Electrochemistry Adjustable Amps/Volts Power supply

[Tinker Terry]

I have been having good results using a houshold light dimmer switch on the AC side of bothe a manual auto battery charger and for miniscule voltages a nicad flashlight battery charger. I use the push on/off style light switch as it allows my to turn the current off and on while saving my setting. tried it on the DC side of the charger also but that doesnt work. I have also tried using AC current in a cell to break down mtal pins etc and it appears to be very effective as pretty much everything I ha used as electrodes both seem to end up as sludge. I used non-iodized salt solution as electrolyte. I made the 6/12 V power supply by tapping into the tranformer in my old auto battery charger between the tranformer and the rectifier. Note that this also bypassed the cicuit breaker protection in the charger as the breaker is on the DC side of the rectifier.Later discovered that the rectifier in that charger was shorting out anyways so I probably could have used the charger as is for AC output. Burned out a furnace transformer rather quickly experimenting with the Idea of AC electolysyis to prepare metal for acid treatment rather than melting and shotting etc. Could use some help on the chemical reactions I am playing with. Advise on electrolytes and info on the gassing would be most welcome for safety reasons. Aslo would like to know which electrode in DC cell produces O2 and which produces H. What other gases might be produced at which electrode using different electrolytes? I excpect the using any chloride electolyte would likely produce chlonine gas and would prefer not to do that.

 

[element47.5]

Technically, you're not supposed to use an inductive load (meaning, the step-down transformer within your car battery charger) on "most" dimmers...and this, or perhaps the low load you've placed on the rectifier/charger output has been responsible for not blowing it (the dimmer, not the charger) up so far. You can help yourself out if you add a regular incandescent light bulb on the output of the DIMMER, not the charger. Effectively, you plug both the light bulb and the charger into the output of the dimmer. This will act as a ballast resistor and damp down the "pumping" type of action that is there (but you don't see it) on the output.

Incidentally...the same technique allows one to use a conventional dimmer when powering up a strip of those halogen track lights....the ones with the box on their bases. That box has a little switching power supply in it, with inductors as part of the circuit. If you add just one incandescent track light fixture on a track that you wish to dim, you can use cheap conventional dimmers to dim halogen/low voltage track fixtures. Otherwise, you're supposed to buy special $80/ea dimmers to dim halogen tracks. Using conventional dimmers, not only will the action of your dimmer not be at all linear, at certain settings, they will "pump" and possibly blow something up at some point.

 

[butcher]

When we mix a metal with an acid we make a salt of that metal and that acid, these metal and acid salts can be used as electrolytes.

In this dissolved salt, the metal is the Cation, oxidized by the reaction (loss of electron), and the (normally oxidized) acid is reduced (gain of electron) is the anion of this salt, which is normally dissolved in solution like you are using for an electrolyte.

Example sodium metal dissolved is HCl, the metal sodium (Na+) the Cation, and (Cl-) the Anion making table salt NaCl.
or
Silver metal dissolved in nitric acid to make the silver nitrate salt dissolved in this solution.
silver (Ag+) cation, and nitrate (NO3-) silver nitrate AgNO3...

When in an electrolytic cell, you can split these salts (as well as water),

The metal cation (+) migrates to the cathode (-) of the cell where it normally will gain an electron (reduce) and convert back to metal, silver cation for example Ag+ --> Ag(s) forming a solid silver metal with a full shell of electrons in its atom.

The Anion (-) (nitrate for example) will migrate to the anode, where it can convert back to an acid or a gas,
In this reaction the anode gives up electrons (normally under force from the power supply), to become oxidized (loss of electron) into solution as metal cations, these cations joining with the free anions to reform the electrolyte, repeating the operation.

The gas at the anode will be a component of the Anion (chlorine gas from a chloride solution), and NOx gases from a nitrate), the gas formed at the cathode will be of the cation in solution (like Hydrogen (H+)from the acid or water), current and temperature and other factors can be a big factor in how much of these gases are formed as well as many other factors of the cells operation and conditions.

