burningsuntech
Active member
Process: AP
Ratios: 600ml HCl 31.45% : 400ml H202 3% a ratio of 3:2
Scrap content: Approx 200g Shredded boards from a cell phone, from the displays of 4 laptops, and the gold pins from 3 cpus and a few connectors on the motherboards.
AP went as expected. Got the Emerald green color of the CuCl2. I moved it outdoors because of the chlorine and the ambient temp outside was about 40 deg F. After 2 hours, the reaction stopped so added more CuCl2 to restart. Got a good reaction. I left it go for 4 hours and then checked how well the copper was stripping off the boards. There wasn't much difference. Added another 100ml of CuCl2 and got no reaction. Left it overnight. Checked it again in the AM and the color was darker but there was still a lot of copper to be dissolved. Very little of the gold stripped from the boards.
I decided to switch to Ferric Chloride for faster stripping so I drained the shred from the pot and put it in a clean plastic bowl and added tap water to rinse it before moving it to the FeCl2. This is when the water turned very cloudy white. So I put the cloudy water in another container and let it settle. It now has a beautiful sky blue color with white cloudy puffy looking precipitate on the lower third of the container.
Here is what I believe has happened. Correct me if I'm wrong. The White cloudy solution is the result of high silver content of the boards and the silver reduced the ability of the solution to strip the copper from the boards because it bound itself to the chlorine ions thereby leaving the gold still attached. So what I have here is Silver Chloride? If so then I can convert it to Silver Nitrate and cement it out with copper. If not, what is it then? I have well water here and it is very hard. Could it be a carbonate of silver? Is there such a thing?
This is not the first time this has happened. A previous attempt resulted in a greyish sediment that I filtered from the CuCl2 solution and am holding till I can determine what it is and what to do with it.
I seem to have better luck with Ferric Chloride than with The AP in getting gold off the boards. Anyone else have any suggestions?
Thanks for your input and advance. This site and the guys here are awesome!
Ratios: 600ml HCl 31.45% : 400ml H202 3% a ratio of 3:2
Scrap content: Approx 200g Shredded boards from a cell phone, from the displays of 4 laptops, and the gold pins from 3 cpus and a few connectors on the motherboards.
AP went as expected. Got the Emerald green color of the CuCl2. I moved it outdoors because of the chlorine and the ambient temp outside was about 40 deg F. After 2 hours, the reaction stopped so added more CuCl2 to restart. Got a good reaction. I left it go for 4 hours and then checked how well the copper was stripping off the boards. There wasn't much difference. Added another 100ml of CuCl2 and got no reaction. Left it overnight. Checked it again in the AM and the color was darker but there was still a lot of copper to be dissolved. Very little of the gold stripped from the boards.
I decided to switch to Ferric Chloride for faster stripping so I drained the shred from the pot and put it in a clean plastic bowl and added tap water to rinse it before moving it to the FeCl2. This is when the water turned very cloudy white. So I put the cloudy water in another container and let it settle. It now has a beautiful sky blue color with white cloudy puffy looking precipitate on the lower third of the container.
Here is what I believe has happened. Correct me if I'm wrong. The White cloudy solution is the result of high silver content of the boards and the silver reduced the ability of the solution to strip the copper from the boards because it bound itself to the chlorine ions thereby leaving the gold still attached. So what I have here is Silver Chloride? If so then I can convert it to Silver Nitrate and cement it out with copper. If not, what is it then? I have well water here and it is very hard. Could it be a carbonate of silver? Is there such a thing?
This is not the first time this has happened. A previous attempt resulted in a greyish sediment that I filtered from the CuCl2 solution and am holding till I can determine what it is and what to do with it.
I seem to have better luck with Ferric Chloride than with The AP in getting gold off the boards. Anyone else have any suggestions?
Thanks for your input and advance. This site and the guys here are awesome!