- Joined
- May 17, 2020
- Messages
- 4
Hi there. I have a lot of gold filled jewellery scrap. I have gone the nitric acid leach, followed by AR route in the past. Mixed results. Lots of stuff doesn't dissolve in nitric and then messes up the AR step.
My question: Can you start with one or more hydrochloric acid leaches? That should get rid of copper, zinc, iron, tin etc. Especially tin, which messes up the nitric acid leach, and the iron, which doesn't seem to dissolve in nitric.
I have looked through the forum but couldn't find anything.
I am aware that there must not be any oxidants present in the HCl leach, otherwise gold will go into solution as the chloride complex. A small amount of gold will dissolve, but that will be recovered later from the stock pot by cementation onto copper. Silver might give problems, but I don't expect much silver to be around.
Thank you!
My question: Can you start with one or more hydrochloric acid leaches? That should get rid of copper, zinc, iron, tin etc. Especially tin, which messes up the nitric acid leach, and the iron, which doesn't seem to dissolve in nitric.
I have looked through the forum but couldn't find anything.
I am aware that there must not be any oxidants present in the HCl leach, otherwise gold will go into solution as the chloride complex. A small amount of gold will dissolve, but that will be recovered later from the stock pot by cementation onto copper. Silver might give problems, but I don't expect much silver to be around.
Thank you!