urgent help plz green aqua regia

hi guys id really like to have posted my first post to say hi and how much i love this site but iam sitting at my laptop wanting to tear my hair out plz help,i want to read the great info that this great site has to offer but i cant seem to focus,after going around like a maniac collecting all the computers i can get my hands on and the money i spent on chemicals ahhhhhhhhhhh,ok sorry i'll get to the point -yesterday i wanted to give refining a try so i went into the garage like a crazy son of a gun i had a chem mask on i for some reason mixed 1 part nitric acid to 3 parts hydrochloric acid altogether about 240mls i added the gold bits i had chipped off into little bits then added them to the solution,it started bubbling instantly then 5 minutes into the process it started to turn to a green colour then the reaction stopped completly so i filtered a little bit to see if the solution will turn yellow when i add the sodium(percipitent),i added a bit of sodium meta to the green test solution it started bubbling and changed to a black brownish colour but it didnt powderize an fall to the bottom like it should,plz someone help me out as i dont know if i should have done the process on a hotplate???and why didnt it turn out yellow ??am i screwd an can i still save the solution,pppllllllllllzzz guys help me out thanks for your time.

Sounds like you didn't get the Nitric Acid out. Did you add water?

smack thanx for your reply sir no i didnt add any water.

Well if there is still Nitric present there is no reason to add water yet. Did you dissolve the base metals first before you did the AR? So by now you are realizing that you may have been a lot premature on taking action. I can tell your excited but you really need to store your AR and do some reading on this forum. Don't worry about the Gold in AR it will stay there. Grab yourself a beer or whatever you like and use the search in the top right of the page. If your committed to doing this then just keep collecting you scrap but most of all read from the forum while your scrapping.

http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=52 This would be a good start.

there was hardly any other metals present on the gold bits i chipped off the boards,could the green be maybe copper contamination?

iam trying to find info man but iam kinda in a situation now were i have this green aqua regia sitting in front of me & i cant seem to find info to help me change the colour ,how do i get the nitric acid out plz someone?

goldrushedharold said:

there was hardly any other metals present on the gold bits i chipped off the boards,could the green be maybe copper contamination?

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I have never encountered any solid gold on circuit boards. It's virtually all plated, there is no valid reason for it to be solid. The only thing that varies is the base metal it is applied to.

You might have been better served leaching the base metals first in HCL. Add a little heat to speed the process up. Once you've done this a couple times, filter, and add the solids back to the mix. Then add the HCL and a little nitric. Unless you know how much gold you have in the beaker, I just add a little (1-2mL) at a time. With heat, the reaction passes quickly. Without heat, you have to take it slow. Anyhow, this doesn't really help all that much considering where you're at in the process.
When you added the SMB, you had a little precipitation, but then it disappears because there is still nitric acid in solution. This free nitric reacts with the HCL and then redissolves your precipitating gold. The solution? There are many. Gently simmer your vial of filtered acid. Don't boil it. When you've reduced the volume of your acid by half or more, add some fresh HCL until you've reached your initial volume. If you had 1L of AR, and evaporated down do 400mL, add 600mL of HCL. Once you've done this twice, some will say more, you should have gotten the nitric out of the mix. Next, add your precipitant of choice. Don't forget to dilute your AR before adding your precipitant. Some on the forum do not dilute. You can bypass a lot of the simmering and adding of the HCL by simply adding a small gold BB. This will prevent you from having to evaporate off the nitric, and use it to digest a little of the BB. It's all here on the forum. I think the advice you've gotten so far, is spot on. Put this vial aside, and do some reading. You'll find most of your questions have already been answered on this forum. Had you read HOKE, you would have known exactly what was happening in that beaker. Be safe, read, and this will all come together.

it seems to me that you mixed the AR too strong on the nitric side. if you have more metal to dissolve add that to the solution and add more hcl acid till the reaction starts up again.the reaction stopped because the solution ran out of hcl acid.dont be too concerned over the color,its just all the copper that was in your material.just keep adding metal and hcl till the reaction stops again.this time it will be because the nitric has been used up.filter into a clean glass container that will hold the solution and an equal amount of water(tap water will work).split it up if you have to as long as the ratio is 50/50 solution to water.then add a solution of water and sodium metabisulfite.double the weight of SMB to the weight of gold (weight of gold is 4 grams then 8 grams of SMB).stir briskly,as the solution is dirty you may not notice too much of a color change but you should see black powder precipitate pretty quickly.this will be dirty gold and will need to be refined again.

