first ap run

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pinman

pinman

Well-known member
Supporting Member
Joined
Nov 29, 2008
Messages
268
Location
northern california
a few questions. sorry if these are redundant.
do i keep my ap reaction bucket covered? in steves video he mentioned it had taken 36 hours. was it covered the whole time?

can i just throw the jumper pins plastic and all in, or do i have to remove the plastic from each pin? there's loads of pins connected with plastic i sheared off but it would be quite the PITA to pull each and every pin.

also i have a bunch of sheared cellphone boards that are gold plated(small bits of solder, no components). can i throw them in as well? or should i do a separate run for each type of material?

thanks
 
pinman said:
a few questions. sorry if these are redundant.
do i keep my ap reaction bucket covered?
Click to expand...
Keep the bucket loosely covered to prevent debris from getting the in bucket. Do not seal the reaction as gases will build up inside and could be very dangerous when the lid is opened.

pinman said:
can i just throw the jumper pins plastic and all in, or do i have to remove the plastic from each pin? there's loads of pins connected with plastic i sheared off but it would be quite the PITA to pull each and every pin.
Click to expand...
It all depends on the type of plastic. Do a small test on a single header and if the plastic doesn't turn into goo while in the acid overnight, you should be ok. If it does turn to goo, you will need to crush or pluck them out or use the stripping cell with a modified anode.

pinman said:
also i have a bunch of sheared cellphone boards that are gold plated(small bits of solder, no components). can i throw them in as well? or should i do a separate run for each type of material?
Click to expand...
Keep the scrap types separated to save yourself headaches.

Steve
 
thanks steve,
i did what you said with 1 jumper, the plastic is fine in ap. my acid is only 14.5% but the gold started flaking off within 5 minutes. should i go out and buy the stronger acid when i process the whole 40lbs? or just use what i have?

thanks
 
so i started a 1lb pin run in ap to see what the avg yield will be. i can see this taking a very long time. are there any suggestions for a more efficient means of recovery?
i have 40lbs of clean jumper pins with the plastic still attached.

thanks
 
Yes, you can reuse AP until it is chocolate brown in color. Once it gets this dark you will need to rejuvenate ti with an air bubbler and perhaps a little additional acid.

Steve
 
thanks, on closer inspection the pins are not as stripped as i originally stated. but when i pull the bucket i can see loads of dust on the bottom of the larger bucket and lots of little flakes floating around when disturbed.

i have been considering building a cell more and more to speed things up, has anyone had experience with using jumper pins with the plastic attached in a cell? ill take pictures in the morning of the material to give you an idea as to the makeup of the pins.
is there a specific type of airstone i need to get or will anyone for the aquarium work?

thanks again.
 
The cell will only deplate anything that the acid comes into contact with, so plastic will prevent deplating of anything it covers since the acid cannot go in between the pin and plastic holder, other than that yes the cell will deplate the pins. Pictures of the plastic and pins will be helpful.
 
sorry again for the poor quality, they are phone pictures again.
the beaker is the test pin to see if the acid affected the plastic. the pins fully dissolved in 4 days im assuming due to the metal, acid ratio.
the 2nd picture is of a 1 lb run mostly stripped it has been 4 days, and i can see that most of the material is stripped but there is still some apparent gold attached to the pins.
the third picture is of the pins themselves. i weighed them all out, it turned out to be 37lbs of various types of that pin. i paid 60usd for the lot.

any direction as to a more efficient means of recovery for this particular medium would be greatly appreciated.

thanks again
 

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Pinman,

AP works faster with a little heat, 3 Molar HCl and high CuCl2 (Copper II Chloride ) levels as compared to CuCl (Copper I Chloride ). Heating will cause more HCl vapors that will corrode you and any metal in the area so use proper ventilation.

The copper chloride levels can be maintained by using an air bubbler setup. The aquarium stones don't hold up, but a length of tubing with multiple pinholes and plugged at one end works fine. You'll need to secure the hose under the scrap as it tends to float, RTV will work for this. Lastly, don't forget a loose fitting lid to keep the tiny splatters in the bucket.

3 Molar HCl is about a 10% solution of HCl by weight.

If you haven't downloaded and studied the copper chloride document on my website you should.

Steve
 
alright tomorrow i will rig up some vinyl tubing and an air pump for the bucket.
i dl'd that document you mentioned. it is extremely helpful thank you. some of it seems a little advanced but i will do my best to understand it.
thanks again.
i cant wait for the results.
 
so i pulled the bucket, rinsed, filtered. im really thinking this is not the way to go with these pins. after being stripped they dont really provide foils just dust.
any suggestions from experience with a medium similar to this would be GREATLY appreciated.
 
The extremely low yield for the pins sounds to me like the headers are flash plated.

Typical flash plating is very thin and appears bright and shiny, almost white with a hint of yellow. Medium to high grade pins have a deep yellow color. If you have several types of headers on hand. Do a small test sample of another type (one header) that has a darker yellow color to the plating, if you see the gold flakes off in foils instead of fine powder, the headers you are processing are very low grade. The best headers I ever processed had a deep yellow-red color to the plating and yielded 3+ gram per pound.

Low grade headers will be mostly stripped of all visible gold in less than 24 hours using AP. All that will remain are copper colored pins in the plastic headers. Higher grade headers will take a few days to strip and the foils will float off in larger pieces.

There is no need to dissolve the entire pins if the gold is all removed.

Lastly, test the AP for dissolved gold using stannous chloride.

Steve
 
the same batch has been marinating for another week now, with air agitation for 3 of those days. i can see just as much dust and flakes on the bottom as i did when i pulled the first time. when i spread the pins out in a 5 gallon bucket there is still quite a bit of visible gold attached to the pins. i am going to buy some 32% muriatic at the pool supply and try again with a 1lb run.
 

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when i went to agitate the bucket today pins started to fall out so i separated it and replaced it with another 2lbs of pins, and added an aquarium heater. i can still see gold attached to the pins that wont dislodge with the sprayer, but in very small amounts.

at what temperature should i keep it at?

thanks again.
 
To answer your last question,the temp should aways be below boiling.I agree with the flash plate suggestion by steve.The resultant material just looks too fine to be normal gauge plating.An easy way to find this would be to put a few of the pins in nitric and see if the result is powder like you have here or larger flakes.If you find they are flash plated I would suggest running the rest of them in plain muratic and let them soak for a week or two with just a bubbler and no peroxide,if you have the time.The flash plate has a higher percentage of gold dissolving into solution with AP than normal plate due to the higher surface to mass ratio.By eliminating the oxides you lose no gold to dissolution however the drawback is the added amount of time it takes the base metals to go into solution without the presence of peroxide for faster oxidation.However the resultant material may look the way it does because of a couple other reasons,first you may have your peroxide to acid ratio too high then you are dissolving a lot of your gold into solution(test your AP with stannous for gold content),second if you are agitating your material too much you may be grinding the flakes to more of a powder consistancy.When you agitate your material in AP you only need to move the container enough to move the solution,not the material you are processing.When processing any material as the outside of the base metals dissolve they develope a saturated/semisaturated acid solution around the inner part of the base metal inhibiting or slowing down the rate of dissolution.By agitating the solution you expose the base metal to cleaner less saturated acid allowing the dissolution rate to remain as fast as it can.A bubbler works great three fold.One it helps keep the oxide level up in the solution,2 it keeps the solution constantly moving and three,it wicks the gold away from the base metals almost as soon as the gold it released allowing even more base metals to be exposed to the solution.Hope this helps.

Johnny
 

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