# stuck in aqua regia process



## awm (Oct 31, 2015)

Hello, i have a stone having 12 % gold in it .i crushed it and add nitric acid so that copper,silver and other metals can dissolve as i dont need them so i filtered the liquid and waste it and put the leftover in aqua regia and wait for 1 day after that i was left with small metal pieces cant understand what metal it is as it did not dissolve in aqua regia and looks silver and grey i am attaching the picture of it please let me know what it is, also it is non magnetic plus i have a problem in the evaporating process of aqua regia as i heat it at slow flame until the solution decreases to a significant level and pour hcl in it then repeat it and lastly did the same but this time with water after evaporating what left is light green substance having some black sponge type thing on it ( i thought that the black thing is the waste or something like that because i thought that gold chloride is always in a brown or dark brown or yellowish colour it was my mistake i think as i was unaware of it ) so i repeat the evaporating process by adding some water again but this time no sponge or something else out so i decided to redo the whole process again by adding some aqua regia in the same previous leftover substance and add an aluminium sheet in it and wait for another day after that i repeat the evaporating process hcl washed but this time what left is a mixture of dark green and black substance i am attaching its picture also please please guide me that where i am wrong and what i have to do now glad to hear the experts opinion i am new here and inexperienced i read alot on internet but when it comes to practical i am confused,stuck and frustrated by not getting the results i want please correct me.special thanks to all.


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## galenrog (Oct 31, 2015)

Before anyone else chimes in on this, let me ask one question. What leads you to believe that this material is 12% gold, or has any gold in it at all?


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## awm (Nov 1, 2015)

The person whom i got it showed me a laboratory test which includes gold, titanium,zinc and copper


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## butcher (Nov 1, 2015)

If the stone has gold in it aqua regia process may or may not work, and with most stones would not work, in fact attempting to extract gold from ore with aqua regia not only normally would not work but can be very dangerous.
Aqua regia is used for refining gold, very seldom used for recovery of gold from scrap metals.

With ore trying to recover gold using aqua regia would almost always be a very bad idea.
A stone or ore can be composed of many different elements, some of which can produce deadly gases (arsenic for example), many compounds of the ore even if gold is involved may not let the gold react with the acids or a leach, or may need a pre-treatment for any acid leach to the attack gold, the base metals may take gold back out of the leach if gold was put into solution, for any acid or basic leach to work some pre-treatment may be needed to change the composition of the ore for a leach to work, and base metals may have to be leached first so as not to interfere with the leach of the gold.

Ore can be composed of many different combinations of the elements, leaching may or may not be the best choice for recovery even with pre-treatment.
Every ore is different and may take a different process to extract the gold, or to may take different methods to get more of the gold from the ore, many times it may take experimentation to extract the gold even after the elemental composition of the ore is known through assaying and testing.

Some ores the composition of the ore itself its minerals may also effect a leach adversely as the chemical composition of the ore and the chemical composition of the leach can react chemically to dissolve gold where the leach may not be intended to do so or may make the leach ineffective.

pre-treatment and concentrating the ore is normally done in many processes.
Different ores types normally take different methods of processing.

12% gold in a stone is a very high amount of gold, almost unbelievable (not impossible for vein gold in quartz), just crushing and gravity separation methods may be the best choice.

With a sulfide ore flotation may be a better option of concentration.

Unless the gold is free gold, and can be removed and concentrated through mechanical means. Then without understanding the composition of the ore through assaying, leaching with most any leach is just shooting in the dark at best...

In ore just because the ore is not magnetic ( or its dust is not magnetic) does not mean there are not the magnetic metals involved, the composition of the magnetic metals involved can be of a composition making them non magnetic.


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## awm (Nov 3, 2015)

I am in pakistan, here we do not have mining equipments and cyanide is also not easily available,is there any chance to recover gold through acids like nitric,hydrochloric? Also i will post the pictures of ore soon.


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## butcher (Nov 3, 2015)

There are many different ways to process ore, much depends on the ore itself, an assay will give you an indication if the ore has enough value to process, and will give you a starting place in finding a method to recover those values.


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## awm (Nov 5, 2015)

Here is the laboratory test and i think that zinc and titanium are not letting the gold free or dissolve even after processing through aqua regia kindly help me regarding this matter. what i have to do now ? Guide me step wise please


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## awm (Nov 5, 2015)

I hear something about heating the titanium,zinc and gold in aqua regia, will this method help separating gold from them ?


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## geedigity (Nov 5, 2015)

What else does the assay indicate, since it appears that some of the analytes (concentrations of other metals, minerals, etc) are missing due to the right side of the photograph being cut off.


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## rickbb (Nov 5, 2015)

Slow down, study more. You cannot get want you want with a step by step guide from this or any web site. 

You have a complex ore and you need to tailor a specific solution to what you have. There is no cookie cutter formula to hand out for you to use.