 

[Tinker Terry]

Technically, you're not supposed to use an inductive load (meaning, the step-down transformer within your car battery charger) on "most" dimmers...and this, or perhaps the low load you've placed on the rectifier/charger output has been responsible for not blowing it (the dimmer, not the charger) up so far. You can help yourself out if you add a regular incandescent light bulb on the output of the DIMMER, not the charger. Effectively, you plug both the light bulb and the charger into the output of the dimmer. This will act as a ballast resistor and damp down the "pumping" type of action that is there (but you don't see it) on the output.

Incidentally...the same technique allows one to use a conventional dimmer when powering up a strip of those halogen track lights....the ones with the box on their bases. That box has a little switching power supply in it, with inductors as part of the circuit. If you add just one incandescent track light fixture on a track that you wish to dim, you can use cheap conventional dimmers to dim halogen/low voltage track fixtures. Otherwise, you're supposed to buy special $80/ea dimmers to dim halogen tracks. Using conventional dimmers, not only will the action of your dimmer not be at all linear, at certain settings, they will "pump" and possibly blow something up at some point.

Thanks!!!!!! I had a problem with the current jumping from 50Ma to 10Ma when turning it down. Had connected an LED bulb in series on the low voltage side to get around it but your sugesstion works great. I presently have the dimmer switch connected to a NiCad battery charger with a 50 watt light in parallelon the output of the dimmer and I can vary output voltage to cell by 0.01 Volts.
Am now getting what I hope is pure tin and pure lead from 50/50 solder. Both of which I need. The tin for stannous chloride testing solution and the lead for inert anodes for electrowiNnning the copper out of the AP that I'm using to dissolve the base metals from pins and connectors. Once I have a bit of gold that will be my anode, which will rest in the sludge at the bottom. That seems to work well for making H2SO4 from a saturated solution of CuSo4. I figure if the anode is the anode sludge it should be reasonably free of base metals that will plate on the cathode. Removing the copper and other metals via electrowinning should allow me to use the same acid bath almost perpetually, providing I also replace what is lost though gassing and evaporation.

 

[Tinker Terry]

Thanks Butcher. I have been studying what I can find on the net but the jargon and abbreviations have been confusing. Any suggestioNs you may have regarding electrowinning the base metals out of my AP solution would be most welcome. I have so far created H2So4 from a saturated CuSO4 solution. My next project is to recycle the HCL+H2O2 solution (AP) which by now is fairly saturated. It has two colours. Emerald green which seems to sink and black which seems to float above the green. Also have gold foils floating and sticking to the test tube.
So far I have learned from experience that separating tin from 50/50 solder inn an electrolytic cell is a precarious balance of having enough current to prevent the tin from returning to the solution. Had a cathode lose 1/3 of it's weight.

 

[butcher]

Tinker Terry,
Without having a better Idea of what your doing it is hard to try and give advice, at this point I do not understand what your trying to do with the electrolytic cells, how your doing it, electrolytes your using, and whether the cell is using membranes or salt bridges.

I also do not understand why your trying to do some of this electrolytically, or if it would work (especially without knowing more details of the process or setup.

Tin and lead would break down in HCl and H2O2, lead chloride is pretty much insoluble and will settle out as a white precipitant of lead chloride, tin would stay dissolved in solution as stannous chloride, this could be done without the use of an electrolytic cell to force the reaction, but I would not want to use this for stannous chloride to test my gold with, nor would I want to use tin separated from lead in the electrolytic cell. gold is so hard for me to get, and is so easy to lose, pure tin is so cheap to buy, why would I want to fool around, when I can just get pure tin and be more confident of my test results when testing for gold in solution.

Copper II chloride leach, what you are calling acid peroxide, is a solution of copper, if your solution has other base metals besides copper it is no longer copper chloride, say it has iron it could now just be iron chloride or a mixture of iron chloride with a little copper in solution.

If your copper chloride solution is still copper chloride solution it is easy to rejuvenate it, with just a little HCl and oxygen source. If it is an iron chloride solution or other base metal chloride solution you will not be able to rejuvenate it, even in an electrolytic cell.

You could use an inert graphite anode to push some metals out of solution, but without knowing what the purpose or what your doing I do not see what good this would do.

