and another question

[Drowningbodacius]

i was wondering about this.
after your use the AP the color turns a dark green, yes, and i placed a peice of pure aluminium into the Ap and it precipitated the copper out of the solution. but i went to put some ram sticks in to the solution and nothing happened
so i ran a simulation on my computer and it states that all the HCL is being used up on the aluminium to push teh copper (II) chlorideout of the solution so it leaves the solution weak if not totally useless now is this correct or am i not reading something right
oh and sorry about not puttin this into my other post

 

[NobleMetalWorks]

i was wondering about this.
after your use the AP the color turns a dark green, yes, and i placed a peice of pure aluminium into the Ap and it precipitated the copper out of the solution. but i went to put some ram sticks in to the solution and nothing happened
so i ran a simulation on my computer and it states that all the HCL is being used up on the aluminium to push teh copper (II) chlorideout of the solution so it leaves the solution weak if not totally useless now is this correct or am i not reading something right
oh and sorry about not puttin this into my other post

In order for your AP solution to work, it has to be comprised of Cu2Cl. In other words, when you put Al into your AP and displaced your Cu out of solution, you no longer had Cu2Cl, I am not sure but you might be changing your solution into some form of Al chloride like Aluminum Polychloride? Can someone confirm that or correct if I am wrong, I am actually kind of curious what the resulting solution will be. Regardless you no longer have Cu2Cl because you displaced the copper.

AP is an ever expanding solution, as you go along you simply keep expanding your solution until you can no longer expand it, then you remove some of the solution, and add water with your supply of air again. The part of the solution you removed, you process to cement out the copper and whatever metals are in solution. You can cement out with Iron, then use Sodium Hydroxide/Lye to precipitate the Iron. You can then test your solution with an ORP meter to test for reduction potential, PH to insure your dealing with salt water now and if both are good, you can then dispose of the solution as salt water. Even if there is small amounts of Iron, Iron is not considered to be a pollutant.

Scott

 

[Drowningbodacius]

thanks SBrown that explained alot of what i was wondering. i am still curious about the resulting solution as well

 

[NobleMetalWorks]

thanks SBrown that explained alot of what i was wondering. i am still curious about the resulting solution as well

Cu2Cl + Al = AlCl3 + Cu

AlCl3 is also called Aluminum Chloride

If you mixed NaOH (Sodium Hydroxide) I believe you get a precipitate of Aluminum Hydroxide.

My question is this, is this the best way to precipitate the Al, and what should be done with it after this point? Or if enough water is added, will it break the ionic bond and precipitate as Al?

Scott

 

[Drowningbodacius]

well i took your advice and ran a new simulation with it using Al instead of Fe, it makes Al Chloride. after i add the NaOH it precipitates the solution as Al hydroxide and Cu hydroxide. ill upload a vid of the simulation to youtube later
the only problem with the program is that the Ap solution does nothing so i have to use hno³ and hcl to make my copper chloride

 

[NobleMetalWorks]

Oh, that's easy, in a new bucket/container, etc. Mix HCl and water like you did last time by putting HCl into water, acid into water never water into acid. Then add your Hydrogen Peroxide, then half the copper you cemented out.

If I were doing this, I would incinerate your copper first, this burns off any associated acids or dried solution, then give it a HCl bath, this should dissolve any Al or other base metals that might be included in the Cu. So long as your HCl wash stays cool, you shouldn't dissolve any Cu. This will give you clean Cu to use in your AP solution.

Scott

 

[Drowningbodacius]

oh ok that is pretty easy ill have to try that when i make a new Ap solution this up coming weekend.

 

[NobleMetalWorks]

Let us know how it went, I am curious to learn what happened...

If you have a bit of copper pipe laying around, that might be easier than refining the copper you cemented out.

Scott

 

[Drowningbodacius]

yeah im drying the cemented copper right now and ive run into a worry. it seems through the filtering process of my gold finger foils some of them have been blasted into extremly tiny bits and i see shiny specks in my cemented copper so i need a better filter or i...... i cant figure out my next step. any thoughts? would dissolving the copper be fine, thats what im thinking and then using more coffee filters and saving them for the Acid Clorox part of the process

 

[NobleMetalWorks]

If you had too much oxygen in your AP solution then some of the gold was dissolved, but would cement back out as copper was dissolved into solution. To prevent this, when I start a new AP Solution, I start with half as much solution as I want in the end, I add pure copper, then add a bubbler, when the solution is saturated it will not dissolve anymore copper. Then I expand the solution by adding water and then put my material in to be de-foiled.

If you are seeing really small bits of gold foils, then you can dissolve the copper with either hot HCl, or Nitric Acid at room temp. Nitric will do better, just make your Nitric solution 50% NItric/50% Di water. The Nitric Acid will only dissolve the copper, but will leave the small gold foils behind. Then rinse your gold foil, if you are using AP you do not need to incinerate, if you are using HCl/Cl to dissolve the gold foils, then you need to wash really good and incinerate to make sure you have no more Nitric Acid associated with the foils.

Scott

 

[Drowningbodacius]

i dont use a bubbler for my ap process. since i only do small batches of about 150 ml of total solution so im going to try to dissolve the cu and filter through more filters. then wash the filters in a seperate tub, dry and then when i use the clorox acid method ill use thse filters to filter my eventual auric acid though and that should dissolve the little amount in the filters . the amount of gold in my powdered cu is so little that ill just experiment with it and not worry about loss. its probably not even a 8th of a gram of au.

 

[samuel-a]

Aluminum Chloride will hydrolyze water into HCl. Therefore, saturated AlCl3 HCl/water solution in will slowly raise pH (to around 2-3) and precipitate oxides/hydroxides.

Maybe there's a chemist in the house who can explain it better then i can...

 

[Geo]

if you rinse the filter well, they will still contain copper chloride. if you filter gold chloride through these filters, you will just be adding copper to your gold.save the filters until you have enough to incinerate and enjoy the extra amount of gold when you get it.