I have some old friends who have decided to refine some of their own scrap but have decided to forge ahead without advice or knowledge. They dissolved ,eventually, about 30 grams of 9k scrap in AR, the mix they tried was 98% hydrochloric 2% nitric,hence the time taken and then saturated it with bicarbonate of soda and are now left with a beaker full of salts in a very weak AR solution. My initial thoughts were to fill the beaker with water ,heat and see if the salts would dissolve ,having first precipitated the Au so leaving the Au powder in the bottom of their beaker. Further ideas or suggestions welcomed.
Excessive use of bicarbonate of soda in AR!
- Thread starter nickvc
- Start date
Help Support Gold Refining Forum:
- Joined
- Feb 25, 2007
- Messages
- 8,360
Strange. I'm at a loss to understand why they did what they did.nickvc said:
If the mess had been delivered to me to be salvaged, I believe my objective would be to get the salts liquefied. I'd add water, as you suggested, then heat gently, in the hopes that the chemicals would dissolve. I would not be concerned about any remaining metals, which would be recovered in the filter. Assuming I got the solids dissolved, I would then attempt to recover any dissolved values using copper. When the solution tested barren, I would allow the solids to settle well, siphon off the majority of solution, then filter the remaining, getting all of the solids in the filter. I would then incinerate the solids, then mix with soda ash and borax, then melt. That should recover traces of silver that may have been converted to silver chloride.
The molten mass would be poured to a cone mold, then the recovered bead inquarted and properly processed to refine the gold.
There's likely other ways to attack the problem, but I know that I suggested would work, and work well.
Harold