It sounds like you are having fun experimenting with the cells, keep studying, the more you study the more you will learn the language, technical terms, principles, and how things work, but do be careful, chloride electrolytes can make dangerous gas of chlorine, sulfuric acid electrolytes can make dangerous or even explosive gas of hydrogen and oxygen...


copper II chloride is green, copper I chloride dissolved in this solution will color it very dark green almost brown, but then again Iron chlorides can also be green or brown in solution, colors do sometimes give us clues to what we have, but then again we cannot always go by the color of a solution to determine what it is.

Tinker Terry, it sounds like you like to tinker, but unless I misunderstand what your trying to do, I feel in this case your tinkering is just a waste of time, without more study of the processes already known to work, these processes have been perfected to a science, when you study and understand how they work, and how to use them then you may want to tinker with a few of the details, but tinkering to try to get something to work before you even understand how the known processes work, would be like tinkering in the dark, and tinkering in the dark you will always be bumping into the walls not getting anywhere.

 

[bswartzwelder]

Electrolysis uses DC current for a reason. The DC current flows in only one direction. I know of no electroplating operations which do not use as pure a DC current as possible for this reason. Reverse electroplating is doing the same thing as electrplating except everything is in backwards. Instead of plating something onto an object, the plating on that object is removed and replated onto something else or it falls into the sludge formed by the operation. As that DC current flows, it can take atoms from the positive electrode and force them into the electrolyte. After a period of time (usually pretty quickly) those same atoms are attracted to the negative electrode and will plate out of solution onto the negative electrode. Using AC current for electrolysis should not work. The atoms taken from the electrode which is positive at this instant in time may not have enought time to travel to the negative electrode. On the next half cycle of the electric current, what was your positive electrode now becomes your negative electrode and tries to recapture (replate) the atoms it just lost. The process would be repeated at the opposite electrode. When you put an LED (Light Emitting Diode) in series with your output, you effectively changed the AC current to DC current. The LED can only pass a very tiny amount of current and operates on very low voltage (usually around 1.5 volts). If you raise the voltage, the current also rises (Ohms law). Once you surpass the operating parameters (eithe voltage or current) for the LED, IT WILL FAIL. All circuits using LED have some form of voltage dropping/current limiting resistor. On some LED's it's built in. You need to look at the specifications for the LED you are using to know what its limitations are.

Way back in the late 1960's when I was in college, they taught that current flows from positive to negative. I believe this is still what's being taught. However, they also taught that voltage flows from negative to positive. This was in order for Newton's laws to remain in balance. For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. It's been many years since I have done any studying on this subject, so I don't know with any certainty what is being taught today.

If you wanted to make a really effective plating (or reverse electroplating) setup, start with a battery charger like a car battery charger. Connect it to a car battery like you are trying to charge it up. Then run the positive and negative leads to your electroplating setup. BE SURE YOU USE SOME FORM OF RESISTOR IN SERIES WITH EITHER ONE OF THE LEADS BETWEEN YOUR BATTERY AND THE ELECTROPLATING CELL. This is very important because without it, it is possible for the current to rise to the highest level that the battery can supply if the leads are accidentally shorted together. Under normal operating conditions, the current would be limited by the electrolyte used, its chemical strength, the distance between the electrodes, the size of the electrodes, and the temperature of the solution. As a general rule, the more concentrated the solution, the higher the current. The closer the electrodes, the higher the current will be. The larger the electrodes, the higher the current. The hotter the solution, the LOWER the current. Heat of the solution is an inverse function of the current whereas the other factors are a direct function of the current. Different electrolytes have different resistances based on their chemical composition.

Once, as a kid, my father had a battery in his car go dead. He took the old one out and placed it on the garage floor. I had recently acquired a DC ammeter with about 6 settings. I took a pair of jumper cables and connected the positive terminal of the battery to the positive terminal of the ammeter. I just wanted to see how much current that "dead" battery could produce. I connected the other jumper cable to the negative terminal of the meter which was set to 600 amps. When I touched the free end of the negative jumper cable to the battery post, all HECK broke loose. Some of the battery terminal melted, some of the jumper cable clip melted and it blew up the meter. Molten metal spewed in all directions. I know my Guardian Angel was watching over me that day. Things could have been much worse. The battery migh have exploded, the wire in the jumper cables might have heated up to their melting point and started a fire, or any number of other bad things could have happened. AND I WAS USING A DEAD BATTERY. Please be careful in your experimentation and good luck.

