If I Dissolve the platinum from a catalytic converter with aqua regia,
I have a large mess on my hands.
The problem is that I have to crush the converter and deal with a mess of finely crushed ceramics.
Could I just use some kind of gold pan, "blue bucket", or sifter?
It would take a lot of time and continual washing... it should work right?
With aqua regia I have dissolved 2 converters.
The first cooked for a long time and then i lost some of the dark orange liquid because I added water.
After that I accidentally dissolved a copper rod in the solution because I thought I could electrolyze out the platinum.
I must have had the current backwards...
I also think that i need to have platinum metal for an electrode to do this.
I was using carbon and copper electrodes.
I added salt, table salt i think...
Then I reversed the current, sucked up the copper and made a copper salt.
It looked like turquoise powder sitting at the bottom of the water.
( but that's a different experiment)
THE SECOND CONVERTER:
I crushed the whole converter with a mortar and pestle.
I poured AR all over it and dissolved the platinum.
It was a green mess that bubbled furiously.
I let it sit for hours.
I filtered the resulting mess in a funnel with a paper filter.
There was a layer of bone white ceramics
and there was a gray runny sludge on top of it.
Some orange liquid came through the filter,
(but I don't think all of the platinum was in there.)
The whole mess wouldn't filter,
and there was a lot of sludge still.
So I separated it.
The white ceramics and a thin layer of fine cement.
The top half was a bunch of orange liquid.
I added ammonium chloride to the orange liquid and I got a clay like residue in water.
I centerfuged this
and a white streak resulted in the test tube,
under the clay and water.
(two test tubes broke, the corks popped out while they were spinning)
I scaped out the white streak and cooked it
and got a really crappy looking rust
but the white streak burned onto the test tube wall.
I turned my attention to the gray cementy goo.
I put it in AR for a third test.
I got orange dark liquid on top again
I siphoned some of that off so I would not dilute the mixture.
I tested the liquid by cooking it down.
I cooked it once and got a precipitate.
The precipitate was really pretty and shiny and would float up and down in chunks while the brown liquid bubbled.
I felt like I was loosing some platinum because it might have not dissolved completely.
I stirred it with a magnet (creating a vortex)
And the pretty shiny chunks dissipated
I cooked it again and got dust.
still working....
Can magnet stirrers speed up the reaction? I tried that and it just made everything dissappear.
(How long does it take for the nitrogen to just wear out and evaporate from the solution?)
So From what I've read, I need to cook the catalytic converter/aqua regia mess, filter it through a stainless steel screen,
avoid adding more water and instead cook it while adding more chlorine and some ammonium chloride?
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Would it make you happy to have glow in the dark pee?
I have a large mess on my hands.
The problem is that I have to crush the converter and deal with a mess of finely crushed ceramics.
Could I just use some kind of gold pan, "blue bucket", or sifter?
It would take a lot of time and continual washing... it should work right?
With aqua regia I have dissolved 2 converters.
The first cooked for a long time and then i lost some of the dark orange liquid because I added water.
After that I accidentally dissolved a copper rod in the solution because I thought I could electrolyze out the platinum.
I must have had the current backwards...
I also think that i need to have platinum metal for an electrode to do this.
I was using carbon and copper electrodes.
I added salt, table salt i think...
Then I reversed the current, sucked up the copper and made a copper salt.
It looked like turquoise powder sitting at the bottom of the water.
( but that's a different experiment)
THE SECOND CONVERTER:
I crushed the whole converter with a mortar and pestle.
I poured AR all over it and dissolved the platinum.
It was a green mess that bubbled furiously.
I let it sit for hours.
I filtered the resulting mess in a funnel with a paper filter.
There was a layer of bone white ceramics
and there was a gray runny sludge on top of it.
Some orange liquid came through the filter,
(but I don't think all of the platinum was in there.)
The whole mess wouldn't filter,
and there was a lot of sludge still.
So I separated it.
The white ceramics and a thin layer of fine cement.
The top half was a bunch of orange liquid.
I added ammonium chloride to the orange liquid and I got a clay like residue in water.
I centerfuged this
and a white streak resulted in the test tube,
under the clay and water.
(two test tubes broke, the corks popped out while they were spinning)
I scaped out the white streak and cooked it
and got a really crappy looking rust
but the white streak burned onto the test tube wall.
I turned my attention to the gray cementy goo.
I put it in AR for a third test.
I got orange dark liquid on top again
I siphoned some of that off so I would not dilute the mixture.
I tested the liquid by cooking it down.
I cooked it once and got a precipitate.
The precipitate was really pretty and shiny and would float up and down in chunks while the brown liquid bubbled.
I felt like I was loosing some platinum because it might have not dissolved completely.
I stirred it with a magnet (creating a vortex)
And the pretty shiny chunks dissipated
I cooked it again and got dust.
still working....
Can magnet stirrers speed up the reaction? I tried that and it just made everything dissappear.
(How long does it take for the nitrogen to just wear out and evaporate from the solution?)
So From what I've read, I need to cook the catalytic converter/aqua regia mess, filter it through a stainless steel screen,
avoid adding more water and instead cook it while adding more chlorine and some ammonium chloride?
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Would it make you happy to have glow in the dark pee?
