A request for a little education on Precep problem

[ph0t0bug]

First, thank you for allowing me to join you here on the group. Im sure through your guidence I will better understand where I messed up.

I have read through the group and did not see where anyone had mentioned this situation. Im sure its a beginners mistake.

I have watched Geos videos, as well as others, and read many articals on refining gold from my escrap. The following is what happened during my first try:

1. Gold fingers, pins, crushed CPUs put into HCL with H2O2 to remove gold leafs.
2. Strained off the trash and flakes from the HCL and H2O2 and stored mixture.
3. Used fresh HCL with Household bleach to melt the flakes to liquid form.
4. Took, correct me please if Im wrong, the Auric Chloride and filtered out all the trash, stored, and then added, I think this may be part of my mistake, equal tap water to the Chloride.
5. Added Urea to nutrlize acid.
6. Added SMB to "drop" the gold out.

At this point I ended up getting nothing but clearing the liquid from yellow to clear. Nothing on the bottom.

Decided to test the liquid for gold. Used HCL and eletrical sauter to make test fluid. Took a small amount of the above liquid and got a brownish "mud" to "drop" in the sample. At this point I took a sample from the "Trash" that was collected and the reaction was even greater with darker mud and the yellow came back to the liquid.

Question is I guess.... Just what the heck did I make and is it recoverable or should I just get rid of this mix? I also had a question about heat. Where I realize that heat speeds up chem reactions, but is it a must. I wanted to try to keep the gas out to a min but it may be a necessary evil. I know that druing the first process I used the HCL and H2O2 method without heat for a week. It did a fine job and I had very little gold still attached to the boards afterwards.

Once again I hope that my question dose not seem trivial and hope that one of you will be able to assist me in finding an answer.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

 

[Geo]

First, thank you for allowing me to join you here on the group. Im sure through your guidence I will better understand where I messed up.

I have read through the group and did not see where anyone had mentioned this situation. Im sure its a beginners mistake.

I have watched Geos videos, as well as others, and read many articals on refining gold from my escrap. The following is what happened during my first try:

1. Gold fingers, pins, crushed CPUs put into HCL with H2O2 to remove gold leafs.
2. Strained off the trash and flakes from the HCL and H2O2 and stored mixture.
3. Used fresh HCL with Household bleach to melt the flakes to liquid form.
4. Took, correct me please if Im wrong, the Auric Chloride and filtered out all the trash, stored, and then added, I think this may be part of my mistake, equal tap water to the Chloride.
5. Added Urea to nutrlize acid.
6. Added SMB to "drop" the gold out.

At this point I ended up getting nothing but clearing the liquid from yellow to clear. Nothing on the bottom.

Decided to test the liquid for gold. Used HCL and eletrical sauter to make test fluid. Took a small amount of the above liquid and got a brownish "mud" to "drop" in the sample. At this point I took a sample from the "Trash" that was collected and the reaction was even greater with darker mud and the yellow came back to the liquid.

Question is I guess.... Just what the heck did I make and is it recoverable or should I just get rid of this mix? I also had a question about heat. Where I realize that heat speeds up chem reactions, but is it a must. I wanted to try to keep the gas out to a min but it may be a necessary evil. I know that druing the first process I used the HCL and H2O2 method without heat for a week. It did a fine job and I had very little gold still attached to the boards afterwards.

Once again I hope that my question dose not seem trivial and hope that one of you will be able to assist me in finding an answer.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

How much material are you talking about. You can precipitate a gram or two of gold in 5 or 6 hundred ml's of solution and you may not even see the precipitate for quite some time until it settles. Number 5, you do not need urea when using HCl/Cl (muriatic acid/bleach). Once all the foils are dissolved, you should heat the solution to drive out the free chlorine or let it sit overnight and it will "gas off" on it's own. If you make stannous chloride from solder, make sure it is tin solder and not lead solder. Make sure of the solder you used and test it again. Sounds like you got a false positive the first time.

 

[butcher]

1. Gold fingers, pins, crushed CPUs put into HCL with H2O2 to remove gold leafs.

It is best to process materials separately.

2. Strained off the trash and flakes from the HCL and H2O2 and stored mixture.

If you over use the H2O2 you can put gold into solution, it mayor may not precipitate back out onto remaining copper as a fine brown or black powder, this can make loosing gold easier in the process.

Ideally you want to use copper II chloride to leach copper and base metals from the gold without putting gold into solution at this point.

Also removing trash and solder from your material as much as possible before trying to remove the base metals from the gold.

3. Used fresh HCL with Household bleach to melt the flakes to liquid form.

Dissolve the gold flakes to liquid form. Dissolve is the correct term to use here. Not melt, you are not using a torch in this process to melt the gold.

4. Took, correct me please if Im wrong, the Auric Chloride and filtered out all the trash, stored, and then added, I think this may be part of my mistake, equal tap water to the Chloride.

Dilution is not needed here, it will not help, the HCl/Bleach will form salts and water, as long as you do not use heat to evaporate solution you will not need to add water to keep the gold and sodium salts dissolved, when using aqua regia we add water to help the silver settle as silver chloride, that is not needed in the process you are using here.

5. Added Urea to nutrlize acid.

You have not used nitric acid, using urea here makes no sense at all, the oxidizer here is chlorine, letting it sit in the sun or giving it some heat to drive off free chlorine will remove the oxidizer, forget using urea even if you are using aqua regia, study the forum there are much better ways to deal with nitric acid.

6. Added SMB to "drop" the gold out.

If you have free chlorine in solution the SMB may not work to precipitate the gold, the free chlorine will dissolve it back as soon as it would try to form a precipitant.