Study Hokes, goldrushedharold.

I know you get excited to try this out, but jumping into it head first will just cause one big headache, you will constantly be asking questions on what to do next and why does this not work it seems so simple, well truth is there are minor details and if you miss them, it will not work.

Hoke will walk you through some getting acquainted experiments, these will teach you what to expect with metals and acids, she also teaches testing of metals in solution, and how to use aqua regia correctly, she can make this easy for you.

thanks guys i will try all your methods until i get it right,i know i was a bit excited an still am,thanks for all your advice which was much needed you guys are ledgends,i hope once the nitric acid is out the solution will turn to the yellow colour iam looking for,thanks

goldrushedharold said:

thanks guys i will try all your methods until i get it right,i know i was a bit excited an still am,thanks for all your advice which was much needed you guys are ledgends,i hope once the nitric acid is out the solution will turn to the yellow colour iam looking for,thanks

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I think you missed the best advice given, READ Hoke's book & study the forum, only then should you try to fix your mess. :|

Claudie said:

goldrushedharold said:

thanks guys i will try all your methods until i get it right,i know i was a bit excited an still am,thanks for all your advice which was much needed you guys are ledgends,i hope once the nitric acid is out the solution will turn to the yellow colour iam looking for,thanks

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I think you missed the best advice given, READ Hoke's book & study the forum, only then should you try to fix your mess. :|

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And further more I would be willing to bet your AR will not turn yellow, maybe darker green. Sounds like you have some copper in solution. Please put the batch you started on hold for a minute untill you get some knowledge on the subject. It will take you a very sort time to read up on AR and what you've done and what to do from here. I collected computer waste for 12 years before I learned what to do and how to do it. I looked and looked for how to process this stuff and never found this forum until I had learned from bits of info here and there over a period of about 2 years. So if you read and learn from here you will have far exceeded my learning curve.

goldrushedharold said:

thanks guys i will try all your methods until i get it right,i know i was a bit excited an still am,thanks for all your advice which was much needed you guys are ledgends,i hope once the nitric acid is out the solution will turn to the yellow colour iam looking for,thanks

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Your solution is not going to turn yellow. That you can forget. It is green because it contains elements other than gold---which you can expect when you don't make an attempt to eliminate them before introducing the values to AR. I would suggest the solution contains copper, which, mixed with gold, would be green, but it can be iron or nickel just as well. Makes no difference what it is, not for your purpose.

That the solution isn't yellow isn't a big deal. You can still recover the values contained within. What is a big deal is that you don't have a clue what you're doing. To put this in context, it's akin to handing the keys to your car to a kid that has no driving experience, and expecting him to perform at an acceptable level. *Ain't likely to happen*.

The best advice you can receive is to start reading, beginning with Hoke's book. Until you have an understanding of what to expect, you will never progress past the "what the hell just happened" stage.

I saw no mention of you testing with stannous chloride. Until you have that capability, and understand what the test means, please do not continue with what you're doing. All you're going to do is irritate the hell out of people that keep telling you to read and come to an understanding of the fundamentals of refining. When things start making sense, you won't be asking these questions, and can then turn to the board for help in areas that are troublesome. That's where the board shines. We try to not become a kindergarten teacher----that, alone, sorts those that will succeed from those that expect a handout.

Welcome to the forum.

Harold

I was typing this while Harold was giving you the advice you need to get you going in the right direction.

The green is from base metals, they needed to be eliminated before using aqua regia on gold; then your gold chloride solution would be yellow.

You can also learn not to use too much nitric when dissolving in aqua regia, GSP has made some very good posts on the subject.

You will also learn how to eliminate the nitric acid before you try to precipitate the gold, Harold’s trick of adding gold to the evaporation process works wonders if you did use more nitric than necessary.

You will also learn how to make and use stannous chloride solutions to test for values in solution, to tell you if you even have gold in your solution or not.