 

[g_axelsson]

Way back in the late 1960's when I was in college, they taught that current flows from positive to negative. I believe this is still what's being taught. However, they also taught that voltage flows from negative to positive. This was in order for Newton's laws to remain in balance. For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. It's been many years since I have done any studying on this subject, so I don't know with any certainty what is being taught today.

Current flows from positive to negative in a circuit. Inside a battery it flows from negative pole to positive. Look at it like balls on a hill with an escalator. Balls (the current) always rolls downwards but the escalator (battery) is lifting them up again, adding energy to the system.

Newtons laws is only concerning movements and accelerations of mechanical systems, not electrical circuits. Maybe you are thinking of Kirchoffs laws.
- In any point (node) in an electric circuit the sum of currents going in is the same as the sum of currents going out.
- in any loop in an electric circuit the total sum of voltage drops (for example resistors, LED...) and gains (for example batteries, generators, ...) is zero.

Just to make things more difficult, electrons moves in the opposite direction of the current. That is because they defined plus, minus and current before they discovered the electron. Hey, they had at least 50% chance of getting it right... and they blew it! :mrgreen:

Göran

 

[Tinker Terry]

First of all I cannot "easily buy pure tin" unless I shop online and pay prohibitive shipping charges and financial institution charges. Lead free sinkers? Bought some. Says on the back of the package they are zinc 53% cadmium45% magnesium 1.5. Any others I find say nothing at all about what's in em.
Lead free solder? All I can find says "contains silver". So where do I find this easy and cheap pure tin? I refine my own.
My Acid/Peroxide solution has been for some weeks sitting in a test tube with some pins and connectors and a few IC board fingers in it. some have dissolved completely, leaving a black sludge and gold foils and specs which tend to float and stick to the test tube. Some of the connectors appear to be completely unscathed. Even the parts that do not appear to be gold plated are still looking as shiny/ new as when I started. The metals by the way are mostly ones that I could pick up with a magnet so there may be some iron in my solution. The ones that the acid isn't dissolving? Could they be plated with a white gold alloy?
Commercial/industrial refineries use electrowinning to refresh and recycle their electrolytes. I see no reason why I shouldn't do the same. Also it seems like a good way to make H2SO4 that is chemically pure. Can't buy that here either. Am using "Liquid Lightning" drain opener "Vigin Sulfuric Acid with 12 buffers"".
MSDA says it's "section 2 Hazardous Ingredients - Sulfuric acid CAS NO. 7664-93-9
%Weight - 94.19. OSHA - 3mg/m. PEL - (3). TLV - 1mg/m cubed. 313 - T.
What do the OSHA, PEL, TLV, and 313 headings mean?
Lists nothing under non-hazardous ingredients. So what are the 12 buffers and how do they affect electrolysis chemistry. Hard to tell so being able to make my own H2SO4 is a good thing to know.

Why fool with AC current in electrolytes? There is no such thing as useless knowledge (possible exceptions would be such trivia as batting averages etc.). First time I did it just to see what would happen. What happened was I quickly burned out a 120V/12V furnace transformer. One of my electrodes was a shield from an external computer connector. What happened to it is 1: the shiny plating was removed rather quickly. 2: the underlying brass soon took on the appearance of copper.
Nothing plated to either electrode, everything went to sludge or solution. Electrolyte was a solution of non-iodized salt. When I have more knowledge re chemical reactions I will probably pursue this farther. Have found a couple of good instructive websites where I am studying.
Also need to know more about the gases given off by acids and electrolytes. Capturing them is easy. Scrubbing, filtering, and neutralizing/utilizing them is another area I will be giving study time to.
Would bubbling Chlorine gas through a NaCl solution result in sodium hypochlorite?

 

[Tinker Terry]

This will act as a ballast resistor and damp down the "pumping" type of action that is there (but you don't see it) on the output.

