Can this be substituted for HCL ?

[jamaicanyute]

Hi All,

I usually use 30% HCL from Chemical Supply Co. but they are all out, went to the hardware and found the following, could it be used as a substitute ?

 

[goldsilverpro]

That 2nd ingredient is probably an inhibitor which inhibits the attack on metals and cuts down on the fumes. Also, it doesn't list the percentage of HCl and I would expect it to be lower, maybe a lot lower, than normal muriatic. All in all, I wouldn't use it. Hardware stores, paint stores, pool supplies, etc., should carry muriatic acid which is normally about 31% HCl. Don't buy "safer" muriatic because it contains inhibitors.

 

[jamaicanyute]

Thanks for the info, I was planning on using it as a wash/boil for my precipitated gold. The powder is coming out of a Nitric wash. Its the second Nitric so it should be pretty clean gold, I kinda want to melt it up today, what do you think. I usually AR and drop with SMB, then boil in HCL and then melt. Any suggestions ?

 

[Palladium]

Why would you wash your powder with nitric? This will redissolve your gold and you will lose some.

 

[jamaicanyute]

This batch was of gold came from approx. 1200 grams of GF which i kinda didnt do properly to begin with. I incinerated GF, then with 50/50 Nitric,distill water, it looked like all the base metals had dissolved but on addition of HCL i could tell there was NOT full dissolution of base metals because the AR turned green, i decided to complete AR eventhough i knew i was dissolving base metals along with gold foils, I ended up with a very over pregnant solution and metals were dropping out all by themselves. so i figured i could filter the whole batch and then Nitric the powders to get rid of anything thats not gold, and the picture is wat i have left. i still have approx 15 litres of AR which i believe contain gold , i am currently trying to evap out free nitric in the AR, so that i can add SMB. I have created a lot of work for myself.

 

[Palladium]

I hope you didn't throw that nitric water out. Use it for you next batch of ar. Never add nitric acid to something that contains or did contain a chloride. Some of you gold is in it! Test it with stannous chloride.