# nitric acid after aqua regia



## daiene1979 (May 20, 2011)

Hi boys.
I have a bunch of computer boards, jewelry with different k of golt .
I was thinking about put everything in aqua regia, precipitate with smb and put the brown mud(gold) in nitric to make sure all the base metals are gone. After that wash it with amonia and destil. water.
Does it work?
I have fine powder smb and i need help with the solution.(how much water and after it is done, how much liquid smb i need i the aqua regia?
Thanks people.


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## jimdoc (May 20, 2011)

Don't do anything until you do more reading.
Mixing everything together is a bad idea.
Getting rid of the base metals first is generally the best idea.
Don't rush into this hobby, and be safe most of all.
You can build up your supply to refine while you read.

Jim


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## Harold_V (May 20, 2011)

If you're interested in my opinion, I'd suggest you lose the ideas you have posted and start reading. The methods you propose can work, but are filled with problems that can easily be avoided. One, in particular, is the notion of washing precipitated gold with nitric. Sounds like a good idea, but it's a good way to put back in solution gold that has already been processed. There are far better ways to approach washing precipitated gold. 

Dissolving everything in AR without dealing with base metals isn't my idea of a smart thing to do. It, too, can yield serious problems, often resulting in the loss of gold, or difficulty in dissolving karat gold. 

In general, my advice to you is to put on the back burner the idea of refining, and start reading Hoke's book, so you have a better understanding of the potential problems you will face when you go off on a tangent, doing what you want to do instead of what is known to work. If you persist in reinventing the wheel, when you are faced with failure, you may be unpleasantly surprised that few will offer assistance. We try to minimize the amount of time spent on folks that tend to ignore convention, especially when they have little or no knowledge in refining. 

Read Hoke. 

Harold


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## daiene1979 (May 20, 2011)

Harold_V said:


> If you're interested in my opinion, I'd suggest you lose the ideas you have posted and start reading. The methods you propose can work, but are filled with problems that can easily be avoided. One, in particular, is the notion of washing precipitated gold with nitric. Sounds like a good idea, but it's a good way to put back in solution gold that has already been processed. There are far better ways to approach washing precipitated gold.
> 
> Dissolving everything in AR without dealing with base metals isn't my idea of a smart thing to do. It, too, can yield serious problems, often resulting in the loss of gold, or difficulty in dissolving karat gold.
> 
> ...




Hi Harold,
I am already reading hoke by the way.
It was just an idea.
The reason I thought about it is because in my mind the aqua regia is strong and would just eat everything faster(let me know if I am wrong), so I thought cleaning the base metals after would work the same way.
I would not try anything without learning first. That is why I asked.
I did the refining one time(2 years ago).I got the brown powder, but i believe it is contaminated.I refined 2 computers board only to make a test.I could not melt it because I my torch is a propane gas torch and it didnt melt. It melted a little and it was fine with the 22k acid gold test which means the other 2 parts could be any bad metal.
I will refine it again with the new test in a feww days.The way I did was just the way I asked, but I didnt cleaned with nitric because I had no knowledge enough and still dont, but a little more.
If it wasnt a good idea it is fine dissolving the base metals in nitric before AR which is the way it should be.
Thank you for your time.


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## daiene1979 (May 20, 2011)

jimdoc said:


> Don't do anything until you do more reading.
> Mixing everything together is a bad idea.
> Getting rid of the base metals first is generally the best idea.
> Don't rush into this hobby, and be safe most of all.
> ...




I wont mix. It was just an idea and I think it is the right place to ask.
I will go ahead and do the nitric first.
Thank you for replying. I will read more and do in the way it should be.


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## Harold_V (May 21, 2011)

daiene1979 said:


> I am already reading hoke by the way.
> It was just an idea.


That you're reading Hoke is really a good thing. That will help you understand my comments, which were intended to be constructive, not critical. 



> The reason I thought about it is because in my mind the aqua regia is strong and would just eat everything faster(let me know if I am wrong), so I thought cleaning the base metals after would work the same way.


Unfortunately, that's not very good logic. There's more than a few reasons why ----which you will come to understand with time, and with reading Hoke's book, but in a nut shell, when you attempt to dissolve values with base metals, while it works, it has limitations (when silver is involved), plus when you dissolve all of the base metals with the values, drag down becomes a problem. It also makes little sense to process large volumes of solution when volume can be drastically reduced. The product isn't of high quality in most instances, and there's nothing to be gained, anyway, in that regardless of which method one chooses, everything gets dissolved, anyway, so you're much better served to eliminate the base metals first, before dissolving the values. When you don't, and you don't maintain the proper balance of free acids, values get cemented on base metals, which can be the source of lost material if you don't understand what is happening. 

When you have read Hoke to the point where it makes sense, you will have a much better understanding of why we process as we do. It's not because other methods don't work---they often do. It's because the preferred methods yield the best quality with the fewest problems, and generally are equally as safe, if not safer, than other methods. 

I encourage you, and all newbies, to learn the basics before you start experimenting. I can't think of much that is a greater waste of time than trying to re-invent the wheel, especially when one doesn't have a clue about how the wheel works in the first place. 

Harold


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## daiene1979 (May 21, 2011)

Harold_V said:


> daiene1979 said:
> 
> 
> > I am already reading hoke by the way.
> ...


I have to agree with you!


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