2nd time gold attemp - updating live on forum

[pgm]

Hi

I am going to do a live test, i thought if i took pictures while i did the test then i can get your comments on what i should do. So even before i start i am goingt o go through what i have...or what i have to use

1,2,3 liter beaker
5 liter jar

gold endz from memory stick (200) i have a picture

Bisulfate
SMB
AC
Urea

HCL 36%(Plenty)
Nitric 70% (Plenty)

vaccume filter system
hot plate

step 1

My question is shall i heat up HCL in a 3 liter beaker then add the memory waste and then add nitric slowly to make AR
or
mix 4 parts hcl and 1 part nitric then heat and add in memory waste.

What do the people in the forum think?

 

[Anonymous]

Normally I would say run them in AR,however if something goes wrong you may end up in a little trouble.
However since you did not list peroxide as one of your assets,then we will have to stick with AR.
I think your beaker may be a little too small for the volume you are trying to process.But if you can push down the fingers to around 800ml you'll be ok.
Step 1:Add just enough Hcl to cover the fingers,then add about 10% by volume of nitric wait 30 minutes.If everything has settled down then proceed,if the solution is still fizzing then keep waiting until it settles down.
Once everything has settled and there is no reaction happening,look at what you have.Is everything dissolved?If so proceed to step 3.If not continue
Step 2: If everything is not dissolved add another 5% by volume of nitric,and wait for the reaction to settle again,continue doing this until everything is dissolved......your patience will be rewarded.
Step 3:Once everything has been dissolved,filter your solution through a very good tight filter,rinse the fingers with (little)water and run the water through the filter also.Spray down the sides of your filter until they are clean.
Step 4:Your solution should be a perfectly clear emerald green color.You need to establish if there are excess nitrates in the solution.Throw about 3-4 bb's of urea in the solution and hold it with a light behind it so you can see if the are little bubbles coming from the urea.If there is very little or none,then continue to step 5.If there is a significant amount of bubbles coming off of the urea,then add about 10-15 bb's and let them dissolve fully.stir the solution and add another bb and observe.If still significant amount of bubbles,continue with this process until the bubbles subside.
Step 5:Add about 500ml of water to the solution,then add 6 grams of smb(about 2 teaspoons) to 100ml of water and stir to dissolve.Add the smb water to the solution and stir constantly for about 30 seconds.If you see a little red smoke its ok,that is any excess nitric attacking the gold as it precipitates,as a result the nitric is expelled when it dissolves the gold.However you may have to add a little more smb to "re"precipitate the gold out of solution.That should keep you going for quite a while.Let me know when you are ready for the next step.

 

[4metals]

Good instructions but don't forget to test. Stannous chloride is your friend!!!!!

When you get to the part where you think you've dissolved all of the gold, test the solution. If the solution has become saturated with base metals, your gold could be on the bottom with the stripped parts.

Years ago when hybrid circuits were high grade material, I would digest multiple 55 gallon drums of granulated circuits in aqua regia and allow the acid to digest the gold and the base metals and eventually drop the gold. Then by decanting the spent acid, which had no values (which is easily tested with stannous chloride) we were essentially left with a mix of insolubles and precious metals. Another digest in aqua regia dissolved the gold leaving the insolubles to be filtered off and leaving us with a nice clean acid, loaded with gold.

I'm not convinced, given todays e-scrap yields and chemical costs, that AR is the most prudent approach now.

 

[Anonymous]

Its amazing,I've done that process a thousand times,I could do it in my sleep,yet I still forget something when trying to explain it to someone else.
Thanks 4metals.

 

[samuel-a]

I'm not convinced, given todays e-scrap yields and chemical costs, that AR is the most prudent approach now.

generally i agree, but with this particular batch it might be worthwhile...
he can expect 1.2 grams give or take. that's 51-53$ today's market.

Edit: ohh yea, great post mic !

 

[goldenchild]

Normally I would say run them in AR,however if something goes wrong you may end up in a little trouble.

I think your beaker may be a little too small for the volume you are trying to process.

