HobbyChemist69
New member
I’ve been having trouble getting gold to precipitate from from chloroauric acid, and I was wondering if I could get some help. I started by dissolving a small amount of gold powder using HCl and bleach, which I then filtered and attempted to precipitate gold from using SMB. After adding the SMB and letting it sit overnight nothing precipitated. I thought it might be an issue with the pH so I added NaOH to balance it, which resulted in a black precipitate. I thought that this was my gold so I filtered it off, but when I did an HCl wash of the powder, it redissolved. I now believe that this black filtrate was gold hydroxide, but now it’s all redissolved and in solution. I’m not sure where to go from here, but I was thinking of maybe converting it back into gold hydroxide, filtering and washing it, then reacting it with HCl again to make a solution of only chloroauric acid (it would have no sodium or bisulfite ions in it) and trying to precipitate it again. Unfortunately, I have no standouts chloride so I can not be certain that there is gold in solution, but I’m pretty sure there is due to the color and the fact that I saw the original gold powder dissolve. Do you think my plan would work? Or would it just be wasted effort?