just been sent this link.

Just had an email from a chap that claims to have a new way to de-plate items.
I Know it has all been covered before,and most lightly it is a clever scam to gouge $99.99 out of gullible idiot's like my self.
But the close up's do show what look's like gold plate loosing cohesion and sluffing off in an elemental form.
Quite interesting I do not do a lot of plating my self but a none toxic way to convince Au to turn to a fine particulate while leaving copper intact is interesting.
It is almost worth the $99.99 just to see and it would probably be tax deductible :lol:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zln3c7-uxzc&feature=youtu.be

"NON-CHEMICAL" appears misleading to me. I think we all no water won't do that. Looks like a cell using sulfuric acid to me.

I have to say the video of the process looks pretty impressive, and the equipment seems simple enough. Could this be one of those systems that uses a salt solution?

It is not a sulfuric cell, -sulfuric has a higher viscosity, the gold would form a dark cloud, his fingers would get burned.

It seems not to be any cell with NaCl, it would dissolve copper and gold, too, and precipitate light blue flakes of copper compounds in my understanding. Though I am not sure. The copper gets that typical copper-hydroxides-blue in one of the pictures.

Has anyone ever tried pure tap water?

from what i see, it dissolve the nickel layer over the copper and under the gold... now what would dissolve the nickel only?

It kind of reminds me of gold plate on aluminum with a nickel barrier. Nitric acid eats the nickel and the gold just washes off.
Gold plate on a circuit board is never plated directly onto the copper, there is always a nickel barrier between so if it would be possible to selectively dissolve the nickel it would look like this. The raw copper surface proves that the nickel is gone.

Many of the circuit boards looked like some part had stayed above the solution, like it was connected to a conductor. As he state it is non chemical I suggest it is an electrochemical method at least.

I think he is using electrolysis with carefully adjusted voltage in an unknown electrolyte, possibly sodium chloride.

Cathode reaction :
H₂O + 2e^- → H₂(g) +2OH^- (E₀ = +0.41V @ pH=7 )

Possible anode reactions :
2Cu +2OH^- → Cu₂O + 2H₂O + 2e^- (E₀ = 0.36V)
Ni → Ni²⁺ + 2e^- (E₀ = 0.24V)

Cu⁺ → Cu²⁺ + e^- (E₀ = -0.159V)
Cu → Cu²⁺ + 2e^- (E₀ = -0.340V)
Cu → Cu⁺ + e^- (E₀ = -0.520V)

What we can see from the standard potentials is that copper is going to be oxidized. (that happens, as can be seen on the video, going from bright copper to dark brown-red copper oxide on the surface) Then nickel goes into solution and the gold falls off.
If the voltage is high enough the copper will also start going into solution.

I'm not an electrochemist so I probably made a few mistakes above. But this is my theory on what is going on in that video.
Please, correct me if I'm wrong.

Göran

Maybe he is reverse electroplating the Nickel using an electrolyte of Vinegar and salt. That would explain the Copper look to the after product and would still get the Gold foil off as well as the Ap process.

For $99.00 I think all you get is a DVD explaining the process. I have been thinking on this some and I am still leaning towards deplating the Nickel, then the Gold would just fall away.
I found a product called MetalX B-9 Nickel Stripper. They claim it is non-toxic and removes NICKEL from steel, copper, brass and zinc diecast, silver and gold. If this stuff works, it would be much simpler than some of the processes we currently use. I'm not sure it would be cost effective though.

Here are a couple of links to the product to find more information:
http://infohouse.p2ric.org/ref/20/19926/p2_opportunity_handbook/msds/1_4ni.pdf
http://www.finishing.com/chemicals/stripper.shtml
http://www.caswellplating.com/electroplating-anodizing/metal-strippers/metalx-b-9-nickel-stripper-2-5lb.html
https://www.google.com/search?q=metalx+b-9&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-USfficial&client=firefox-a&channel=sb

EDIT: Correcting my keyboards mistakes :|

I have asked him to contact me and introduce him self.
But as of yet no answer just an email out of the blue.
Let us hope he make's contact so we can discuss.

