Dilute or not to Dilute

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Anonymous

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Lazersteve, your videos have been very informational, but I have one problem. I cant watch any of them at home and the ones I have seen I watched at work, but now they blocked ALL websites on work computers.

So where my problem begins is I have my cell built. I've deplated a few pounds of terminals and have a thick black paste in my dish. Now I'm just wondering my next step. Am I to dilute my acid down then filter it, or am it to do someother step.

I have atleast 14 pounds of material to work with, so any info you can give me will be very valueable.
 
Because my history does not include running a stripping cell, I hesitate to respond in Steve's place-----but I've refined one hell of a lot of gold in my years, and I have a procedure I'd recommend.

What I'd do is get all that black sludge in a filter to extract the residual moisture, then on to a pan (with the filter paper included), where it would be incinerated to a dull redness, being careful to not melt any of it. I would then give it a hard boil in dilute nitric acid, incinerate again, then give it a boil in HCl and water. At that point, I'd dissolve the remains, filter and then precipitate the gold, using the precipitant of your choosing. By following the process I outlined, you'd remove all traces of not only base metals, but other troublesome compounds, leaving behind almost pure gold. What a nice way to achieve your end goal of pure gold!

Assuming you'd be interested in the process I outlined, it stands to reason that you'd to appropriate water rinses (tap water is fine to use) after each of the acid washes, and you'd test your solutions for dissolved values before discarding them. The HCl wash is important for more than one reason, not the least of which is the ease of filtration of the gold chloride solution, so it should not be avoided.

Harold

edit: removed one word that made no sense.
 
jinx,
save your cell by filtering your sludge. pour off as much of your cell into a hard plastic container without pouring your sludge. does that make sense? use a filter to catch any loose particles. i think steve said he uses five regular coffee filters. when you have the majority of your cell transfered, add distilled water, ( i spose you can use lukewarm tap water) to your dish, now diluting into a seperate hard plastic jug, with filter paper to catch particles and sludge. once you are sure you have captured all of your sludge and hopefully gold, you can dry the sludge and then melt powder in a melting dish. add flux either before or durring melting to keep gold from sticking to dish. you can pour diluted cell down drain. excellent preventative for clogs!
refine by aqua regia or, if you happen to have one laying around, a super hot, inductive furnace.
cheers!
nice emotiffe' by the way. ( avatar)
 
Rag and Bone said:
Calgold
Are you sure the cell liquid can go down the drain?
Doesn't it contain heavy metals?
Click to expand...

Readers would be wise to ignore his post. Another of the mistakes he makes is recommending melting the gold prior to dissolution. It serves no useful purpose, and complicates the process. Gold that is finely divided, as is the black material that comes from a stripping cell, is perfect for pretreatment as I've outlined, and is readily dissolved once treated. Neither of those are true of melted gold. There is no reason to complicate what should be a simple procedure, especially when a suggested operation is counterproductive, as this one is.

Harold
 
Well Harold I'm printing that out. I'll have to try that with atleast one of the batches. By the way it looks so far I'll be running the cell full atleast 4-5 times. So I should have some room for trial and error just hoping the first few errors arent costful ones.
 
As long as you don't discard anything without first testing with stannous chloride, it's pretty hard to lose the values. If you get in a jam, stop what you're doing and ask questions. There are guys on this board that are well experienced in stripping (I'm not one of them), and others that have years of refining behind them (I'm one of them). There's not much you can do that we can't undo----but you have to be specific when detailing what you've done. Leaving out information can yield poor responses.

Remember, too-----values are known to precipitate when you don't expect them to do so. Any solids you filter out should be held until you are satisfied you have recovered all of your values. There are times when processing solids from filtration will yield a great deal that might otherwise have been discarded. My policy was to incinerate all of my solid wastes, which were later processed in a furnace for recovery of values. Shocking, the amount I had put away for retirement by that process.

Luck with the new venture!

Harold
 
harold,
again?
i thought we agreed to disagree. if you dont have anything nice to say dont say it. how about that? jeez, old man youre really starting to get on my nerves.
 
calgoldrecyclers said:
harold,
again?
i thought we agreed to disagree. if you dont have anything nice to say dont say it. how about that? jeez, old man youre really starting to get on my nerves.
Click to expand...

No, we made no such agreement, and if you want to discuss getting on nerves, you're driving me to the brink with your posts that are misleading and often harmful.

You, sir, are providing an injustice to readers that may not understand the difference. Someone should speak up. I'll do that and see that your ill-advised suggestions do not go unchallenged.

There are times when members of a group should talk, and there are times when they should read. You are not in the first category, judging from your posts.

Some folks refer to such people as posting whores----folks that love to see their name in print---even when they have nothing useful to contribute. Is that you?

You have clearly shown you don't understand the methods of refining---and are dispensing information that is not in the best interest of anyone. It might pay you to do some reading, and to buy a book or two that will provide much needed insight on the ways of refining, so you can offer help instead of hindrance.

Mean time----I'm watching you like a hawk. Get used to it.

Harold
 
calgoldrecyclers said:
the cell can go down the drain after dilution. the heavy metals, if there were any, would have been trapped in the filter.
Click to expand...
No, they wouldn't.

Have you considered copper sulfate?

Call your local sewage disposal plant and tell them you're dumping sulfuric acid down your drain, and it's laced with copper. Be certain to leave your name and phone number. I'm sure they'd love to hear from you. Maybe even give you a few free meals and a place to stay while you adjusted your thinking.

Harold
 
calgoldrecyclers said:
why oh, why would there be copper sulfate in the cell?
please tell me that.
Click to expand...

Sulfuric acid will dissolve copper oxide. It does not dissolve elemental copper, which is why baskets can be made of such material. It's hard to eliminate the oxides, so I'd have a hard time believing your solution isn't the least bit blue. If I am wrong, I stand corrected.

Not only does copper sulfate kill the bacterial action that is relied upon to process (human) wastes, it also destroys the equipment by being precipitated from solution by dissolving anything it contacts that is made of iron (steel). Dumping solution from a stripping cell should be accomplished only after removing the copper.

Harold
 
Thank You Harold! If I may? The copper will need to cemented from the solution! Correct? It is not our land to violate, we are mearly borrowing it from future generations :cry:
 
draftinu said:
Thank You Harold! If I may? The copper will need to cemented from the solution! Correct? It is not our land to violate, we are mearly borrowing it from future generations :cry:
Click to expand...

That's the way I see it, and that's what I did before discharging my solutions. It's not a big deal-----you simply place the spent solutions in a bucket with scrap steel and allow the heavy metals to precipitate (cement out). When the job is done, the solution is relatively harmless. The process even consumes a lot of the free acid.

Harold
 

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