I agree with going straight to AR. If that is a 3 liter beaker that should be way more than enough to get the job done. I process the big fingers like from slot cards, motherboards etc. in a 1 liter beaker a pound at a time. I use only about half to three quarters of the beakers volume to get the job done. The AP method is cool and I'm glad I learned it but I will never use it again. Straight AR is so much faster and more efficient. You can also save even more on the HCL by diluting it a bit with water. Once you get the hang of it you can have a pound dissolved, filtered and ready to drop in less than an hour.

After thought
I would also only dissolve the material in thirds of the beakers volume. This way you can be certain that the layer you are working on is completely dissolved. Its harder to get the nitric to penetrate through all the fingers down to the bottom if the fingers are totally submerged. You will also find that much of the upper layers will dissolve from the foam that is created from the reaction. By the time you get to the top there may not be much more digestion needed. This is why you can process all the fingers with this method using very little AR.

 

[pgm]

Thankyou everyone for the instructions...this is mic's steps.....

Ok here we go....

Step 1 adding 800ml of HCL and 150 ml nitric

Step 2 adding more nitric 100ml and then left over night...nothing was happening.....can heat up, but didn't, should i?

more pics today

 

[pgm]

just another thing i tryed to make some testing solution and i messed up

took steves formula

30ml of hcl
2g of tin powder

i had 2 packages same colour but no label VERY IMPORTANT to label, ended up puting Zinc powder in but stopped when it started to fizz on the spot....i wont do that again.....

 

[goldenchild]

I would recommend heating the solution to get the nitric circulating and make sure that all of the gold is completely digested. 250 ml of nitric acid however, seems excessive for this amount of material.

This brings up a point about AR that I would like to make. AR is created by combining HCL and nitric acid in a 3:1 or 4:1 ratio. However this doesnt mean that you HAVE to use those amounts of acid strictly. In other words if you had 100ml of HCL this formula dictates that you would need to add 33 or 25 ml of nitric. Your material however may only need 10ml of nitric for full digestion.

In this case there is no way of knowing exactly how much metal needs to be dissolved which is partly why I recommended adding the acids in increments. I would bet even money that this material could have been fully digested using about 100ml or less of nitric. I will be getting 2 pounds of fingers soon that I won off of ebay. Maybe I will make a video :idea:

 

[pgm]

I would recommend heating the solution to get the nitric circulating and make sure that all of the gold is completely digested. 250 ml of nitric acid however, seems excessive for this amount of material.

This brings up a point about AR that I would like to make. AR is created by combining HCL and nitric acid in a 3:1 or 4:1 ratio. However this doesnt mean that you HAVE to use those amounts of acid strictly. In other words if you had 100ml of HCL this formula dictates that you would need to add 33 or 25 ml of nitric. Your material however may only need 10ml of nitric for full digestion.

In this case there is no way of knowing exactly how much metal needs to be dissolved which is partly why I recommended adding the acids in increments. I would bet even money that this material could have been fully digested using about 100ml or less of nitric. I will be getting 2 pounds of fingers soon that I won off of ebay. Maybe I will make a video :idea:

thanks for the update will heat up and then filter the lot more pic today...fingers crossed

 

[Oz]

I would recommend heating the solution to get the nitric circulating and make sure that all of the gold is completely digested. 250 ml of nitric acid however, seems excessive for this amount of material.

If he is using 250ml of 70% nitric he will have to boil off well over 150ml of free nitric that will not be consumed by the reaction before he can move on to precipitating with SMB.

 

[goldenchild]

I would recommend heating the solution to get the nitric circulating and make sure that all of the gold is completely digested. 250 ml of nitric acid however, seems excessive for this amount of material.

If he is using 250ml of 70% nitric he will have to boil off well over 150ml of free nitric that will not be consumed by the reaction before he can move on to precipitating with SMB.

He sure will. Or use quite a bit of urea. If it were me I would use urea. I used to swear against using urea but for first refinings when I'm not worried about purity and just want to quickly drop the gold I use it. You will find that you dont have to use much, if any, if you add small increments of nitric to the HCL. Same goes if you use the evaporation method. Adding nitric slowly also keeps the effervescence from the reaction down to a minimum. This combined with a watchglass should amount to 0 losses in the digestion stage.