Did you see the bubbles in the background, probably due to a slight overvoltage, I would guess.

After experimenting with the pure water silver deplating cell, I would still think tap water could work - oxidizing copper and nickel to oxides/hydroxides and the gold loses its substrate. That would explain the generation of probably hydrogen at the other electrode.

Trying to make sense off all your guesses, i tried this with both tap water and the vinegar/salt solution, the plated gold seems to fall off after all base metals are dissolved. when i tap the anode, there were black flakes falling off, first from the narrow edges. the nickel hydroxides (I presume that's what they are) float to the surface in water, this would make separation easier through suraface draining. that could explain the two containers with a pump.

I tried some acquintance tests, with vinegar and salt, without salt and with different electrodes. Cu and stainless seel 3mm thick. the Cu looses its material slowly without salt. With the salt added, it goes faster in both vinegar and water leaving a blue colored luquid near the anode, the Cu cathode gets coated in a white powder layer. later the dissolved copper oxidizes to the cathode.

I used a 40V powersupply with adjustable current limit up to 3 Amp in a 500ml erlenmayer flask. first only electrodes to see the difference in reactions. later with a single plated contact, not really much, but still enough to watch and learn.
water eats all of the base metals, vinegar/salt seems to focus on one of the top layers (nickel?), and leaving the copper alone longer.

The stainless steel anode electrode gives off a yellow liquid droppping to the bottom, so its better to keep it out of the solution. don't know what the stainless oxides do to the chemistry.
still more tests to do and to figure out the best way to separate the gold from the cholrides or whatever is in there. evaporation, inineration, HCL washes and then i'll probably try HCL and bleach.
the white parts that fall down leave a kind of rusty stain on the bottom. Probably from some iron, it was a spring type contact.

Nice to know that normal water or vinegar might do the trick, after considering nitric! a lot safer option. allthoug i got a whiff of some "nox-like" fumes with the vinegar and salt and stainless combination, or i might have gotten a little paranoid from reading that msds. :shock: i now run all test through an ice bath test tube, to see if the pH changes from any fumes.

I have taken pictures and films of the process, and will do so with future tests. any suggestions about possible solutions are welcome. i'll try water and salt only, and diluted vinegar.

kinda hoping this will trigger some more speculation and theory. we might figure it out.

With vinegar and salt you are basically making hydrochloric acid in an organic carbon based solution, electrolyzing this can produce chlorine gas at the anode.

Thanks for the input. As i understood from the HCL / bleech process, chlorine gas can dissolve gold as well, so some of the gold will dissolve in the solution, making it useless for the intended purpose of getting the gold off in flakes and particles...?
vinegar seemed a better option to me, as it leaves the base metal alone longer, be it Cu or a Cu alloy. but resulted in less or no (hydr)oxides floating around. the HCL will probably convert those metals into chorides too, i can imagine. every discovery leads to even more questions...

Tap water is more aggressive to all metals and will(?) not be able to take some metals in solution, leaving hydroxides floating around and salts dropping to the bottom, which would otherwise go into solution, because of the HCL.( am i right in this assumption?) so i have a choice between gold flakes and having to separate the fluffies from the solids, or using vinegar and having to separate using selective precipitaion, incineration and washes.

Butcher, thanks again for the valuable input. Any idea what gases are produced using tap water, i was thinking hydrogen.

With water you are splitting the H2O water to H+ Hydrogen (acidic) and OH- Hydroxide (basic) these migrate to their respective sides of the cell, if the you are running the cell and the cells current is high enough you can produce hydrogen gas, and oxygen gas at their respective electrodes (making the whole cell more basic (or a hydroxide solution as the reaction proceeds).

Splitting water never creates a basic solution. 2 H₂O -> 2 H₂(g) + O₂(g)
Nowhere is there any OH^- created.... or you can see it as hydrogen hydroxide, but that's just plain water. :mrgreen:

Göran

I thing that is possible when you use membrane (like the one used for reversed osmosis) between electrolisys electrodes. One side will become acidic and another basic.

