Can I mix these?

[necromancer]

Just a hair over 1.5 grams per milliliter of 70% nitric acid

thank you, wanted to compare it to urea, big difference !!

math still works best in avoiding free nitric.

 

[Anonymous]

Urea? Eww horrid stuff - change to Sulfamic if you can get it. MUCH less hassle.

 

[4metals]

Math works best on the scale you are doing it, when you process large lots, it is more tedious to shuffle back and forth between enough acid and too much. That's why a lot of refiners use urea. It is easy. Personally I prefer sulfamic acid.

 

[necromancer]

i have never used sulfamic acid or urea, just math. and for processing $100,000 worth of gold at one time. i'm not there yet

its just that i know more farmers then lab technitions 8)

 

[Justincase]

Only just tried sulfamic acid and very helpful.
I start with math's well basic arithmetic as I am none to bright.
All ways have some left over nitric as it helps to digest the material.
Then use Harold_V's trick of using a button to use up the excess Nitric acid.
After filtering I always have quite a lot of fluid so it is good to evaporate down any way.
Then when I am ready the sulfamic acid was a very nice way to make sure the Gold chloride solution was nitric free and ready for its last filter.
Thanks for the tip chaps it was a winner. :lol:

 

[bswartzwelder]

OK, here goes the thinking process for now.

1. Do not mix the powders of different colors. It will only contaminate the more pure stuff with the less pure stuff. Makes sense.

2. Do I wash or boil the black powders from the electrolytic cell in HCL before I re refine them?

3. Re refine everything. Since I am dealing with powders, use either AR or AC. AR may cause problems with excess Nitric but this can be corrected by precipitating with Sulfamic Acid. AC does not introduce Nitric, so it could be dropped with Copperas, SMB, or Oxalic Acid.

4. Do the final washes by boiling three times in HCl and distilled water. HCL then water, then HCL, then water, then HCl, then water works as well as Harold's method.

5. Finally, the big day has arrived. Melt and pour into the mold of your choice. I hope this sounds like I'm one the right track.

I had a 1 ounce man made gold nugget (22 k) which I have been dissolving in my electrolytic cell. Once it is dissolved, I still have some plated cell phone parts to drop into the cell. The yellow colored powders came from dissolving some foils in poorman's AR, killing excess nitric (there was a lot) then dropping with SMB.

Over the years I have been reading the forum, I have amassed the chemicals needed. I have H2SO4, HNO3, HCl, Sulfamic Acid, SMB, Oxalic acid, and Copperas. I have many pounds of mercury which I plan to turn in the next time our landfill has an "open chemical" day. Thanks to all.

 

[solar_plasma]

AC does not introduce Nitric, so it could be dropped with Copperas, SMB, or Oxalic Acid.

Also the chlorine has to be driven off. The difference is, chlorine is easily driven off by heating (lower solubility at higher temps) and sunlight (I think it accelerates the conversion from highly reactive Cl_nasc to less reactive Cl₂), if available. Any reducer will have a hard time in an excess of oxidizer.

 

[jason_recliner]

3. Re refine everything. Since I am dealing with powders, use either AR or AC. AR may cause problems with excess Nitric but this can be corrected by precipitating with Sulfamic Acid. AC does not introduce Nitric, so it could be dropped with Copperas, SMB, or Oxalic Acid.

3.5: Incinerate here, if you've been using AR. Otherwise the HCl will conspire with any remnant nitrate to make a little new AR, which redissolves some of your gold.

4. Do the final washes by boiling three times in HCl and distilled water. HCL then water, then HCL, then water, then HCl, then water works as well as Harold's method.

 

[Harold_V]

4. Do the final washes by boiling three times in HCl and distilled water. HCL then water, then HCL, then water, then HCl, then water works as well as Harold's method.

Maybe. Maybe not. Depends on what contaminants are present. If you happen to have traces of silver chloride in the gold, overlooking the ammonium hydroxide wash isn't in your best interest, as it may not be eliminated. Even if there is no silver, there's benefit by doing the ammonia wash.

For the record, silver tends to be the chief contaminant in gold, assuming it comes from jewelry, or has been inquarted. Plated stuff? Probably not.

Harold

 

[Clneal2003]

Wash Idea. Hoke mentions that one can wash with sulfuric acid... Add a few drops to cold water. I haven't seen anyone mention this in a good wash cycle. Has anyone tried it? I'm getting decent results without it but I'm wondering if it makes any difference. I know the ammonia wash, when done safely , makes my batch come out shades lighter.

