Ad8chd
Member
Oh yeah, what’s wrong with using AR to get the gold Out of the rocks? It seems like it worked way better than what I was doing. I didn’t even though I don’t have my gold right now. I don’t have any other gold either so you know…
Aqua Regia attempt
- Thread starter Ad8chd
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Cementing is an ion exchange process.
The dissolved Gold swaps olace with the Copper and becomes a metal again.
Pure Gold dropped with SMB or other looks like cinnamon in color.
My bad sulfamic does not neutralize nitric acid. However in the exchange/addition of sulfamic it is said it changes the free nitric to sulfuric acid.
Please read this blog insert with far better explanations.
https://ewaste-nation.com/denox-methods-what-are-they-and-which-one-should-i-choose/
Once you get the experience and visual action of what drops out of solution being it SMB based or cementing with a reactive metal.
You will get a better picture.
There is so much material written here at the forum with many pictures.
Just search and look around.
I see you did not read FrugalRefiners post earlier as he shows a reactivity list of metals.
https://goldrefiningforum.com/threads/when-in-doubt-cement-it-out.30236/
https://goldrefiningforum.com/threads/when-in-doubt-cement-it-out.30236/
Using acids on raw ore can liberate toxic metals and minerals as gasses that masks and respirators have difficulty stopping. Arsenic is but one example.
Have fun with that.
Time for more coffee.
- Joined
- Mar 19, 2021
- Messages
- 86
In the beginning, I never understood the "harsh" replies around here and the constant push to read, study, and study some more...
Unfortunately, my infancy in this hobby was literally an experiment in itself as I had only the most basic knowledge. Somehow I was successful at retrieving my PM's, but I *CRINGE* to this very day, several years later, about the methods I employed and my (naive) disregard for my health, safe recovery & refining. It has been several years of study and experimentation and I am STILL dialing in my lab, and my methods, before going full bore. Now I see how often this forum is called upon to "fix" the errors of people stumbling in here without a clue as to how dangerous it all can be, and why the obvious impatience of some members when it happens.
Didn't mean to bug you, but I love the sardonic quip, "Have fun with that."
Ad8chd
Member
I read it after responding to people. Everyone was very cool getting right back to me so I gave the same courtesy. I have a chemistry (not professional, minimal training fair amount of experience) and have run many replacement reactions, mostly halogens but same idea. That and someone mentioned boiling to reduce the volume of my solution, which normally results in a thick sludge, so I was thinking maybe that was what was meant.
Ad8chd
Member
You don’t work under a fume hood? at least outdoors? OK inside, but with a fan blowing? didn’t Covid teach you enough about masks and their ineffectiveness? OK that last bit I was just busting balls…
I appreciate your answer, and your knowledge, and the fact that you shared it with me.
Except for the last part where you got a little snarky. I’ve never done this before, I took the initiative to sign up for your forum, and do some reading and try to learn some stuff, you don’t gotta be a **** about it dude. Like you never tried to do something new and did it wrong at first time
Edited by moderator to remove profanities.
Last edited by a moderator:
Drop the attitude a couple notches please, he is looking out for your health and well beeing and as a semi trained chemist you should know better!
And next, we do not accept profanities in here so I will edit it out!!!
There are no masks or filters that will remove all or even suffient amounts of NOx and other nasties from the reactions that may happen with acids and ores.
If you see the major operators in the industry use a process it will be the one that makes economical sense.
AR is not one of the processes used on ores, it may however be used on some concentrates.
So taking this into account and follow this logic I assume you will end up with another process.
Thats a great chart to know because if something goes wrong with your solution you can get your metals to drop/cement out.
Do it again with the knowledge you acquire and it gets easier to deal with.
The boiling down part is slow but works well if needed. Actually helps in reduction of volume of waste liquid.
The point of boiling down to, not to a heavy sludge but to the point when the liquid just thickens up a bit slightly syrup like,
At this point you add some HCL and you can see the nitrogen gases coming out of solution when you have used too much nitric acid.