AR is not what you need to be working with on this ore. Set that aside before you hurt yourself or others with some exotic poison gas.

Just because the assay says there is gold does not mean it's "free" gold ready to be separated and refined with AR. It is likely bound up with other minerals and will need multiple steps to get a final product out of it.


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## awm (Nov 5, 2015)

There is nothing about metals on right side blank column with a heading in persian language anyhow report shows 5 metals only. I am really sad i want to extract the gold out


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## awm (Nov 5, 2015)

I just want to know how to separate and attack titanium and zinc by using acids


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## butcher (Nov 5, 2015)

I am unsure how they got the report of metals involved in that report, what it does not tell you is what all the ore is composed of.
That sheet is only somewhat helpful, but not what we need to determine what the ore you have actually is, or what processes you may need to go through, or the possible dangers involved to process for values.
It only shows some of what the ore may have contained or what the concentrates of the ore can be converted into (for example if the ore was crushed and panned for concentrates and roasted, or concentrated through a sulfide flotation and roasted or concentrated and processed by some other means which may have resulted in the concentrates which reported as oxides...
The sheet says concentrates from the ore were analyzed. and showed these elements or oxides of these elements.

What it does not show how the ore (Concentrates) may have been treated before the analysis if the concentrates from the ore, (was the small amount concentrates tested from tons of ore roasted ?)... which could have changed the composition of the copper bearing ore to give copper oxides in the concentrated material tested.

The raw ore or stone you have, can be of a different composition than that of the concentrates which were tested, it could contain arsenic, sulfide or other salts that if roasted could have been driven off in the process... 

This seems to be primarily a copper bearing ore that does not narrow it down much, the copper oxide could come from many different sources of copper minerals especially if the concentrates were roasted, only a few sources of ore possibility's:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper%28I%29_oxide
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuprite
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalcopyrite
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenorite
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennantite
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalcocite
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bornite
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covellite
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malachite
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrahedrite
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azurite
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysocolla
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spertiniite

A more complete assay of your ore would give you a much better idea of what you have, at this point you have a piece of paper that really does not tell you what mineral you have, it just shows what someone had in some concentrates (which could have been processed) that they had analyzed for a few components. How can you be sure the concentrates came from the same stone as what you have? If they were, did they ore concentrates undergo a process that changed the composition of the ore from its mineral salts to its mineral oxides?
Not really much to go on...

How many tons of this ore do you have? 
How many tons of the ore were processed to get the concentrates that show the results on the paper you have. How were these tons of crushed ore concentrated, and or processed?

The paper you have may, or may not give much a reflection of what the stone you have contains, or what is possible to get from processing the stone you have.

I would be tempted to take a sample of that stone, crush it, and roast it, and melt it with copper shavings (of a known weight), with a good reducing flux composition (high in carbon), in a reducing flame or environment, to keep the copper from oxidizing, and to reduce the copper oxides of the ore to metal in the fluxed melt, then proceed to process the copper slug, parting the slug with nitric then process the remaining powders, in your aqua regia.

If you have access to tons of this ore then spend a little money and get a proper assay and go from there.


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## awm (Nov 6, 2015)

Yes the small amount is tested around 100 grams and 60kg is currently in the stock of supplier but he said he can arrange tons for many years.i want to tell you about the ore it looks like shiny silver colour and when i started crushing it, it broke into pieces and those pieces have golden colour visible and also copper colour was visible and the picture attached in my post above of the leftover from aqua regia that grey powder or small silver metal pieces shines golden too.


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## butcher (Nov 6, 2015)

Color golden or silver does not really mean much with ore, several types of fools gold can be mistaken for gold by someone not familiar with the difference of real and fools gold.
Crush and pan it, fools gold is light and will pan out of the pan easily, gold is heavy with its high density and will stay in the pan to the end (when panned correctly), silver is also fairly heavy and can be panned by gravity separation.
Fools gold is brittle and will crush easily, gold is softer and malleable which can be flattened.

At this point I would say the papers or the suppliers words are meaningless, you really have no idea if the paper is even for the stone you have, you have no idea if the sample stone you have is representative of the material he may sell you at a later date. He could have given you a cherry picked sample of good ore, or the best piece from a vein, to get you to buy a whole mine of mostly worthless rock, you need a good representative sample of the whole lot you plan on purchasing, and have a good assay done on the representative sample.