 

[Geo]

Wash Idea. Hoke mentions that one can wash with sulfuric acid... Add a few drops to cold water. I haven't seen anyone mention this in a good wash cycle. Has anyone tried it? I'm getting decent results without it but I'm wondering if it makes any difference. I know the ammonia wash, when done safely , makes my batch come out shades lighter.

The washes being discussed are of the refined powder. Some do and most should do a sulfuric wash to remove borax from the melted gold.

 

[butcher]

With lead a likely possible contaminate of the powders, especially when dealing with electronic scrap, or even the possible solder on some karat gold, or jewelry, my concern would be to the possibility of converting any lead chloride, which would be soluble in Hot water to an insoluble lead sulfate.

In the washing procedure of the gold powders (we normally deal with), I do not see much benefit in adding sulfuric acid to the wash cycle normally suggested ((Harold’s method), and depending what portion of the wash cycle or sequence, if you did add it, it could actually do more harm than good, making it harder to remove the lead portion of contaminant.

 

[nickvc]

Bert I fully expect an excellent outcome from this next step.
A point to remember is that with bigger quantities you can get a more concentrated solution which in my experience gives a cleaner and faster precipitation, allows for better control of the chemicals and as a bonus reduces the percentage loss overall.

 

[richoc]

Take that 22k man made nugget and crush it out in a smother faced vice.
Then hammer it you as thin as you can get it.
Then it will process in your sulfiric cell way faster, surface area contact to the acid is key.
I do karat gold jewelry in my cell all the time.

 

[g_axelsson]

Take that 22k man made nugget and crush it out in a smother faced vice.
Then hammer it you as thin as you can get it.
Then it will process in your sulfuric cell way faster, surface area contact to the acid is key.
I do karat gold jewelry in my cell all the time.

What good does it make to run carat gold in the sulfuric cell?
If I understand it right, the cell would break it down into a black mud of gold and then the base metal would fall off like the anode slime in a copper plant, mixing with the gold mud. The end result would be a fine mud instead of a solid object. The gold and copper mud would still be mixed with concentrated sulfuric acid.

To me it seems like going straight to AR would be both faster and simpler.

If you don't want to dissolve the gold in AR but just want to wash the mud to get rid of base metals and then melt, in that case inquartation would be my choice.

Göran

 

[richoc]

This was a tip to a earlyer poster on this subject.
He stated he keeps putting a 22K man made nugget in his cell.
Thought it would reply with him in mind.

Most do not not even scrape the surface on what can be done in the cell.

All your gold recoverd or refined can be mixed for melting.
I like to keep batches apart so I know recoveries.
Mix your cake with your mud ,hit it with AR or AC and drop it , do your washes refining it as much as you wish before melt.

 

[richoc]

I can take a 14K mans weding shackle in to Goo in like 10 minutes.
Let cool, harvest Goo, mix in 5x distilled water,repeat untill water is clear.
The blue in the water is the copper such will stay in solution until you wish to recover it.
Black Goo now has almost no copper.
Ready to ether refine one more step or dry and melt .

Lowest cost way to process to a broken down state.

 

[Anonymous]

I can take a 14K mans weding shackle in to Goo in like 10 minutes.
Let cool, harvest Goo, mix in 5x distilled water,repeat untill water is clear.
The blue in the water is the copper such will stay in solution until you wish to recover it.
Black Goo now has almost no copper.
Ready to ether refine one more step or dry and melt .

Lowest cost way to process to a broken down state.

That's really confusing, can you word that in a way that someone as uneducated as me can understand properly because I obviously missed some detail there.

Jon

 

[richoc]

Spaceships after years of reading books picking guys brains I think I have found the lest expensive way to do refining of any kind of scrap gold I have found.
There are dangers and issue like all methods.
Once the gold is removed into the blrack Goo,itz is very easy to refine from that point.
At this point you need very little amounts of chems. to do the jobs to finish the recover or refining of the gold.

 

[richoc]

Goran.

Acid stays in the cell it is a very small amuont that transfers in the mud.
What acid there is burns up in the exothermic reaction of the first rinse.
Copper comes out in distilled water silver comes out in the fillering and settling.
the next step for the mud uses very little chemicals.
Because you only treat the mud the gold.
Then acid bleach or aquatic regiea process.
And then drop your gold cake at 3-9'S on the first melt.

Inquartation is a medevil times way of doing it.
Works
But takes forever needs bunch of silver , Costs a lot in fuel.

But we use the way we like and will.not change, human nature.