Incidentally...the same technique allows one to use a conventional dimmer when powering up a strip of those halogen track lights....the ones with the box on their bases. That box has a little switching power supply in it, with inductors as part of the circuit. If you add just one incandescent track light fixture on a track that you wish to dim, you can use cheap conventional dimmers to dim halogen/low voltage track fixtures. Otherwise, you're supposed to buy special $80/ea dimmers to dim halogen tracks. Using conventional dimmers, not only will the action of your dimmer not be at all linear, at certain settings, they will "pump" and possibly blow something up at some point.

Works great on the nicad battery charger. I wonder if this would work to control the speed od a small electric motor as well. Dimmer switch is rated 600 Watts so as long as I keep the total load below that I should be OK?

 

[squarecoinman]

First of all I cannot "easily buy pure tin" unless I shop online and pay prohibitive shipping charges and financial institution charges. Lead free sinkers? Bought some. Says on the back of the package they are zinc 53% cadmium45% magnesium 1.5. Any others I find say nothing at all about what's in em.
Lead free solder? All I can find says "contains silver". So where do I find this easy and cheap pure tin? I refine my own.
My Acid/Peroxide solution has been for some weeks sitting in a test tube with some pins and connectors and a few IC board fingers in it. some have dissolved completely, leaving a black sludge and gold foils and specs which tend to float and stick to the test tube. Some of the connectors appear to be completely unscathed. Even the parts that do not appear to be gold plated are still looking as shiny/ new as when I started. The metals by the way are mostly ones that I could pick up with a magnet so there may be some iron in my solution. The ones that the acid isn't dissolving? Could they be plated with a white gold alloy?
Commercial/industrial refineries use electrowinning to refresh and recycle their electrolytes. I see no reason why I shouldn't do the same. Also it seems like a good way to make H2SO4 that is chemically pure. Can't buy that here either. Am using "Liquid Lightning" drain opener "Vigin Sulfuric Acid with 12 buffers"".
MSDA says it's "section 2 Hazardous Ingredients - Sulfuric acid CAS NO. 7664-93-9
%Weight - 94.19. OSHA - 3mg/m. PEL - (3). TLV - 1mg/m cubed. 313 - T.
What do the OSHA, PEL, TLV, and 313 headings mean?
Lists nothing under non-hazardous ingredients. So what are the 12 buffers and how do they affect electrolysis chemistry. Hard to tell so being able to make my own H2SO4 is a good thing to know.

Why fool with AC current in electrolytes? There is no such thing as useless knowledge (possible exceptions would be such trivia as batting averages etc.). First time I did it just to see what would happen. What happened was I quickly burned out a 120V/12V furnace transformer. One of my electrodes was a shield from an external computer connector. What happened to it is 1: the shiny plating was removed rather quickly. 2: the underlying brass soon took on the appearance of copper.
Nothing plated to either electrode, everything went to sludge or solution. Electrolyte was a solution of non-iodized salt. When I have more knowledge re chemical reactions I will probably pursue this farther. Have found a couple of good instructive websites where I am studying.
Also need to know more about the gases given off by acids and electrolytes. Capturing them is easy. Scrubbing, filtering, and neutralizing/utilizing them is another area I will be giving study time to.
Would bubbling Chlorine gas through a NaCl solution result in sodium hypochlorite?

I could answer most of your questions , but to me it seems that you are not serious about safety , you try first and then you will find out what happens
when buying lead free sinkers ( read the back first )
You are in Canada, if you would have followed the guided tour, you would have been in the safety section and you would also have learned about Lazersteve , he has a webside and you can buy pure TIN there 1 dollar for 1 gram. I believe that refining your own will cost more then buying 1 gram. And sending from the US to Canada does not cost a fortune.

If you would spend time reading about AP you will see that it is not a good idea to mix things. Use search to find out why .

commercial refiners do use several techniques to refresh the solvents they use, but you are not in the same position. and you should learn to walk before you try to run.

You write that you have a couple of good websites where you are studying , the best one is this one, but the hard part is that people expect you to study Hoke and safety first .

