# gold recovery useing lye



## Anonymous (Nov 1, 2007)

hi im new at this and am wondering if anyone knew the formula in laymans terms on useing lye to get the gold off of cpu's or memory. i have a mit of lye laying around in a bucket as my cousin makes fis own bio diesel with the stuff. awesome site btw.
also is thare any other ways to do this with stuff i can get at the hardware store or home depot?

thanx
chad


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## OMG (Nov 6, 2007)

From my knowledge so far,
Lye (NaOH) won't dissolve gold.
But it will convert dissolved gold into a solid again. It will either make Au(OH)3 or sodium aurate (NaAuO2). It will make sodium aurate when you put in too much NaOH.
If you make the Au(OH)3, you can just heat it to get it back to plain gold.

The chemical reaction goes something like this:
NaOH + AuCl -> NaCL + AuOH
Lye + dissolved gold -> salt + gold

But NaOH is not normally used as a precipitant because it drops(precipitates) every metal that happens to be in solution, so unless the only metal you are dissolving is gold, you're still left with a big mess of metal that you still have to purify. (and computer stuff has lots of other metals with the gold.

Read through this site, there are LOTS of ways you can get the gold off.
You should read a lot before actually trying something because you might end up with a big mess of hazardous chemicals and no gold.

*You can get the stuff you need from the hardware store. (for most of the processes)


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