All you have is his word, a sample of concentrates that may or may not have come from tons of the processed ore (concentrated to a high value, from a large volume of more valueless ore), which may or may not be a representative sample of what he has to sell you, with a piece of paper that only tells a partial story, of what the concentrate may or may not contain if processed to a concentrate the way he processed it. 
All you have now is enough to get you interested this may be something to peruse, without any education in mining you are likely to just be setting up yourself to loose a lot of money buying tons of worthless rock with no understanding of how to get any value from it.
You would need a lot of education to be able to proceed, and will have a lot of trials and errors to get it right. you will need to learn many different things, first you will need to learn how to determine if the ore has enough value. and how to recover those values, how to concentrate it and process it for further recovery, learning the best recovery method, and best way to process for further treatments, for that specific type of ore, and then how to smelt, leach, or get the values separated for further refining...
Just because a rock has gold, it may not be worth the time and trouble to get the gold out of it, and if it is worth it, you will need to be able to know enough of how to do it, or may have to experiment with your knowledge of many different methods to find a method to recover most of those values from the stone, not all rocks are alike, not all methods will work for different types of rock...

If you plan on proceeding with more than a small sample out of curiosity, get a good assay of the ore, that will give you a full picture of what you may be dealing with, example find out if this is a sulfide ore, an arsenic bearing ore...


Without the assay you really have no place to go, except to wandering around in the dark trying to find a way out, and possibly putting yourself in danger in that dark, or setting yourself up to spend a lot of money and time with nothing to show for it.
Without an education in mining, or skills in recovery and refining your still in the dark just wandering around looking for a way out of a mess.

Then you may not just be stuck in some aqua regia process, but you could be stuck with tons of expensive stone that is basically worthless, and no idea what to do with it.

Get the assay and work on your education, trying to get gold without these is just wandering around blindly.


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## g_axelsson (Nov 6, 2015)

Panning doesn't work if the gold is included as microscopic inclusions in sulfides.

I've seen ore samples with arsenopyrite that contained 2500 grams per ton but wasn't visible at all. That mine never made any money.

A warning, roasting an unknown ore could be fatal. Our long time member Irons can attest to that. Roasting arsenic containing materials releases poisonous gas and smoke.
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=10018&p=207114&hilit=arsenic#p207114

Göran


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## awm (Nov 9, 2015)

Hey i put the leftover in concentrated hydrochloric to attack titanium and zinc for a day after that i add hydrogen peroxide and hydrochloric the reaction was too nasty and then filtered it add urea to neutralize and sodium metabisulphite after evaporating some brown material came up,i am attaching its picture plus i tried to melt it through the fire gun which is used in repairing air conditioner and that brownish material turns into red hot metal piece it was too bright cannot be seen when heated after that it converted to black metal piece i am attaching its picture also.i think that gold doesnot melt properly due to some pressure and temperature problem please check it out and guide me in this regards thank you.


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## awm (Nov 9, 2015)

One thing i must mention is that the material when heated doesnot came into liquid form as it did not melt at all.the brownish material when heated shrinks and became red hot.no melting no liquid just a piece i attached the picture of.


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## g_axelsson (Nov 9, 2015)

Before you added SMB did you test your solution to see if there was any gold at all?

Göran


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## awm (Nov 9, 2015)

How can i test the presence of gold before adding smb ? Please let me know


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## g_axelsson (Nov 9, 2015)

You need to study a lot more before doing experiments if you don't know that already.

http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/search.php?keywords=testing+for+gold+in+solution&terms=all&author=&sv=0&sc=1&sf=all&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&st=0&ch=300&t=0&submit=Search

http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=85

Read Hoke and do the acquaintance experiments!

I could have pointed you straight to the answer but this way you will learn a lot more. You need it!

Göran


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## awm (Nov 9, 2015)

ok can i read hoke online ? And if possible tell me straight because its urgent and it will take time to read a book but i promise to read later give me the link of hoke also thanks.


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## g_axelsson (Nov 9, 2015)

First thread in the library section : LIBRARY INDEX THREAD

The library section was the second link I posted.

Göran


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## Anonymous (Nov 9, 2015)

AWM

Seriously, you don't want to be randomly melting stuff without knowing what it is. It can be very bad for your health. That's not a scare story- it's from experience.


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## rickbb (Nov 10, 2015)

So much for getting him to slow down and study.

The gold didn't melt due to pressure or temp problems, it didn't melt properly because IT WAS NOT GOLD. It was a bunch of unknown metals/minerals that you have not separated the gold from yet.

You are trying to work from an assay that WAS NOT DONE on the material you have. It was done on something that was pulled from your material. 2 different things.

In this part of the world we call what you've been sold, "a pig in a poke". Typical bait and switch, you've been shown an assay that is not from the material you are expected to buy. The assay you have shown was done after the material was concentrated down to have a 12% gold content and other minerals removed. You still have all those other minerals in your "rock". 

Your sample may only have 1% gold or even less, you don't know. Take your sample you have in hand and have your own assay done. That will tell you what you really have and what needs to be done to it.

You will never get any gold until you find out EXACTLY what you actually have in hand instead of what the seller wants you to think you have. As long as you are depending on a switched assay you will continue to spin your wheels getting nowhere.