Claudie said:

For $99.00 I think all you get is a DVD explaining the process. I have been thinking on this some and I am still leaning towards deplating the Nickel, then the Gold would just fall away.
I found a product called MetalX B-9 Nickel Stripper. They claim it is non-toxic and removes NICKEL from steel, copper, brass and zinc diecast, silver and gold. If this stuff works, it would be much simpler than some of the processes we currently use. I'm not sure it would be cost effective though.

Here are a couple of links to the product to find more information:
http://infohouse.p2ric.org/ref/20/19926/p2_opportunity_handbook/msds/1_4ni.pdf
http://www.finishing.com/chemicals/stripper.shtml
http://www.caswellplating.com/electroplating-anodizing/metal-strippers/metalx-b-9-nickel-stripper-2-5lb.html
https://www.google.com/search?q=metalx+b-9&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-USfficial&client=firefox-a&channel=sb

EDIT: Correcting my keyboards mistakes :|

Click to expand...

I used to use that very thing when I was in the CD-ROM business. It's a yellow powder you mix with water and heat it up. Very basic like a lye. We used it to remove pure nickel from our stainless tooling out of our nickel vacuum deposition chambers. It took a very long time, turned the nickel into a black powder sludge that we bagged up and sent off to be reclaimed when the solution became saturated.

g_axelsson,
I would agree with you if we were only splitting water to generate hydrogen and oxygen, or where not oxidizing metals or reducing them, or had no interference of other Anions or Cations in the electrolyte to change the balance of the acid and base properties of the water being split...

From wiki:
In pure water at the negatively charged cathode, a reduction reaction takes place, with electrons (e−) from the cathode being given to hydrogen cations to form hydrogen gas (the half reaction balanced with acid):
Reduction at cathode: 2 H+(aq) + 2e− → H2(g)
At the positively charged anode, an oxidation reaction occurs, generating oxygen gas and giving electrons to the anode to complete the circuit:
Oxidation at anode: 2 H2O(l) → O2(g) + 4 H+(aq) + 4e−

The same half reactions can also be balanced with base as listed below. Not all half reactions must be balanced with acid or base. Many do, like the oxidation or reduction of water listed here. To add half reactions they must both be balanced with either acid or base.
Cathode (reduction): 2 H2O(l) + 2e− → H2(g) + 2 OH−(aq)Anode (oxidation): 4 OH−(aq) → O2(g) + 2 H2O(l) + 4 e−
Combining either half reaction pair yields the same overall decomposition of water into oxygen and hydrogen:
Overall reaction: 2 H2O(l) → 2 H2(g) + O2(g)
The number of hydrogen molecules produced is thus twice the number of oxygen molecules. Assuming equal temperature and pressure for both gases, the produced hydrogen gas has therefore twice the volume of the produced oxygen gas. The number of electrons pushed through the water is twice the number of generated hydrogen molecules and four times the number of generated oxygen molecules.

Hi butcher,

what I was reacting on (I should have cited it to make it clear) was the following post and more specific the part marked in red.

butcher said:

With water you are splitting the H2O water to H+ Hydrogen (acidic) and OH- Hydroxide (basic) these migrate to their respective sides of the cell, if the you are running the cell and the cells current is high enough you can produce hydrogen gas, and oxygen gas at their respective electrodes (making the whole cell more basic (or a hydroxide solution as the reaction proceeds).

Click to expand...

I should have read the post not as a freestanding statement but in view of the whole thread.

The splitting of pure water by itself can't make a solution acidic or basic. To get an electrical cell working we need to have a flow of charge, even if we put in a membrane we need to allow some ions through and the smallest one is H⁺. As that passes through the membrane the balance of OH^- and H⁺ is kept and the pH stays neutral at 7.

But if we have an electrolyte or interactions with the electrodes then we can get a shift in pH thanks to the side reactions. (For example splitting weakly basic copper sulfate into copper and sulfuric acid)

I guess we are both correct in this way. 8)

Göran