Chemical Grades

[Moo]

Hi newbie to refining so please take it easy on me

I have been reading hokes book and watching lazersteves videos and studying all I can with the time I have but have a few queries I hope someone can help me with.

As far as im aware you use the highest quality chemicals you can, however they appear to be so expensive for AR grade here In Australia, I am intending on processing some fingers using AP because its not as toxic as AR and seems to be the best and safest way to get started, however after that I will be trying AR method for some ceramic CPUS.

Its been 2 days since I bought this batch of stuff off ebay and hasnt been sent so im a little worried has anyone dealt with these people before?
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/150808056691?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/280872854220?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649

Would somebody be kind enough to give a guesstimate on the amount of gold you would expect from both batches? If processeed yourself. Math and me are enemies .

Are there chemicals that I can get away with not buying reeagent grade for like stannous chloride and HCL for example?
I was looking at stannous chloride for sale and it mentioned it had tin, SA060/5KG Stannous [Tin(II)] chloride dihydrate AR

is this the right stuff for gold testing?

Any help appreciated.
PS. I was doing some electroplating research and thought you guys might find it helpful to know you can turn an old pc power supply into a bench psu cant vouch for its safety though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2oSFpKh_Uw

 

[butcher]

Moo,

Welcome to the forum, sorry we do not take it easy on anyone here, but we all help each other and become good friends, you do not need to worry about high grade chemicals, here I buy my Hydrochloric acid from the hardware store Muriatic acid for cleaning concrete, (they are selling
Some brands that are supposed to be low fume or green or something like that I stay away from chemicals with additives), the 70% nitric acid (which for silver and base metals we dilute 50:50 with water but use full strength for aqua regia, I buy mine at the mining supply house, and I make nitric from nitrate fertilizers (distilling it if used for silver), read through the forum and you can find many ways we save money, make some of our own reagents, you can also find posts with lists of chemicals and some places we find them.

You already understand the importance of Hoke's book, I recommend you do the getting acquainted experiments, she teaches, they will help you tremendously when recovering and refining.

Stannous chloride can be made from plumbing solder, you want 95% tin 5% antimony, I smash a piece flat and dissolve in HCL heated, filter to storage bottle and add a little piece of un-reacted tin solder, read up on this and its use on the forum, also ferrous sulfate (copperas) can easily be made it will test for gold and precipitate gold.

For dissolving fine gold HCl (hydrochloric acid) and bleach (sodium hypochlorite) works well if dealing with fine gold from electronics I usually recommend its use especially for the new refiner, aqua regia can be difficult for the beginner (reading about its use and using it is usually harder than it sounds), you want to study it well before using it.

Sorry I do not normally keep track of yields from electronic scrap, but there are many posts discussion them, you may get clues from reading them.

It would be hard to make any profit from buying scrap on Ebay.

Laser Steve's web site is a good place to visit, he has some videos and tutorials, he also sell a few supply's very reasonably to help the members out, he has a search button there for the forum that I feel works better for finding information on the forum than the one here on the forum.

Do not forget to study the safety of these processes, and dealing with waste, we have a safety section.

I know your anxious to get started recovering and refining gold, but this can be a mistake as most people jump in before they have studied enough to really understand it, loosing gold wondering what happened, they read some and it sounded so easy, if they would take there time and study the processes better, and start out slowly at first they would be closer to melting pure gold, than they do by jumping in and dissolving everything in acid and wondering why it did not work, and begin asking questions, how do I get out of this mess.

I normally tell them start with Hokes experiments, also learning the testing solutions, then progress to an easy material like memory fingers, collecting the gold foils from the copper II chloride leaching process (also called acid peroxide or AP). Then using the HCl/bleach to dissolve and refine the foils, studying the processes well before they begin, taking small steps and work your self up to a run.

Do not dissolve gold into solution until you remove the base metals, keep things like tin and aluminum out of your solutions as much as possible, work safe and do not breath the fumes.

Hope this helps some.
Next time we talk I will not be so easy on you, :lol: You wont be so new.
Joking aside welcome to the best place to learn about these metals.

 

[Moo]

Thanks for the reply butcher, . I will take what you have said and apply it thankyou, Safety is definitely of a concern to me especially for my dogs safety.

So far I have a few fiber cpus I removed the pins from about 5 that I had laying around and have been using 28% HCL from hardware shop which definitly has fumes, I checked the msds and theres mention of =< 1% of titanium dioxide is this ok?. To remove the kovar from the pins etc just cold and left overnight, After trying twice I guess better add some heat to the mixture but Im not in a position to do so at the moment and really want to keep things such as fumes to a minimum etc living virtually next door to the neighbours etc and as I need to aqquire the correct equipment. Then ill hightail it out bush and camp for a week I guess. As for AR that scares the heck out of me and so far if I get to that stage my plan is to add the nitric to the HCL and run like hell. Watching the reaction and colour changes etc I think ill leave on the back burner till im more informed.

I know theres a lot I need to study yet and im hoping that will somewhat settle my nerves about these red death fumes and such. Believe me Im going to properly prepared when I do this, thanks for the welcome

 

[butcher]

Moo,
It sounds like your doing your homework, It is good to see a new member come here and do his homework like you have been doing, You have the makings for being a good refiner, (and this is what we here love to see), it makes it easier to help you get started and before long we are learning new things from you.