The sulfamic acid crystals work much quicker, we wrote about earlier.
You have to deal with waste. Healthy environment. Waste management is an important issue.
Some reading and soon this becomes easy to deal with.
Its possible some waste is reuseable at times.
Health and safety go hand in hand, it doesn't take much gas/fume to create issues and worst case loss of life or health.
Even outdoors, sometimes there is no breeze direction. Or direction of air movement changes.
A large fan can help at times.
In your case burning and roasting ore's there are unknown's of what is in there and one heavy wiff of it can poison or kill a person.
A person needs to be reminded of this constantly.
Kindly we are looking out for each other.
The words may not appear in a kindly manner, snarl, snip, chew, spit, however the meaning is for yours and others well being.
Its fairly easy to see how a person reacts to suggestions, attitude, how you react.
In the end its all good information. Best to take it in to better you in the long run. Don't make a short time of it.
Attitude is important, are you able to see the positive side of what is said and not take it as a negative statement.
This can go on and on.
Bottom line we look out for each other and as time goes on good methods develope that we all want to see.
The more you read you see these professional members, applied mineral and chemical science, equations, developed methods, patents, over my head but I am very interested.
We are lucky to be a member here at GRF.
We do not boil a solution to reduce the volume. We heat it to the point that the volume reduces without wasting the metals in solution to the fine mists that come with boiling. Try using a coffee filter over your solution while heating it. This will give you a test paper that you can use stannous chloride on to see when your gold is being lost to evaporating to rapidly. A negative test would be the point to stop increasing your heat and begin saving those losses.
Ad8chd
Member
You guys platform doesn’t agree well with iPhones. This page keeps reloading and erasing everything that I typed. It’s incredibly frustrating.
As far as my attitude goes, could you really call attitude when your buddy came to me all wild first? I’m not gonna ask you to admonish him, because I did in my previous post.
Yeah dude, I know that masks aren’t gonna keep any sort of acids (especially in gaseous form)out of my system, I was being sarcastic. I work outdoors under a fume hood, and I get rid of my waist by giving it to my buddy who works in an industrial refinery, they have the proper channels to dispose of the waste properly.
I didn’t use my AR on straight orE, If you read my original post or one of my responses, maybe I just use it on all of my pyrite from all of my gold panning. Not all of my pyrite just the pyrite it looked wonky and was way heavier than all the other pyrite
You know I’m in my early 40s, so I was a kid in the 90s when the Internet like really came out or whatever and anytime I ever try to learn how to do something I don’t know how to do I go on forums. And it’s funny because it’s been this way since the 90s, you get on these forums and there’s all these guys that are quasi experts at whatever the forum is about and they think that makes them better than other people. it does not. I doubt anybody’s gonna answer this because I’m talking crazy right now to you guys, but for the time being none of this matters because when I was trying to reduce the volume of my solution, I had it on my hot plate on a Pyrex cake pan and the dumb thing shattered. So that’s that I don’t even know if this is gold but I put a piece of copper in there. I’m gonna put a picture of it up and there’s a couple little things that are like stuck in it and if you look at it with a magnifying glass, it looks like they’re growing out of it. I was wondering if that was maybe gold I didn’t fill that box but I had the piece of copper in there and I had a magnetic stir bar keeping the solution in motion. And before anybody says anything it was ceramic coated. so, I’m on my way to the thrift store. I’m gonna try to find a book about processing gold and metallurgy maybe. Here’s my little copper thing for whoever said that I wasn’t reading or paying attention. Also, I feel like that process would go way quicker if you had like some powdered copper metal. Your surface area is everything.
As far as my attitude goes, could you really call attitude when your buddy came to me all wild first? I’m not gonna ask you to admonish him, because I did in my previous post.
Yeah dude, I know that masks aren’t gonna keep any sort of acids (especially in gaseous form)out of my system, I was being sarcastic. I work outdoors under a fume hood, and I get rid of my waist by giving it to my buddy who works in an industrial refinery, they have the proper channels to dispose of the waste properly.
