Another wierd scenario.. This one's the trickiest one yet..

[Xydoman]

OK refiners and chemist's.. I've got another one. So far, anytime I've posted, someone or multiple someone's have been able to peg it right on and nudge me in the right direction. So I literally owe all my knowledge and limited success y to u guys. There's absolutely no way a guy like me could ever dare to take on such a hobby without the support of you guys.. OK, pleasantries out of the way...

I've been at this for about a year now and have learned a couple of key processes that I can manage, so I stick to those now days. But when I first started, I was one of those who figured he could simply watch a coue of YouTube videos containing incomplete info, and just hit the ground running. I was wrong. Ill shorten it a bit..

Fast forward to about a week ago, I'm cleaning out my chemical cabinet just to clear done dust and empty jugs, and I come across a spaghetti sauce jar with a strange solution in it. Crystal Clear liquid like water on top, and an orange/ brown sludge at the bottom. I've began washing it. I decanted the liquid on top and used distilled water to fill the flask back up (switched containers), and I plan to do this till I can see more of what it might me.. Or at least I HAD planned that. The thought occurred that I neededvto turn to you guys so I ddnt mess it up again.. Whatever it is..

So here's what we know..

1. Spaghetti sauce jars were being used about the time I started to figure some things out. I was screwing up less, but when I did, you guys would tell me to stop and learn.. And come back to it I think this is one of those solutions.

2. I've only ever attempted hold and silver recovery. In those days I was processing vintage computer scrap. Ie processors, ram sticks, ic chips, and such.. I THINK this possibly came from ic chips from telecom equipment. I posted a Pic of one and asked what it was once. I'll dig thru the archives so I can repost the board. But I had tons of them and didn't seem to be getting any hold from them so I moved on.

3. My processes were the standard few. Either ap then AR or Hcl and bleach.. Only smb to precipitate. I've lost tons of solutions after the smb step due to ignorance. I'm not sure if this one made it to the smb step, but I would guess it did? As that's when I would usually give up.. Altho there's no odor coming from it. For ics and bgas I used incineration, then panned the material down, and then ap for the concentrate.

4. As of now, when I filled the flask with water after decanting the old liquid, I noticed a familiar sight. I'll try my best to explain it do bare with me.. You know when you're recovering silver from circuit breakers using the sugar/lye method? On the home stretch, after a couple of washes to remove the sugar and lye, when you go to fill the container with more water for another wash, you can begin to see the elemental silver settling at the bottom. The particles look small, Gray and round-ish, and you can distinguish each particle as they pile on top of each other against the glass, from the liquid they are in. The particles in my mystery solution look just like these silver particles, only orange / brown.

I hope I have described this well enough and provided enough info, albeit incomplete, to figure out what it is. I was planning on decanting, washing, melting just to see what it turned out to be, but If it happens to be something good that might require another step, then I guess I'll just go ahead and stop again til I hear something.



Thanks everyone.

 

[FrugalRefiner]

Test! Why melt it. What will that tell you?

First, I would test the solution. If it's barren, then treat it as waste and dispose properly.

When faced with an unknown, the best thing to do is test. Take a tiny amount of your "stuff". This should be a test tube quantity test. Add a bit of HCl. Warm it. Add a bit of nitric acid, peroxide, bleach, or some other oxidizer. Observe the solution for any visual cues, but don't bet the ranch on the color of the solution.

Eliminate any excess oxidizer, then test the solution with stannous. If it tests positive, process the remainder of the stuff. If it tests negative, dispose of it as waste.

Dave

 

[butcher]

No need to work with the whole lot, a couple of samples in a test tube can tell you what you need to know.

Hoke's book page 100 test for iron.
See the solubility rules, several metal salts are soluble in water.

From the color, I can see from the picture I would suspect iron hydroxide.
I do not see the colors of copper.

if just dissolving the salts in water, the water-soluble salts will most likely not have any values in the solution, you can test to be sure,

If chloride salts and nitrate salts, then adding an acid like HCl could put values in solution (test for values).

Then you can try to dissolve the remaining powder in acid with an oxidizer strong enough to dissolve gold like a little HCl a few drops of bleach, heat to destroy free chlorine gas (some types of iron rust may remain undissolved even after dissolving gold, (again testing solution for values).

 

[Xydoman]

Test! Why melt it. What will that tell you?

First, I would test the solution. If it's barren, then treat it as waste and dispose properly.

When faced with an unknown, the best thing to do is test. Take a tiny amount of your "stuff". This should be a test tube quantity test. Add a bit of HCl. Warm it. Add a bit of nitric acid, peroxide, bleach, or some other oxidizer. Observe the solution for any visual cues, but don't bet the ranch on the color of the solution.

Eliminate any excess oxidizer, then test the solution with stannous. If it tests positive, process the remainder of the stuff. If it tests negative, dispose of it as waste.

Dave

OK this is what I'll do. I'll post the visual cues fir further guidance.. Oh ant to answer the question.. Why melt it? Yeah I understand it'll tell me nothing. But since I finally figured out what I was doing wrong when trying to melt my gold, ive become infatuated with seeing metal melt under my torch.. More specifically, the moment when its still a solid and gets as bright as its gonna get, and then starts spinning and turns into a shiny little puddle.. Idk.. Awfully satisfying and lately satisfaction has been kind of hard to come by in my corner of the holler. So I'll take what I can get. However if it's iron I don't think my little torch would be up for it lol

 

[Xydoman]

Test! Why melt it. What will that tell you?

First, I would test the solution. If it's barren, then treat it as waste and dispose properly.

When faced with an unknown, the best thing to do is test. Take a tiny amount of your "stuff". This should be a test tube quantity test. Add a bit of HCl. Warm it. Add a bit of nitric acid, peroxide, bleach, or some other oxidizer. Observe the solution for any visual cues, but don't bet the ranch on the color of the solution.

Eliminate any excess oxidizer, then test the solution with stannous. If it tests positive, process the remainder of the stuff. If it tests negative, dispose of it as waste.

Dave

Hmmmm... So I definitely was NOT expecting this.. Purple.. Wow. And it looks like quite a bit.. In fact, it'll be possibly my biggest "drop" to date.. And I had no idea what it was. Any thoughts? I'm thinking.. Surely not.. But even as I stand here the purple stain is getting darker and darker.. What would give it that brilliant orange color?

 

[Xydoman]

Holy moly.. Here's another layer.. So after the purple stannous test, I decided I'd redisolve it.. I added hcl ONLY, and it immediately turned to this.. Purple solution.. I haven't added anything else to it.. Of course there was likely some residual original solution. I had washed it dmseveral times before adding hcl.... Dammit.. OK I know what happened. I've got 2 water bottles. One marked distilled and one for tap. I had inadvertently reached for the tap water on that last wash.... Is this gonna be trouble or should I just go with it?