Astraveller
Active member
We are newbie’s. We’ve got bunch of computers but no chemistry experience so we decided to try the acid peroxide from the General Reaction List first.
“4. AP= Acid Peroxide = 2 Parts Muriatic Acid, 1 Part 3% Hydrogen Peroxide. Dissolves base metals, slowly dissolves gold when heated. If gold is present drop with SMB, NO urea needed.”
So we took 1 oz of fingers and put them in a dish with 200 ml of 32% muriatic acid and 25 ml of 6% hydrogen peroxide – it started turning green within a few minutes.
We also took another ounce of fingers and put them into 200 ml of 20% muriatic acid and 25 ml of 6% hydrogen peroxide it also started to turn green but took longer.
We left them for the rest of the day and watched as the gold foils lifted. We left them for two days and the foils were completely dissolved. We then added the two dishes together and got rid of the ‘empty’ fingers filtered the green liquid which left no residue in the filter paper.
Then we added a teaspoonful of SMB and noticed some fine bubbles and a small amount of black stuff forming in the bottom of the dish, when the reaction seemed to slow down we added some more SMB a couple of times and gave it a stir. At some point the solution turned a rich brown colour and gave off a very strong SMB smell that nearly took my head off. (And 8 hours later as I write this, I can still taste it and I have the sniffles like a cold). After that, every time we added SMB we got a more violet reaction.
I left it for a couple of hours, then took some water in another dish and a added about 100 ml of the liquid in the belief that maybe the HCl was too strong and was re-dissolving the gold and ‘fighting’ the SMB, I ended up with a nice yellow liquid like Auric Chloride in LaserSteves video so I added some SMB – nothing!
There is gold in the original liquid and the diluted liquid obviously but I/we have missed something. Can anyone help? What do I do next or next time? We have another batch on the go.
Linton.
“4. AP= Acid Peroxide = 2 Parts Muriatic Acid, 1 Part 3% Hydrogen Peroxide. Dissolves base metals, slowly dissolves gold when heated. If gold is present drop with SMB, NO urea needed.”
So we took 1 oz of fingers and put them in a dish with 200 ml of 32% muriatic acid and 25 ml of 6% hydrogen peroxide – it started turning green within a few minutes.
We also took another ounce of fingers and put them into 200 ml of 20% muriatic acid and 25 ml of 6% hydrogen peroxide it also started to turn green but took longer.
We left them for the rest of the day and watched as the gold foils lifted. We left them for two days and the foils were completely dissolved. We then added the two dishes together and got rid of the ‘empty’ fingers filtered the green liquid which left no residue in the filter paper.
Then we added a teaspoonful of SMB and noticed some fine bubbles and a small amount of black stuff forming in the bottom of the dish, when the reaction seemed to slow down we added some more SMB a couple of times and gave it a stir. At some point the solution turned a rich brown colour and gave off a very strong SMB smell that nearly took my head off. (And 8 hours later as I write this, I can still taste it and I have the sniffles like a cold). After that, every time we added SMB we got a more violet reaction.
I left it for a couple of hours, then took some water in another dish and a added about 100 ml of the liquid in the belief that maybe the HCl was too strong and was re-dissolving the gold and ‘fighting’ the SMB, I ended up with a nice yellow liquid like Auric Chloride in LaserSteves video so I added some SMB – nothing!
There is gold in the original liquid and the diluted liquid obviously but I/we have missed something. Can anyone help? What do I do next or next time? We have another batch on the go.
Linton.