 

[glorycloud]

Um, maybe I missed something but I don't see a fume hood
and for all the folks out there that don't understand that
red cloud they are seeing us super, super bad to breath! :shock:

 

[pgm]

ok this is what happened....

boiled the nitric lot's of fumes

then filtered via a filter with cotton in it, my vaccume pump and the paper i got where no good cheap

added urea lot's when it stopped fizzing i added 500ml of water but i had little bits and bobs in it, so i decided to re-filter again using the cotton filter

 

[pgm]

so i was ready for the BIG drop i waited for the filtering for 1 hour to finish and guess what...nothing dropped.

i might have too much nitric? i am at stage 5, now i have left it over night maybe at night something might happen.

anyone any idea's?

 

[goldenchild]

Um, maybe I missed something but I don't see a fume hood
and for all the folks out there that don't understand that
red cloud they are seeing us super, super bad to breath! :shock:

Might be doing it outside?

so i was ready for the BIG drop i waited for the filtering for 1 hour to finish and guess what...nothing dropped.

i might have too much nitric? i am at stage 5, now i have left it over night maybe at night something might happen.

anyone any idea's?

You say you added urea until it stopped fizzing. Did you add more after that? You have to keep adding it until there is no reaction. You used an excessive amount of nitric. It should take quite a bit of urea to neutralize the acid. Let it sit over night and see what happens. If nothing is there see if it will react with urea. Oh and test with stannous to make sure gold is in the solution.

 

[pgm]

this is what happened the site was down so e-mailed STEVE, he advised to add smb until there was no red smoke and then heat it up, trust me when i say i added a little every 10 minutes and i must have added 300g coz i was there along time finaly it stopped doing the red smoke, then i put it on heat. this process took along time but i have learn't never to add too much nitric did not need it....i think if i heated the hcl with the fingers then added 50ml and waited to see what was been eatin this would have been better. and add 10ml at a time would have been better.

ok i kept on putin in smb then i split the batch and put a small bit 500ml out of 1500ml in to a separte flask, to see why it still had nitric because it was just taking too long. i then added alot of smb to this 500ml and then added water to it 500ml and then this small black dust was at the bottom. heated this again and then waited and added more smb. now for the main batch i still added more smb and kept on going and finally it stoped giving off red smoke. now have left over night and going to check in the morning.

what i was really expecting was the coffee like material big chuncks of it and the colour to change like you see in the videos but this did not happen, well might be like that tommarow so time will tell, this could have been due to the nitric being too much.

 

[pgm]

some more pictures

 

[pgm]

Um, maybe I missed something but I don't see a fume hood
and for all the folks out there that don't understand that
red cloud they are seeing us super, super bad to breath! :shock:

i understand i was coughing for a few hours but this was done in a furness which has a cheminy, but still you are right fume hood is very very important

 

[pgm]

Normally I would say run them in AR,however if something goes wrong you may end up in a little trouble.

I think your beaker may be a little too small for the volume you are trying to process.

I agree with going straight to AR. If that is a 3 liter beaker that should be way more than enough to get the job done. I process the big fingers like from slot cards, motherboards etc. in a 1 liter beaker a pound at a time. I use only about half to three quarters of the beakers volume to get the job done. The AP method is cool and I'm glad I learned it but I will never use it again. Straight AR is so much faster and more efficient. You can also save even more on the HCL by diluting it a bit with water. Once you get the hang of it you can have a pound dissolved, filtered and ready to drop in less than an hour.

After thought
I would also only dissolve the material in thirds of the beakers volume. This way you can be certain that the layer you are working on is completely dissolved. Its harder to get the nitric to penetrate through all the fingers down to the bottom if the fingers are totally submerged. You will also find that much of the upper layers will dissolve from the foam that is created from the reaction. By the time you get to the top there may not be much more digestion needed. This is why you can process all the fingers with this method using very little AR.

thanks for the info i need to learn about hcl and diluting it, i like the idea..