You will learn to cement values from dirty solutions using a piece of copper metal when you do mess up.

you will learn using aqua regia on gold with base metals is not a very wise decision, if you do not completely dissolve all of the metals your values will plate out onto any metals which are not dissolved, and your aqua regia may be barren or almost barren of the values you thought you have in solution, and even if you do dissolve the gold with base metals you have just made a complicated situation to get all of the gold back out.

You must first learn patience without it you’re constantly spending time trying to fix things you done in a hurry without studying first, and studying Hokes book, doing the experiments she teaches, then I would start off with something simple like memory fingers using the methods you could learn from Laser Steve.

Most important is the safety and dealing with waste; these should be studied before even thinking about using chemicals.

Acid_Bath76 said:

Gently simmer your vial of filtered acid. Don't boil it. When you've reduced the volume of your acid by half or more, add some fresh HCL until you've reached your initial volume. If you had 1L of AR, and evaporated down do 400mL, add 600mL of HCL. Once you've done this twice, some will say more, you should have gotten the nitric out of the mix. Next, add your precipitant of choice. Don't forget to dilute your AR before adding your precipitant. Some on the forum do not You can bypass a lot of the simmering and adding of the HCL by simply adding a small gold BB. This will prevent you from having to evaporate off the nitric,

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acid_bath76 thanks man your advice was much needed ,may i ask after the ar has evaporated why do i need to add more hcl cant i just add the water and percipitate,also what do you mean by adding a small gold bb?

geo-thanks yea i think i did add too much nitric acid,iam not going to be adding any more gold or metals so why do i need to add more HCL??

thanks everyone for your help yes i did rush things and next time i will not refine the next batch until i have the knowledge,just that i was starting to loss hope when i saw it turn green an i wanted to deal with the situtation in hand.

You should know why it's turning green for starters. Read HOKE. It's readily available on this site. You're setting yourself up for failure if you expect to recover and refine by simply throwing your material in a mix and expecting forum members to walk you through it step by step. That's my rant, and I'll stop. I hope you take the advice seriously. To answer your questions though.

** you reduce the solution via simmering NOT boiling to get the active nitric out of the mix. When you reduce it to half/three quarters the volume, you add the fresh HCL to expel the nitric. You can't precipitate the gold, using SMB, while the nitric is still active. Well, you can, but you're going to use a lot. That all depends on how much free nitric is in solution though.

** If you add a small piece of gold (gold BB/ball), the nitric and HCL will dissolve a little of the BB, thus using up the nitric. This sidesteps the process of having to simmer and "denox" the AR.

** Water does not get rid of the nitric. Water just gives you more dilute solution with nitric in it, which equals more waste solution to deal with later. I know some people here actually precipitate from condensed solutions. I have tried it, and actually prefer it. I mix up my SMB in a large glass of water, and then add it to the pregnant solution. In a a sense, that is like diluting it. You just have to make sure your nitric is all out of solution. Take your time with this, and read HOKE. READ HOKE. READ HOKE. You'll find most of your questions are answered in her book. When you run into a hurdle, you'll find forum members more enthusiastic to lend you a hand. Most here have put their time in learning this stuff. I don't think anybody is guarding the knowledge, but do you know how many times these questions have been asked? I empathize with you. This is an exciting time, but you're going to hurt yourself, or worse someone else, if you don't dedicate the time necessary to learn how to do this properly.

Just one more part to add to the mix. :shock:
Never start an escrap refining process with aqua regia unless you are sure of what will happen, why it happens and how to deal with what happens. :shock:
It seams that everyone that starts that way comes here :roll: to fix their problem. :shock: Why don't they just start here first and READ, READ, READ.

Tom C.

niteliteone said:

Just one more part to add to the mix. :shock:
Never start an escrap refining process with aqua regia unless you are sure of what will happen, why it happens and how to deal with what happens. :shock:
It seams that everyone that starts that way comes here :roll: to fix their problem. :shock: Why don't they just start here first and READ, READ, READ.

Tom C.

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Well said Tom. Although, I was guilty of this too. The only difference is, I was too embarrassed. I just read as much as I could while the solution sat on a shelf. It was a mess!

Hay Acid,
With the knowledge I see you share on the forum You have come a long way 8) keep up the good work and the great posts.
I started with refining escrap back in 96 and I am still learning new things from this forum. The best place I have ever found for learning this trade.
Tom C.