dissolved my gold filled without base metal removal. help!

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jay308

New member
Joined
Feb 25, 2015
Messages
1
I'm hoping someone can help. I have dissolved my gold filled scrap in a solution of sodium nitrate and hydrochloric acid and the solution turned a very dark brown with the little bit of green. I then treated the solution with urea and filtered it. I took a portion of that solution and added sodium metabisulfite and what precipitated out was a white sludge. I then took another portion and tried precipitating with storm precipitantand the same thing happened. I'm assuming that these are all the base metals that I failed to remove beforehand. Is there any way to remove them now so I can just drop the gold?
 
Welcome to the forum Jay. I guess you've already figured out that the methods you've tried aren't very successful, so I won't scold you for making a mistake.

Your gold is still there, and you can recover it as long as you don't throw anything away. I recommend you put a lid on your containers and set them aside for a while as you study the forum. If I had you solution to deal with, I would use the "cementation" process to recover your gold, then follow other procedures described on the forum to refine the recovered metal. You can use the search function to learn about cementation.

I also recommend reading through my Tips for Navigating and Posting on the Forum thread. It will help get you off to a good start here. Be sure to follow the link to Lazersteve's Guided Tour of the forum.

Dave
 
Hello Jay and welcome to the forum.

What frugal wrote is good advice and you will find a ton of information here on the forum.

Since you referred to the precipitant as "Storm" I guess that you bought an expensive kit from Shore. While reading the forum you will find out that they are selling cheap common chemicals that can be bought for peanuts locally and renaming it so people shouldn't know what it is. Their customer service is nonexistent when there is a problem. As you understand, that company isn't one of our favorites. 8)

You never told us anything about the weights of scrap, the amount of gold, how much chemicals you used, times to let it react, testing for dissolved gold (look up stannous chloride and learn to test for gold) ... and so on. The more details you can provide the better help you can get. But the best help you can get is to learn it by reading the forum, then you will learn so much more than just the details about this problem and next time you have a problem you will know how to proceed.

Based on the few hints in your post I would guess that the white precipitate is copper chloride. If it is it would not be soluble in pure water but would be in hydrochloric acid. But if you add HCl then you would create aqua regia again (since you never denoxed your solution) and also dissolve any gold left.

My advice to you is to study the introduction texts, read Hoke to get the vocabulary so you understand what we are telling you, then learn how to test for dissolved gold.
Then check a number of similar posts because you are not the first person to make a mess. See what they were recommended for solution and based on that make a plan.
Present that plan here as a list of steps to do and then you would get a lot help and recommendations. It is so much easier to help someone that tries to solve the problem and listens to advice. Anyone just wanting a quick fix and nothing else is mostly ignored.

Good luck in your studies.

Göran
 
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