I didn’t use my AR on straight orE, If you read my original post or one of my responses, maybe I just use it on all of my pyrite from all of my gold panning. Not all of my pyrite just the pyrite it looked wonky and was way heavier than all the other pyrite
You know I’m in my early 40s, so I was a kid in the 90s when the Internet like really came out or whatever and anytime I ever try to learn how to do something I don’t know how to do I go on forums. And it’s funny because it’s been this way since the 90s, you get on these forums and there’s all these guys that are quasi experts at whatever the forum is about and they think that makes them better than other people. it does not. I doubt anybody’s gonna answer this because I’m talking crazy right now to you guys, but for the time being none of this matters because when I was trying to reduce the volume of my solution, I had it on my hot plate on a Pyrex cake pan and the dumb thing shattered. So that’s that I don’t even know if this is gold but I put a piece of copper in there. I’m gonna put a picture of it up and there’s a couple little things that are like stuck in it and if you look at it with a magnifying glass, it looks like they’re growing out of it. I was wondering if that was maybe gold I didn’t fill that box but I had the piece of copper in there and I had a magnetic stir bar keeping the solution in motion. And before anybody says anything it was ceramic coated. so, I’m on my way to the thrift store. I’m gonna try to find a book about processing gold and metallurgy maybe. Here’s my little copper thing for whoever said that I wasn’t reading or paying attention. Also, I feel like that process would go way quicker if you had like some powdered copper metal. Your surface area is everything.
Attachments
The book is Hokes book in the links you got.
The cementing is all in the cement thread you also got the link for.
And as you so direly have learned, always use a catch pan/vessel.
Pyrocerams are the gold standard here, but it is not always easy to find.
Edit to add:
Pyrite need to be roasted to release the Gold
You are the first I have heard complaining about Iphone compability issues, so it may be something with your service provider or local settings.
Actually, I no longer recover nor refine precious metals. Previous to moving to Central Texas, and my wife’s dream home, a few members were given ores, concentrates, chemicals, glassware, tools, and lab equipment, including fume hood.
Also, I have no clue how well your shop is set up, and do not care to.
When you allude to doing something stupid, such as treating your rocks with acids, I will chime in. I will be blunt, sardonic, rude, curmudgeonly, and a host of other adjectives that you may take as “wild”.
A fume hood may, if both constructed and used properly, protect the interior of your work space. It will not protect living things near your workspace unless you have taken precautions to prevent toxic fumes, gasses, suspended particulate, etc, from affecting areas near the exhaust.
Additionally, every few years we get one or two people who insist on treating their ores with acids, regardless of precautions. In nearly every case, those individuals are no longer heard from, although their membership here remains active. Fill in the blanks however you wish.
Time for more coffee.
Ad8chd
Member
Exactly you got no idea how my lab is set up but you’re talking to me like you do. and if you don’t care too, why you acting like you do? And of course pyrite has to be roasted I roast all my rocks before I crush them and then I dumped vinegar on them when they’re super hot wearing eye protection, it sounds stupid but I think it makes themway easier to break And I know what this is it look at the pictures I just posted like hours ago the copper I pulled out.
Again, do you have an assay?
There may be Gold, Stannous will confirm this.
But there are a lot of other elements and some of them might not play good with life.
How are you scrubbing the gases from your hood?
As Galenrog indicated, we do not pamper bruised feelings in here.
Nor does chemistry.
I'm from a culture that do not have institutonal politness in the language, so if I seem blunt it is a product of my culture, not an attempt to be rude.
Martijn
Well-known member
AR will dissolve gold from rocks.
And if you're lucky there are no nasty substances in the rocks that can create instantly deadly gases.
YOU WERE LUCKY!
You could also have been dead.
New members like to copy-paste you tube video's that they've watched once, and not read a lot, that's why we discourage doing risky tasks. Mercury, cyanide, and much more nasty stuff can be found in rocks that have valuable minerals in them .
Martijn
Well-known member
Imagine those that don't even make it to this forum to get some education and be humble and thank full for all the harsh advice they're given for free, saving their lives.
