Can anyone explain this very strange precipitation?

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spaceships said:
You can get the same type of drop with SMB too. I've done it a few times.
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Really? What did you do differently in order to get smb to drop shiny golden particles instead of the normal matte powder?
 
I have to be completely honest and say that it's always been from HCl/Cl and not from AR.

It's usually been from second refine and when dropping from a hot solution instead of a cold one. Other than that I am afraid that I am not chemist enough to be able to give you a proper answer.

Jon
 
spaceships said:
I have to be completely honest and say that it's always been from HCl/Cl and not from AR.

It's usually been from second refine and when dropping from a hot solution instead of a cold one. Other than that I am afraid that I am not chemist enough to be able to give you a proper answer.

Jon
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Doesn't matter how it is dissolved. On only a VERY few number of times I experienced the same thing, and I used nothing but AR. I also precipitated with SO2 from a cylinder for the vast majority of my refining experiences. Prior to that, I used ferrous sulfate, but never had the same experience with that precipitant.

I typically precipitated from iced solutions, quite heavily concentrated, so temperature doesn't appear to be a controlling factor. Mine happened when cold, while you appear to have had a similar experience with a hot solution. The only thing we may have had in common was, as I recall, the few experiences I had all came with a second refining, not from the first one.

All I can say is having gold precipitate that way was one of the things that was mesmerizing.

Harold

edit:
One of the things I can report is that the gold didn't precipitate immediately, as was normally the case. Instead, the solution absorbed the SO2 and displayed a paling of color, then it would suddenly flash to minute shiny particles of gold in suspension, much like looking at bronze paint.
 
Thank you both for the additional info. I think it's very mysterious how gold can precipitate so differently on rare occasions even though the same usual chemical protocols are followed. It has to be some unforeseen environmental variable causing it. Maybe a difference in the number of solvated electrons present. I don't know, but I would like to find out so we can replicate it at will.

So do you think the golden particles are forming as crystals, or as amorphous metallic agglomerations?
 
Indications are, at least in my example, that crystals were formed.

Harold
 
Thanks Harold. Good to get the consistencies and discrepancies out there. So the only thing we had in common on our drops was the second refine. Well that's a start I guess.

So effectively temperature, and solution (AR or HCl) don't have an effect. I can add another if you like? My solutions were not heavily concentrated so that contrast takes that one out of the picture too.

I did hear someone once making reference to the acidity of the solution but I have no idea whether that is a factor, but another thing I would agree upon Harold is that that every time it happened to me it precipitated exactly as you said it did. Not immediately, and yes then suddenly. Almost in the blink of an eye - does that fit with your experience?

Jon
 
I've also noticed that everyone that reports having this happen used H2SO4 somewhere in the process. I'm not sure that it has anything to do with it though as most everyone uses it before precipitating gold.
 
Irons made a post a few months ago in the Iron(II) chloride to Iron(II) sulfate thread that caught my interest. It may provide a bit of insight.

As Irons quoted, "From concentrated solutions the metal often separates in lustrous laminae. A soft, yellow gold sponge is produced by addition of a small proportion of oxalic acid and a large proportion of potassium carbonate to a concentrated solution, the resulting mixture being then boiled with more oxalic acid."

I haven't been able to experiment with it yet, but it's interesting.

Dave
 
Like Harold, once in awhile, when dropping gold I got this beautiful display of bright shiny gold particles floating around in these swirling patterns. I never could figure out what I did different. It was like it popped up at random.

As far as the video is concerned, it appears to be total BS. It doesn't look to me like gold at all. If anything, it looks more like silver. Actually though, it looks like something worthless made to move a bit with a little heat.

One of these days I'll tell you about the 2 years I spent working with a guy, all day, every day, that fancied himself as an alchemist. If you asked him what he was, he would say an alchemist.
 
