses to specific methods/materials using the Advanced Search function.

The combo that Gold Silver Pro offers for just $35 is really worth 100 times its weight in gold - literally.


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## Acid_Bath76

dtectr said:


> Acid bath
> While you're at it, see if you can get his used feedstock, as there is no good [non-cyanide] way of getting _all_ the gold with these methods.
> The PMs will cement out on existing base metals, even without the addition of extra copper. These old prospector tricks were ok when gold was plentiful & only $380/oz & gas was under $2/gal. I'm not trying to be insulting, but there's no substitute for the proven winner.
> 
> Read Hoke, follow the links in lazersteve's signature line, & download the Gold Refining Forum Handbook. As an exercise, look up Harold_V's responses to specific methods/materials using the Advanced Search function.
> 
> The combo that Gold Silver Pro offers for just $35 is really worth 100 times its weight in gold - literally.



dtectr, 

You're absolutely spot on. I bought his PDF file a while ago, and wanted to jump in on it as soon as I got through HOKE. I've had to take a break due to finals, but after this week I'm back to reading full time. This is the second time I've come across a "simple" method to get the results I see people really working hard for. Thanks for setting me straight. Back to my physics... HOKE on Friday. 

Just curious, but what do you think about melting "less than 99.9% pure Au" with a flux. I'm sure HOKE covers this, but I would like to get an opinion from someone that has actually tried it or knows someone who has... and of course the results. Anyhow, thanks for the heads up.


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## dtectr

Flux only cleans oxides of metals, not base metals themselves. Sorry - no short cut!  :lol:


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## edsikes

ok so i just ran across the ceramic cpu yieldlist pdf posted here on the forum and was wondering what are peoples average yields with other ceramic cpu's like the AMD K6 cpu? i dont even like fooling around with the green fiber cpu's as the gold on those is so minimal. but are the k6 processors worth refining some of the lists i come acros state an average is .12 grams for them just curious what other peoples experiences have been


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## patnor1011

edsikes said:


> ok so i just ran across the ceramic cpu yieldlist pdf posted here on the forum and was wondering what are peoples average yields with other ceramic cpu's like the AMD K6 cpu? i dont even like fooling around with the green fiber cpu's as the gold on those is so minimal. but are the k6 processors worth refining some of the lists i come acros state an average is .12 grams for them just curious what other peoples experiences have been



Depend on what list do you mean. One is floating around with all the wrong numbers just so people can have alook at it and have a laugh.
Can you post link to the one you found?


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## MarcoP

Recently few users did talk about AMD K6's yield in this thread.


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## edsikes

patnor1011 said:


> edsikes said:
> 
> 
> 
> ok so i just ran across the ceramic cpu yieldlist pdf posted here on the forum and was wondering what are peoples average yields with other ceramic cpu's like the AMD K6 cpu? i dont even like fooling around with the green fiber cpu's as the gold on those is so minimal. but are the k6 processors worth refining some of the lists i come acros state an average is .12 grams for them just curious what other peoples experiences have been
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Depend on what list do you mean. One is floating around with all the wrong numbers just so people can have alook at it and have a laugh.
> Can you post link to the one you found?
Click to expand...




well the lists i have seen are the ones that are way off. but someone posted a new one on here that had updated trial and error amounts but they only had 8-10 different chips on there and amd k6 processors werent on it and neither were the k5 so i was wondering from experience what folks, average yields on those two specific processors were.


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## edsikes

this is the new list posted here by samuel-a. but he was missing those two processors


http://www.goldnscrap.com/images/stories/yieldlist.pdf


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## edsikes

MarcoP said:


> Recently few users did talk about AMD K6's yield in this thread.





hey marco! that was exactly what i was looking for. i must have overlooked it!!!! lot of good info in there! thank you so much!


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## Tankman

Hi all,

This is the first time for recovering gold from ceramic CPU's, using poor mans AR. I am at the stage now where I have added SMB to the filtered solution. The question I have is, that is it normal to have a ring of very fine black particles at the top of the solution, which is starting to migrate towards the bottom?


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## Geo

You left out a lot of inbetweens there but if I follow you correctly, fine gold particles get trapped on the surface and are held up by surface tension. Use a spray bottle of water set on mist to knock them down. Wait until everything settles or it will just collect up there again.


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## Tankman

Thank you Geo, 

knocking it down with water on the fine mist setting has worked.


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