jason_recliner
Well-known member
Next time I get my hands on a bunch of golden e-parts, I know I'll have a much better clue - thanks to this forum. I've learned some good stuff here about what not to do.
Alas I still need to recover my recovered gold. It's for the science. I've already spent heaps of time and money on gold of probably lesser value than my chemicals. I think it will be one of the best experiences, learning to recover my first failure by not throwing it all out. In the recover/refine process, I call this re-recovery.
Ok, what have I done? Don't slap me, here goes.
Started with memory sticks, CPUs and various fingers and pins. All trimmed as closely as possible.
Approx 3:1 all up of 32% hardware store HCl with 3% H2O2 to dissolve the copper and whatever else AP will make disappear. (I'm still not sold either way whether this will dissolve some gold as well. ??)
Filtered off the green liquid and rinsed (with filtered drinking water, probably unnecessary. I picked up Harold's tip about things that just won't stick in your gold.) all the bits left behind through the same filter.
This leaves me with bits of phenolic board, plastic and gold flakes, dust etc.
I then dumped this in HCl and added home made Sodium Nitrate. I think this is what you mean by "Poor Man's AR". I put the filter in the mix too, to collect even any dust left behind. Finally, filtered out the junk and rinsed everything into my batch with a little more water.
How much NaNO3? Way too freaking much, probably for even 10 times the gold. Good old "Nothing's happening in only 2 hours, let's add more".
I have a nice jar of perfectly clear gold bearing yellow acid, containing a whole lot more chemicals than was ever required.
I also have a separate batch, a small amount of gold-with-a-tough-of-copper bearing light green liquid.
Similarly too damn much NaNO3. Failed to see any result on a Stannous Chloride test, due to excessive nitrate no doubt, even though I know there's (a little) gold in them thar green. Dumping copious qtys of pre-dissolved Sodium Metabisulphite has produced a very small amount of light brown powder sediment. Barely enough to collect, and not enough for the input qty, I think. Let's perhaps ignore this batch for now.
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Batch #1 "yellow stuff" has a hard time testing positive with Stannous, but it will eventually go a purple to black colour after some time. (Oooh, them nitrates!)
To re-recovery: I have had the yellow stuff on and off a coffee maker for a while, reducing its liquid volume. I intend to slowly evaporate it out. It steams away gently and the jar is too hot to hold after about 10 seconds, which I think is just perfectly slow enough.
I'm now getting clear / white crystals forming under the still quite low viscosity liquid. Presumably this is my sodium nitrate coming back to haunt me. Or maybe could it be table salt, NaCl?
Also, and I can't even ask not to be slapped for this, because this is many weeks ago: I don't remember if I already put some SMB in here and failed to get a drop. Or was it only the green one? Or the other batch where the possums spilt all my brown powder? About 90% I think the yellow is completely SMB free but can't be entirely sure. If I can find something to resemble a test tube, I'll take a small sample and SMB it up to see what happens. I will have to start writing everything down.
It seems that I should keep evaporating my jar until it's a syrupy liquid, and I'll be at that point within a few days. But I'm not sure when to stop; how thick. Then I should obviously filter off the solids, maybe wash the filter back into the jar with a bit of HCl and evaporate again. But then I'm a bit stuck. And I don't have any more gold right now to put in it for nitrates to eat. I'd appreciate any advice.
I read a post a couple of days ago about getting rid of nitrate salts, but I can't find it again in the 1000+ search results.
Again, this is not going to be for the $0.02 of metal returned but for the $1M experience gained.
Alas I still need to recover my recovered gold. It's for the science. I've already spent heaps of time and money on gold of probably lesser value than my chemicals. I think it will be one of the best experiences, learning to recover my first failure by not throwing it all out. In the recover/refine process, I call this re-recovery.
Ok, what have I done? Don't slap me, here goes.
Started with memory sticks, CPUs and various fingers and pins. All trimmed as closely as possible.
Approx 3:1 all up of 32% hardware store HCl with 3% H2O2 to dissolve the copper and whatever else AP will make disappear. (I'm still not sold either way whether this will dissolve some gold as well. ??)
Filtered off the green liquid and rinsed (with filtered drinking water, probably unnecessary. I picked up Harold's tip about things that just won't stick in your gold.) all the bits left behind through the same filter.
This leaves me with bits of phenolic board, plastic and gold flakes, dust etc.
I then dumped this in HCl and added home made Sodium Nitrate. I think this is what you mean by "Poor Man's AR". I put the filter in the mix too, to collect even any dust left behind. Finally, filtered out the junk and rinsed everything into my batch with a little more water.
How much NaNO3? Way too freaking much, probably for even 10 times the gold. Good old "Nothing's happening in only 2 hours, let's add more".
I have a nice jar of perfectly clear gold bearing yellow acid, containing a whole lot more chemicals than was ever required.
I also have a separate batch, a small amount of gold-with-a-tough-of-copper bearing light green liquid.
Similarly too damn much NaNO3. Failed to see any result on a Stannous Chloride test, due to excessive nitrate no doubt, even though I know there's (a little) gold in them thar green. Dumping copious qtys of pre-dissolved Sodium Metabisulphite has produced a very small amount of light brown powder sediment. Barely enough to collect, and not enough for the input qty, I think. Let's perhaps ignore this batch for now.
----
Batch #1 "yellow stuff" has a hard time testing positive with Stannous, but it will eventually go a purple to black colour after some time. (Oooh, them nitrates!)
To re-recovery: I have had the yellow stuff on and off a coffee maker for a while, reducing its liquid volume. I intend to slowly evaporate it out. It steams away gently and the jar is too hot to hold after about 10 seconds, which I think is just perfectly slow enough.
I'm now getting clear / white crystals forming under the still quite low viscosity liquid. Presumably this is my sodium nitrate coming back to haunt me. Or maybe could it be table salt, NaCl?
Also, and I can't even ask not to be slapped for this, because this is many weeks ago: I don't remember if I already put some SMB in here and failed to get a drop. Or was it only the green one? Or the other batch where the possums spilt all my brown powder? About 90% I think the yellow is completely SMB free but can't be entirely sure. If I can find something to resemble a test tube, I'll take a small sample and SMB it up to see what happens. I will have to start writing everything down.
It seems that I should keep evaporating my jar until it's a syrupy liquid, and I'll be at that point within a few days. But I'm not sure when to stop; how thick. Then I should obviously filter off the solids, maybe wash the filter back into the jar with a bit of HCl and evaporate again. But then I'm a bit stuck. And I don't have any more gold right now to put in it for nitrates to eat. I'd appreciate any advice.
I read a post a couple of days ago about getting rid of nitrate salts, but I can't find it again in the 1000+ search results.
Again, this is not going to be for the $0.02 of metal returned but for the $1M experience gained.