If you want to know about chlorine gas, google Chlorine and WWI first, then read the safety section and then think if you really want to do this.
If you still want to, built a hood, show the design discus with members that know about hoods scrubbers etc etc .

my advice is put all you have away for now , study Hoke , study safety , collect ewaste and start again when you understand what you are doing

scm

 

[Tinker Terry]

Electrolysis uses DC current for a reason. The DC current flows in only one direction. I know of no electroplating operations which do not use as pure a DC current as possible for this reason. Reverse electroplating is doing the same thing as electrplating except everything is in backwards. Instead of plating something onto an object, the plating on that object is removed and replated onto something else or it falls into the sludge formed by the operation. As that DC current flows, it can take atoms from the positive electrode and force them into the electrolyte. After a period of time (usually pretty quickly) those same atoms are attracted to the negative electrode and will plate out of solution onto the negative electrode. Using AC current for electrolysis should not work. The atoms taken from the electrode which is positive at this instant in time may not have enought time to travel to the negative electrode. On the next half cycle of the electric current, what was your positive electrode now becomes your negative electrode and tries to recapture (replate) the atoms it just lost. The process would be repeated at the opposite electrode. When you put an LED (Light Emitting Diode) in series with your output, you effectively changed the AC current to DC current. The LED can only pass a very tiny amount of current and operates on very low voltage (usually around 1.5 volts). If you raise the voltage, the current also rises (Ohms law). Once you surpass the operating parameters (eithe voltage or current) for the LED, IT WILL FAIL. All circuits using LED have some form of voltage dropping/current limiting resistor. On some LED's it's built in. You need to look at the specifications for the LED you are using to know what its limitations are.

Way back in the late 1960's when I was in college, they taught that current flows from positive to negative. I believe this is still what's being taught. However, they also taught that voltage flows from negative to positive. This was in order for Newton's laws to remain in balance. For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. It's been many years since I have done any studying on this subject, so I don't know with any certainty what is being taught today.

If you wanted to make a really effective plating (or reverse electroplating) setup, start with a battery charger like a car battery charger. Connect it to a car battery like you are trying to charge it up. Then run the positive and negative leads to your electroplating setup. BE SURE YOU USE SOME FORM OF RESISTOR IN SERIES WITH EITHER ONE OF THE LEADS BETWEEN YOUR BATTERY AND THE ELECTROPLATING CELL. This is very important because without it, it is possible for the current to rise to the highest level that the battery can supply if the leads are accidentally shorted together. Under normal operating conditions, the current would be limited by the electrolyte used, its chemical strength, the distance between the electrodes, the size of the electrodes, and the temperature of the solution. As a general rule, the more concentrated the solution, the higher the current. The closer the electrodes, the higher the current will be. The larger the electrodes, the higher the current. The hotter the solution, the LOWER the current. Heat of the solution is an inverse function of the current whereas the other factors are a direct function of the current. Different electrolytes have different resistances based on their chemical composition.

Once, as a kid, my father had a battery in his car go dead. He took the old one out and placed it on the garage floor. I had recently acquired a DC ammeter with about 6 settings. I took a pair of jumper cables and connected the positive terminal of the battery to the positive terminal of the ammeter. I just wanted to see how much current that "dead" battery could produce. I connected the other jumper cable to the negative terminal of the meter which was set to 600 amps. When I touched the free end of the negative jumper cable to the battery post, all HECK broke loose. Some of the battery terminal melted, some of the jumper cable clip melted and it blew up the meter. Molten metal spewed in all directions. I know my Guardian Angel was watching over me that day. Things could have been much worse. The battery migh have exploded, the wire in the jumper cables might have heated up to their melting point and started a fire, or any number of other bad things could have happened. AND I WAS USING A DEAD BATTERY. Please be careful in your experimentation and good luck.

The LED was connected in a DC circuit which has a 0.5 Amp fuse in it. you were lucky with the battery accident. Sounds like it wasn't a "ded" battery at all if it was capable of producing enough current to melt lead terminals. Haven't done electrolysis on my AP it is just sitting there with pins etc in it. I suspect that it is becoming saturated.

 

[butcher]

If your copper II chloride leach is used on iron, it will become iron chloride , iron chloride will dissolve some copper until it is saturated, if other metals are involved they can cement copper from this solution, after a point the iron chloride solution will not dissolve any more copper or iron, and the solutions effectiveness is depleted, it cannot easily be rejuvenated like the copper II chloride leach can be.