Using too much SMB can give a false positive a brown reaction with stannous chloride test not the purple color indicating gold in solution.


Basically My thoughts are you should do some more study and small experiments, Hoke's book has some great experiments that will help you understand the reactions better. Her book will also help you understand the basic principles involved.
The experiments will help you learn to test for metals in solutions.

Reading the forum you will learn how to prepare the materials even before they see acids or leaches, it will also help you understand what is needed when and why. and help you learn the processes used and the problems that can occur during those processes, and help you to learn to do the processes properly.

After study, try small simple experiments, with an easy material like close cut memory fingers (no solder involved) and lean how to recover and refine the gold from them, before trying to work with harder materials like pins and CPU's...


It sounds like you may have gold in your "trash", save the trash and do some study, if its there you can get the gold, but first you need to get the education!!!

This may seem like simple processes, but the reality is there are many small details easily missed by a beginner, the devil is in these details, and they are what will hide the gold from you, with study and experiments, and learning the simple processes, and building on your knowledge and skill you will learn the details, and know how to keep an eye on your gold even when it is dissolved into solution and no longer visible.
You will learn to understand what should be done and why, and learn to troubleshoot problems that come along, study and education is the key to understanding the recovery and refining of metals, and the chemistry involved...

 

[ph0t0bug]

First, thank you for allowing me to join you here on the group. Im sure through your guidence I will better understand where I messed up.

I have read through the group and did not see where anyone had mentioned this situation. Im sure its a beginners mistake.

I have watched Geos videos, as well as others, and read many articals on refining gold from my escrap. The following is what happened during my first try:

1. Gold fingers, pins, crushed CPUs put into HCL with H2O2 to remove gold leafs.
2. Strained off the trash and flakes from the HCL and H2O2 and stored mixture.
3. Used fresh HCL with Household bleach to melt the flakes to liquid form.
4. Took, correct me please if Im wrong, the Auric Chloride and filtered out all the trash, stored, and then added, I think this may be part of my mistake, equal tap water to the Chloride.
5. Added Urea to nutrlize acid.
6. Added SMB to "drop" the gold out.

At this point I ended up getting nothing but clearing the liquid from yellow to clear. Nothing on the bottom.

Decided to test the liquid for gold. Used HCL and eletrical sauter to make test fluid. Took a small amount of the above liquid and got a brownish "mud" to "drop" in the sample. At this point I took a sample from the "Trash" that was collected and the reaction was even greater with darker mud and the yellow came back to the liquid.

Question is I guess.... Just what the heck did I make and is it recoverable or should I just get rid of this mix? I also had a question about heat. Where I realize that heat speeds up chem reactions, but is it a must. I wanted to try to keep the gas out to a min but it may be a necessary evil. I know that druing the first process I used the HCL and H2O2 method without heat for a week. It did a fine job and I had very little gold still attached to the boards afterwards.

Once again I hope that my question dose not seem trivial and hope that one of you will be able to assist me in finding an answer.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

How much material are you talking about. You can precipitate a gram or two of gold in 5 or 6 hundred ml's of solution and you may not even see the precipitate for quite some time until it settles. Number 5, you do not need urea when using HCl/Cl (muriatic acid/bleach). Once all the foils are dissolved, you should heat the solution to drive out the free chlorine or let it sit overnight and it will "gas off" on it's own. If you make stannous chloride from solder, make sure it is tin solder and not lead solder. Make sure of the solder you used and test it again. Sounds like you got a false positive the first time.

Thanks for the quick response Geo. I will follow those steps and let you know whats happening. Right now its only 2 laptops and 30 to 40 memory chips from back in the late 80's that I have been pulling around for years.

 

[Barren Realms 007]

You should save that up till you have more material to process. You will be lucky to see your gold powder that you process from this batch.

 

[ph0t0bug]

You should save that up till you have more material to process. You will be lucky to see your gold powder that you process from this batch.

The main reason for the small run is to learn the process. Would rather see just a very small amount of gold the first run than destroy everything I have in one of my little screwups.

 

[ph0t0bug]

ok. got the same reaction from the new test solution which I know to be the correct solder. Made a video of it.

http://youtu.be/SSRFlLMA9YA


Any further suggestions?

 

[jason_recliner]

Any further suggestions?

Gloves!

 

[butcher]

I do not see a purple reaction, try it again with a Qtip cotton swab, or on a filter paper.

I suspect the reaction is more brown than violet indicating, a reaction with overuse of SMB and base metals.

Your gold chloride solution also looks clear, not the yellow I would expect to see with gold in solution.

If you suspect gold in solution (I do not), add a bar of copper to cement out values and treat the solution for waste, save any black powders if they form.

I suspect most of your gold is still with the "trash", which should be dried and saved till you get a little more education of how to deal with it.

Start with Hoke's book, collect some memory fingers, study the forum, using the memory fingers along with Hoke's and the forum to make up a gold chloride test solution to test your stannous chloride with, following the experiments in Hoke's, and learning to process the memory fingers properly, then working your way up to harder materials.

At this point your not getting very far trying to follow a few videos, you are confusing different processes, with some study and small experiments many things will become clearer.

There is a lot to this, the more you study the more you will begin to see how much more there is to it, than you think there is at this point.

 

[Geo]

Looking at the solution, I think he dropped all the gold there was to drop. If you haven't switched containers, evaporate the solution down and allow to cool. Add 10ml's of bleach a couple of times and give a couple of hours and test it again. If you do, you may find your gold. Dilute AuCl3 in solution has a distinctive yellow color.