begin first gold recovery with salt/vinegar solution?

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Joined
Dec 10, 2020
Messages
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Hi there, this will be my first post on this forum and my first post about gold recovery.

My current knowledge about gold recovery consists of watching many videos on youtube (mostly sreetips) and my chemistry background in school/uni which has helped me understand most, if not all the reactions/substiutions/reactivity series knowledge (and what ever other chemistry mechanisms) that are needed for such a hobby.

So I've been collecting, depopulating and sorting different boards, pins and whatever else is on boards. And I am approaching my first attempt at recovering all the gold plating from the various parts I've got. I was getting ready to get my hands on some HCl, nitric acid (or bleach), H2O2, stannous choride, SMB and pH testing paper for recovery. However, I recently discovered a far simpler and cheaper (albeit lengthier) way to seperate gold using a salt and vinegar solution.

My questions are:
1. Which metals can be dissolved by a salt and vinegar solution? (does concentration and temperature make any more/less dissolvable? If so, at what temperatures and which metals are affected?) (google didn't provide much help through my own quick research)

2. Will a salt and vinegar solution completely seperate the gold from all the unwanted metals (I assume no PMGs will be on bare motherboards and pins, if yes, please explain which parts may contain PMGs) (i.e. will the gold from this step be contaminated much?)

3. Should I start off with a salt and vinegar solution to seperate the gold from the computer parts (as I will need a few liters to cover all the scrap I have) and then refine whats left with a much smaller amount of bleach/HCl/H2O2 or aqua regia solution followed by a SMB precipitation?

4. Have I missed any important steps for gold recovery with such methods (I'm aware of safety precautions and a stannous test)?

I'm looking to make this straight forward (with simple steps so that i can go from scrap computer parts to a gold bead without many mess ups) and cheap (within reason), as I just want to have a go with such a hobby (not looking to profit from my recovery, but I don't want to spend unnecessary amounts on this). I may also film all the steps and make a short/simple video that others can follow if all goes well on my end!

Thanks to anyone that can help me kick start my little operation!
 
Welcome to the forum.
I will make one point only, why would you want to make a very very weak HCl which will probably take a very very long time to dissolve the base metals when the same can be done in days or weeks using proper HCl ?
If you do decide to follow your own route let’s us know in a few months how things are progressing.
 
I thought using salt and vinegar would only take a couple weeks. I posted these questions to check whether the salt and vinegar method is at all viable. So if using HCl to disolve base metals is far easier i will go down that route. Thanks!
 
Way, way, way far easier and faster. Most likely less waste since I assume you would have been using store bought vinegar @ 5% acetic acid. In the long run you will be far better served to just stick with the standard approach that we use here for each process as that will maximize your chance at success.
 
Salt and vinegar is viable.

What it is NOT is faster, cheaper, easier and certainly not safer.

Search the forum for AP, acid peroxide, copper II chloride and CuCl2. These are various names for the same chemical composition of a good place for beginners to learn gold recovery from a wide variety of electronic parts. Get the recovery down pretty good and then you can move on to refining.
 
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