If your pins were magnetic, I suspect you have made iron chloride , and your leach is no longer a copper chloride leach, the black powder could be some gold that got dissolved if you used too much oxidizer and the dirty gold has precipitated back out of solution with copper, or it could just mainly be copper in a saturated iron chloride solution, the undissolved white metal could be many metals including stainless steel.

If I had this solution I would look at two options of proceeding.

Option one:
would be to let all powders and metals settle well, decant the iron chloride solution, test it for values and send it to the waste bucket, and add fresh acid and 3% H2O2 to the pins and metals to dissolve more base metals.

Option two:
this method I normally used as a recovery method, and I do not suggest it here in your situation.
Heat the solutions and pins concentrating the solution to dissolve more metal, heated concentrated Iron chloride will dissolve a lot more copper or iron into solution, as it gets very concentrated, adding just a little more HCl and peroxide after the solution is concentrated if all of the metals are not dissolved before concentrating the solution to salts, after all metals are dissolved only leaving an insoluble powder, the solution is diluted, this will put most of the base metals into the dilute solution of iron chloride, the powders left can be values, copper I chloride and some insoluble iron hydroxides, the powders are settled, waste solution decanted, the copper I chloride is dissolved in fresh HCl, the values and insoluble iron hydroxides are allowed to settle, solution decanted, and this is repeated until you are only left with an insoluble powder of value gold, and the red iron hydroxide powders, the gold can then be dissolved from the iron hydroxide leaving you with a red rouge of iron hydroxide almost insoluble in most acids including aqua regia.

Relatively pure tin solder is very common, 95% Sn (tin) 5% Sb (antimony), makes good stannous chloride , the antimony is insoluble as black powder, You can also use the tin solder that has a minimum percentage of silver, as silver is also insoluble as a chloride, if using the silver bearing solder I would decant the stannous chloride from the white silver powder before using it.

Besides trying the solder and fishing weights which can be made from tin, certain types of pewter can also be tin from 85% to 99%.

You can also try to buy or trade for some tin, with the forum members most of us have a few rolls of solder, I believe Laser Steve's web site has it, and he is very reasonable on price.

Yes commercial/industrial refineries use electro-winning to refresh and recycle their electrolytes. but the key word here is refresh the electrolyte, but they are not taking a worn out solution of iron waste and trying to make copper chloride from it...

electrolysis of a brine salt water solution will make sodium hydroxide and sodium hypochlorite.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chloralkali_process

Spending time studying will get you closer to learning how things work and how to do them, and actually accomplishing your goals, than trying things willy nelly to find out it will not work, and then taking the time to find out why it wouldn't work by studying .

 

[Tinker Terry]

Quote Butcher: Option one:
would be to let all powders and metals settle well, decant the iron chloride solution, test it for values and send it to the waste bucket, and add fresh acid and 3% H2O2 to the pins and metals to dissolve more base metals.

Option two:
this method I normally used as a recovery method, and I do not suggest it here in your situation.
Heat the solutions and pins concentrating the solution to dissolve more metal, [END QUOTE]
Option one is basically my original plan. How do I decant the floating gold foills out?

 

[butcher]

Usually if the material or lab-ware was dirty from oils or organic material the gold will tend to float, even the oil from fingerprints on glass ware will cause this problem, incineration before hand will remove oils and a lot of the organic trash from your materials before processing, and keeping lab-ware clean, handy tricks learned from Hoke and Harold, just a little prevention is worth a more than a pound of cure.

Try spraying the floating gold with a strong mist from your water bottle, this will many time knock the fine gold below the surface, or help to break the surface tension, to sink the gold, another trick when panning or mining to break surface tension is to add a drop or two of dawn dish soap or other surfactant detergent (this would be my last resort here).

