Accident Recovery

[warrendya]

Long story short, my inquartation experiment was terminated when a beaker of nice yellow Au-Cl dropped on the floor. I soaked the solution up as much as possible with paper towels.

My plan is to incinerate the towels, seive the ash, and redissolve what I can in AC again. Does this sound like the best way to recover the values?

Thanks, Dan

 

[Harold_V]

The only thing you could have done that would have improved on your plan would be to have not dropped the beaker. Proceed as you suggested.

If you didn't do so, it might be a good idea to apply some water to the spilled area, then wipe it up again. Could be you left some of the values behind. Won't likely be much, but at today's market price, could well be worth the effort.

If you did leave traces, you can expect the area to turn a purple color. My lab had purple and brown stains everywhere after ten years of processing.

Because tiny spills are inevitable, I worked over a couple layers of newspaper. I'd change it on a regular basis, incinerating the paper to recover the lost values.

Harold