FrugalRefiner said:
Irons made a post a few months ago in the Iron(II) chloride to Iron(II) sulfate thread that caught my interest. It may provide a bit of insight.
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Great info! Thanks for adding it to the thread. I wonder if the potassium carbonate works due to raising the pH, or if the molecular components are the key.



goldsilverpro said:
As far as the video is concerned, it appears to be total BS. It doesn't look to me like gold at all. If anything, it looks more like silver. Actually though, it looks like something worthless made to move a bit with a little heat.
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You really think those golden particles look more like silver than gold? I guess you are referring to what is called "allotropic silver", which can have a golden color. Or are you leaning towards the idea of it not being a precipitation at all, but just particles thrown into a solution? That's what I thought at first, but it sure looks like the particles are growing near the surface before settling. It would probably be easier to tell what's happening if we could watch the video at high speed. But I'm not sure how to do that with a youtube video.

goldsilverpro said:
One of these days I'll tell you about the 2 years I spent working with a guy, all day, every day, that fancied himself as an alchemist. If you asked him what he was, he would say an alchemist.
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Ha! How on earth did you last so long with such a partner? What's the craziest thing he ever said to you?....other than "I'm an Alchemist".
 
black sands said:
Or are you leaning towards the idea of it not being a precipitation at all, but just particles thrown into a solution? That's what I thought at first, but it sure looks like the particles are growing near the surface before settling.
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That was also my first thought. The beaker sides are very conveniently caked with opaque gunk and I would not be even mildly surprised if there were gold flakes dumped onto the surface.
 
If it's a fake, someone really put some effort into it to stump so many people that have seen first hand precipitations. The gold color could come from the red liquid. Silver foils would reflect the same light from that color solution. How many silver colored metals come out of solution shiny?
 
Hi friends!
It was durring a time when I had so much gold bearing stuff comming in and was recovering and refining day and night (Not real large batches) also, I was doing all the material that I had stockpiled. I have no notes from that short time so, I recalling from memory.
I had one drop from an HCl/Cl disolution that produced the familiar tan gold powder but it was speckeled with a lot of pretty good sized gold crystals mixed in the powder. The remarkable thing was that there was also extreamly small gold crystals that nearly covered the surface of the solution. When I was washing the powder i could tap the beaker to bring a lot of the metalic gold to one side of the beaker. Like panning.
I remember that that perticular batch was in a beaker that had some scratches on the inside that would always collect gold powder, this time the scratches had gold powder and many gold crystals in them.
I woundered at the time if the scratched had seeded the growth of the metalic gold.
artart47
 
Geo said:
I've also noticed that everyone that reports having this happen used H2SO4 somewhere in the process. I'm not sure that it has anything to do with it though as most everyone uses it before precipitating gold.
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Not me mate. I have never used H2SO4 in the processes that resulted in this effect.
 
The term, allotropic silver, is one of those BS alchemy terms that in the real world are meaningless. The only way to change the color of metallic silver throughout is to alloy another metal with it.
 
Thanks for the additional info artart47.


Geo said:
If it's a fake, someone really put some effort into it to stump so many people that have seen first hand precipitations.
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I agree. This is why I think it is a precipitation. If it wasn't, I think it would be more obvious to the experienced members here.


goldsilverpro said:
The term, allotropic silver, is one of those BS alchemy terms that in the real world are meaningless. The only way to change the color of metallic silver throughout is to alloy another metal with it.
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It looks like these scientists didn't have any problem replicating it.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0047720673900058

The discoverer (M. Carey Lea) was an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences. I wouldn't call him an alchemical BS artist.
 
http://www.chemistryexplained.com/A-Ar/Allotropes.html

Allotropes are different forms of the same element. Different bonding arrangements between atoms result in different structures with different chemical and physical properties. Allotropes occur only with certain elements, in Groups 13 through 16 in the Periodic Table.


B C N O
Al Si P S
Ga Ge As Se
In Sn Sb Te
Tl Pb Bi Po

Carbon can be in the form of a diamond, a different form of carbon, with different physical properties, I have never heard of silver doing any like that. I cannot find any evidence of silver forming an allotrope of silver. getting a different form of silversalt in a chemical reaction would not make it an allotrope.
 
You would think it's all BS considering we never hear about it nowadays. But then I find it strange that published scientists would discuss it in a serious manner in peer-reviewed journals, including numerous methods of preparation. Doesn't really matter, I'm not that interested in gold colored silver. :lol:
 

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