 

[bswartzwelder]

The battery was "dead" for all intents and purposes. When a car battery fails, one or possibly 2 of the cells build up a sludge on the bottom of the cell shorting out that cell. The other cells are still capable of accepting a charge and are "treated" to a higher than normal voltage since the voltage across the shorted cell(s) is effectively zero. With one shorted cell, a battery might still crank over an engine. With 2 bad cells, it's doubtful. When in a car, the battery current flows from the battery through a starting relay. There is a voltage drop and corresponding current drop because of the resistance of the contacts. From there, it flows to the starting motor (also the ignition circuit and anything else connected with the key and anything that can be turned on with the engine off). The starting motor has a very low resistance and therefore will have a very high current needed to turn it over. If the weather is very cold, the oil in the engine thickens up making it harder to crank the engine while the battery is actually able to produce less. Harder to crank translates into an even higher current flow for the starter. The connecting wires are cold and their resistance goes down. This part is a good thing because they will consume less wattage during cranking. Losses, according to Mr. Ohms law are equal to current squared times the resistance. While a slight drop in resistance isn't much of a change, squaring the current difference is tremendous. If you leave the headlights on, there's even less current left for starting the engine. To save money, car makers use a wire that is barely heavy enough for the starter. It only has to supply high current for a few seconds while the engine is cranking and if it heats up a few degrees, so what. The length of wire, the connections at the battery(2), the connections at the starting relay (2), the connections at the starter (1 positive) and the connections to the frame of the vehicle and between the frame and the starter motor and battery to frame which are run through steel all add up.

I was using a very good set of jumper cables of very heavy gauge copper. Jumper cables have to be heavy because all the currents normally encountered in starting the car are increased. There are four additional connections between the jumpers and the batteries and the length of the jumpers adds into the equation. In my fiasco, the connections were all clean, and the shunt for the ammeter was almost zero ohms of resistance. Combining these facts, even a "dead" battery capable of producing 10 volts instead of the normal 13.8 is easily capable of producing massive current flows in the range of hundreds of amps, perhaps more for a very short duration.

I was really young at this time, probably about 10 and loved science. I didn't have a background in electricity or chemicals, but a true thirst for knowledge. This dangerous experiment paid off in the long run. My interest in electricity was what led me to go to Penn State where I studied Electrical and Electronic Technology. We had one instructor who taught us about vacuum tubes which was not on the curriculum. Something new had come out called transistors. IC's and LED's were a couple of years in the future and there was no picture transistor in a TV. Any of you other old farts will remember the ancient 2N107 transistors. That's what we experimented with. Triacs and SCR's came on the scene before graduation and were a source for study as well.

Having said all that, I made myself a set of jumper cables years after the accident using my new found knowledge of Ohms law. I bought the heaviest clips I could find and used a piece of wire that I had been given. It was 4 ought welding cable. Welding cable stays much more flexible than an equal sized wire for carrying large currents due to the fact it is made up of (in this case) many hundreds if not thousands of individual current carrying strands of very fine wire. The jumpers are about 12 to 16 feet long and I have them to this day. I think that if needed, they could supply enough current to start up an Abrams tank. Thank God they weren't laying around when I first started tinkering with electricity.

Goran, THANK YOU for your description. Current flows in one direction while electrons flow in the opposite direction. Isn't an electron flow another name for voltage? Those flows, plus the spinning of the starter motor under load, plus the losses accounts for whats going on in this relatively simple circuit. By the way, I do remember studying Kirchoff with the sums of currents and the voltage drops around the circuit. Brought back some memories. Again, THANKS.

 

[bswartzwelder]

Pure Tin Shot is easily available on eBay and I saw one $7.50 four 4 ounces with $3.50 shipping. Would most likely be more to Canada. I purchased Stannous Chloride Anhydrous from a seller on eBay. It is a white flaky powdery substance. A couple of monthss ago, I mixed about 4 of the larger flakes in a brown dropper bottle with some HCl. I also added 2 pieces of tin shot. When finished that day, I put it in my refrigeratror (well marked) and left it sit. Several months later, I expected I would have to make a fresh batch, but to my surprise it seemed to work as well as ever. Hope this helps. You may be able to find an eBay supplier from Canada which will lower your costs.

 

[bswartzwelder]

Regarding batteries, I should have added earlier, there are only two things which determine the maximum current a battery can deliver. One is the resistance of the load it is connected to and the other is the internal resistance of the battery itself.