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## awm (Nov 12, 2015)

Appreciate all replies and thanks to all for your concern i am glad that brothers are worrying about my health too  i am searching for assay laboratory in my area anyhow i am attaching the pictures of ore also may be these pictures will help you all to judge and review it letting me know about possible chances and outcomes one more thing 1piece is non magnetic 2nd piece is slightly magnetic and another piece is slightly more magnetic


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## awm (Nov 12, 2015)

Another one.


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## Geo (Nov 12, 2015)

Definitely a sulfide ore. Have you tried bringing it to a red heat to drive off the sulfur? You can make a simple retort with iron pipe fittings. Crush a sample as fine as you can and run it through the retort. Mill the sample and use a magnet to remove the magnetic particles. Boil in HCl and roast again. Boil in dilute nitric acid and rinse. You should be able to recover most of any gold in the sample after this. It's not as good as an assay but it will let you know if it contains gold. You can also use the retort on a milled sample and smelt using a known amount of silver as a collector. Recover the button produced and dissolve in nitric acid. Again, it wont' be as good as an assay but you will know how much gold is in the sample.


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## awm (Nov 12, 2015)

No i didnot. my bad as i was unaware of any sulphur i am going to do this now and i have a question tell me the time duration of boiling in hcl how many minutes should i have to boil it in hcl ? And after boiling in hcl will i have to roast it red again ? And i have a commercial grade nitric acid how much water should i add to dilute it please tell me the ratio and boiling time in dilute nitric as well.thank you


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## awm (Nov 13, 2015)

Waiting for an answer.


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## Geo (Nov 13, 2015)

Boil in HCl until the solution turns dark. This wash will remove any higher reactive metals like tin, calcium and zinc. If it doesn't turn dark within a couple of hours, proceed to the next step. If it turns dark in just a short time, repeat this step until it doesn't turn dark. Roast after the HCl wash. Boil in 50/50 nitric acid /water. This wash will remove any lower reactive metal like silver and copper. Same as the HCl wash, boil until it turns a different color. If the color changes quickly, repeat this wash until there is no color change. It has to boil to to keep the material moving. Rinse well and go straight to AR. Again, make sure the material and solution boils to keep the material moving.


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## kurtak (Nov 14, 2015)

awm

First of all you need to understand that the "lab report" that you posted "does not" tell you how much gold (&/or other metals) percentage wise is "in the rock"

Rather it tells you what the percentages of "metals" are AFTER they have been "extracted" from the rock

Also - "the report" was done on "concentrates" --- in other words it was not done on solid chunks of ore like you show in your hand

In other words that "report" was preformed on ore (like pictured in your hand) that was FIRST crushed - then it was run through some sort of concenter process (like a shaker table maybe) which removed a good portion of the "rock" leaving "concentrates" of the metals contained in the rock along with "some" of the rock 

In other words - the rocks you are holding in your hand do not contain 12% gold --- rather - the rock contains "some" metal - out of those metals "contained in the rock" - 12% of the metal is gold

To put it another way --- the report "does not" tell you how much rock it takes to get lets say 100 grams of all metals in the rock - which is what you really need to know - because it is this 100 grams of "metal only" that contains 12% gold

In other words - "how much rock" does it take to get 100 grams of metal that "then" is 12% gold

does it take 1,000 grams or 2,000 grams or 5,000 grams or 10,000 grams or 20,000 grams or 50,000 grams or ??? grams of rock in order to get 100 grams of metal that "then" contains 12% gold

That is why you NEED to have an actual assay done "on the rock/ore" --- AND - one rock/ore sample assay is not really going to tell you anything you can count on because one rock could be very rich in gold while the next rock could have little or no gold --- so you need to take multiple "random" samples from the large pile of ore & do multiple assay's - average the results of the multiple assay test results to get an "idea" of "per ton" yield 

My point awm is that you need to give up this "dream" that you are holding "rocks" in your hand that contain 12% gold --- because if that was true then you would have ore that has 12 grams of gold in every 100 grams of "rock" - that would be 54 grams gold per pound of rock or about 1.73 ozt per pound rock - or about 3,472 ozt per ton of ore

That would be the richest gold discovery in the enter universe - let alone anything ever found on this little old earth

You are chasing a "pipe dream" --- even if your rocks had 0.1 gram of gold per pound (454 grams) of rock - that would be 6.43 ozt per ton & that would be considered rich ore - AND - even if it was that rich - acid leaching "is not" the way to recover it

The "supplier" of this rock/ore is looking for a sucker - other wise he would be talking to large mining companies with the proper equipment & ore processing knowledge to invest in his ore ownership - and not talking to someone like you that has no equipment &/or knowledge about ores & ore processing

Kurt


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## kurtak (Nov 14, 2015)

This thread should be moved to Prospecting, Mining, Ore Concentrates & Geochemical

Kurt


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