The pins from the fiber CPU's, in Copper II chloride solution (acid peroxide) will take some time to dissolve the Kovar, heating some does help but not absolutely necessary, the pins are small tubes with one end closed, this makes it hard for the leach to enter while gas bubbles are trying to escape the small opening of the tube, something about this chemistry you will learn is we need patience, reactions do not always occur as fast as we like, and sometimes they occur much faster than we would like.

Studying and taking your time gives you a chance to get equipped, setting up your lab and getting the supplies you need, here are a few things I have learned, you do not need to go out and buy a lot of equipment, most of my lab ware is kitchen glass ware canning jars and plastic buckets, kitchen appliances, I have bought some nice lab glass but so far have not used it much, Ebay is very easy to loose money on materials, there are something you can get cheaper, but for metals and scrap you had better understand how much it is worth before buying, people sell scrap there extremely high priced you can loose money fast learning, even karat and dental scrap very seldom sells at a price you could make much profit,. It is better to wait until you need something before you go out and buys it, including chemicals and supplies, as you proceed the lab also develops to fit your needs.

Electronic scrap takes a lot of work, and a lot of material to make much money processing it, kind of reminds me of mining, it seems to be a good hobby for the small timer but a lot of work for not much return, even if you get the E-scrap for free, and you just about have to get it free to make a profit, the higher grade of scrap will give better return if you can get it at a fair price, so keep your eyes open for sterling silver and karat gold, at fair prices, learn to test the scrap metals (search for pawn brokers Guide, pawn broker is a member so you should find it by searching his post's), Hoke’s also has a book on testing metals that is great, somewhere on the forum there were links to downloads,(Our friend Palladium has put a lot of these type of information and materials on scribed type download site), also learn to calculate the value of the metals, and what to spend to make some profit.

Learning all of this takes time and I do not think one person could learn it all, Heck I forget most of the things I study after time goes by, so in this field it can take years to gain a fair understanding of some of this, so you will need patience, and no need to be in a hurry to jump overboard, until you can swim, but once you begin to learn to swim it seems to get a little easier to study and find what you need to progress in your education and talents.

Keep up the good work and be safe, and keep that puppy healthy.

 

[JoeyJoystick]

Hi Butcher,

Sorry to bring this thread back to live again, but I am also struggling with the issue of chemical purity.

I am reading over and over again that we should not be taking short-cuts. Take your time, do it properly, repeat until you have achieved the required end result etc.. I have even seen several references to not using tap water in some situations because of the contamination of the tap water. (Salts if I am not mistaken, and with that, this is also the only chemical I have found a reference to regarding quality. The water that is). Often these recommendation are made by the experienced guys such as yourself. Having worked in QA/QC quite a bit I am not surprised and basically this is pretty much inline with how I think.

However, when it comes to the use/purchasing of chemicals it seems that everything goes. I have seen some prices of nitric acid not to mention the high purity chemicals from the likes of Sigma-Aldrich. Yes, they are expensive. But why is it ok to take shortcuts here, or am I wrong.

I am a Dutch citizen residing in Thailand. I am for now just looking into this and have not made up my mind as to whether I am actually going to do something with the gained knowledge. Been studying now for approx. 6 months, and for me the studying obviously includes getting prices so that I actually know where this is going financially.

The thing in Thailand is, Quality can be an issue here. It often is until you talk with suppliers in more detail and get directly involved. Now I found a manufacturer willing to sell nitric acid to me for what seems to be a reasonable price from what I gather here on the forum. A 35 litre drum for 560 Thai Baht (THB) this equals roughly (June 2019) $0.52USD per litre. Having said that, I do not know what the quality is of this.

So here the question for you Butcher; Can you please elaborate a bit more on the quality and/or purity of the used chemicals?

Joey

 

[butcher]

Joey, I am not the best one to give you an answer, but I will try:

Treated city water normally contains chlorides which will form insoluble silver chloride when dealing with silver.

Some products like acids may contain other products like inhibitors, surfactants, perfumes, foaming agents, coloring agents... Which may lower their effectiveness or in some cases cause some problems.

As for the use of, and spending your money on high-quality acids, normally we do not need to be very concerned, and we can use lower quality acids, including drain cleaners, plant fertilizers and so forth.

 

[g_axelsson]

Butcher is correct. Just want to clarify some of the quality issues...

The acids we use is for dissolving metals of all and often unknown composition. If you use high purity acid it will be low grade acid after just a few seconds in contact with your metals. If you are aiming for five nines gold or higher then trace amounts of iron (for example) in your acid might affect the result when rerefining really pure gold. But if the metal you dissolve has copper, iron, zinc, gold, lead, tin... in abundance then a few ppm or even percent of iron in your acid won't matter. We all precipitate gold from solution in one or another way more or less selective so the contaminants stays in our solution.

That is why cheap acids are the way to go.

Göran

 

[JoeyJoystick]

Thanks a lot for clarifying.

What do you think of the price here? is $0.52USD per litre a good price?

Joey

 

[Shark]

That is a very good price, wish I could get at that price.