first time ap

[wimpiedoedel]

My fist processing to get gold, i start with a few fingers. Most of them are from old pci-cards, some of agp-cards and from old amd cpu that cam in a large box around it.

The HCl is 23%
And on the bottle peroxide it say "Stabilised to 10 parts" and is sold for manicure use.

After adding the hydrogen peroxide it become yellow. Waited for 1 hour en added some more peroxide.
Again waited 1 hour and it came green. Let it stand for 24 hours and it was yellow again ,but darker. Added some more peroxide.
Day after was the same as previous, yellow again. Day after also the same story...
After 5 days it stays very dark green.

I can see some goldflakes in the mixture but I noticed that not al of the flakes come of (some fingers have al the gold still on them).

Wat would be the next step? filter al the flakes out of it and start all over again with the rest of the fingers or add some more HCl an peroxide?

Does someone knows what "Stabilised to 10 parts" mean and how concentrated it will be?

Greetz
Wim

 

[jimdoc]

Have you been stirring it?
If you add too much peroxide you will dissolve gold into the solution.
This is a process that takes time.

Jim

 

[superten67]

you need to be very carefull with peroxide percentage i think its pretty much safe bet that you never want to use much more than the 3% solution as you then know where you are.
if you have say 9% and its a 200ml bottle you should dilute it another 2 parts with water so the solution should total 600ml.
i had the same problem with gold dissolving and then cementing back to the base metals.
i have had other problems but am getting there now,also when you move on the the hcl/bleach part after various water and acid washes of your dirty stuff be carefull yet again with the percentage of your bleach depending on where you are in the world.
i was using bleach that had more soap than bleach in it.....a very expensive mistake but ill learn,as will you.
but what i do is when i have 5 mins go through everything on this site that looks like its pertainent to your process and even if not read it anyway.

 

[wimpiedoedel]

I stirred it a few times a day. And added small amounts of peroxide in to the solution.
Taking 5 days over the process.

I must say the solution is very dark, only if you hold it into the light you see its green. And i see some gold.
It was only a small batch to test it (maybe from 6 cards).

 

[superten67]

have a look and see if there is any black powder in the ap,also is there any residue on the metals that you were trying to clean?

 

[wimpiedoedel]

I drain the solution with a coffee filter and most of the fingers are complete blank, no metals left on it. Hopefuly it's normal or lose the copper also?
I spray the others with water above the filter and the gold loses. Some of them have some copper on them.
Lets see tomorrow when everthing is dried up, to get the gold out the filter. Maybe this weekend I try to make stanious chloride to test the solution if there is any gold in it.

For now I will read the forum for the next step in recovery/refining

Grtz
Wim

 

[maynman1751]

I wouldn't advise letting the foils or powder dry in the filter. They should be rinsed out into another vessel while still wet. Otherwise they may stick to the filter. After that they should be boiled in HCl to rid them of left over contaminants.

 

[wimpiedoedel]

I wouldn't advise letting the foils or powder dry in the filter. They should be rinsed out into another vessel while still wet. Otherwise they may stick to the filter. After that they should be boiled in HCl to rid them of left over contaminants.

read it today, when it was dry... sticking a lot.
I cleaned the filter with plenty of water and boiled them so al the water is vaporised en put it in a small glas waiting to have more gold to clean.

Thanks for al the advices, and lets search for some more scrap

grtz
Wim