first try...

[adrsinop]

Hey guys! It's Andreas. Firts af all i am sorry if you don't anderstand something becouse of my bad english. I'm from Greece and today i starded the process refining gold from motherboard's pins. I need to ask something becouse i think something i am doing wrong. When i collected all the pins (gold plated) from 4 motherboards an added 3:1 hydrochloric acid and nitric acid the reaction starded and after a couple of hours a saw a dark green solution over the pins. Also, the pins are still having a strange orange colour like rust.
So, is there any gold left on them or its a typical reaction? And what is the next step if this above is wrong?
Note: I have kept both the pins and the solution. Thank's for your help!!

 

[artart47]

Hi !
Welcome to the forum. You need to have an understanding of the basics before trying to recover gold. Please put away the chemicals and the solution you now have.
Find "the guided tour of the forum" read the safety section and download the free copy of the book, C.M. Hoke " refining precious metal wastes" These will give you the understanding of what you are doing and why you are doing it. You will learn to do it safely and how to take care of the toxic wastes you will have when you are done.
You must know these things to do this. Good luck!
artart47

 

[adrsinop]

Thanks a lot! I am already used to chemicals becouse i am agriculturalιst and of course i i take always safety equipment with me. I will read this guide thanks again!

 

[FrugalRefiner]

Welcome to the forum Andreas. I'll add to Art's good advice. Recycling gold from electronic scrap is a two step process. The first step is recovery. The second step is refining. You used a refining process when you should have started with a recovery step of eliminating most of the base metals before dissolving your gold. The reaction you're having is typical when you use the wrong process at the wrong time. As Art said, put your current project away safely somewhere. You're not ready to recover from it yet.

Here are some links I like to provide to new members.

The first rule is to be safe in everything you do. Before you jump into any of the processes you see discussed here, be sure you understand the potential hazards and do everything you can to minimize the risks. Read EVERYTHING in the Safety section of the forum, especially the Dealing with Waste topic. No amount of precious metal is worth jeopardizing your health or the health of those around you.

I strongly encourage all new members to follow the Guided Tour created by LazerSteve. It will provide an introduction to the forum and numerous valuable links including the General Reactions List. Be sure to follow the link to his web site as he has many outstanding videos, a collection of great reference documents, and he sells a lot of the supplies needed to get started including detailed instructional DVDs. Samuel-a also has a lot of videos, guides and tutorials at his web site Gold-N-Scrap.

Download C. M. Hoke's book. You'll find links to both screen readable and printer friendly versions in my signature line below. You'll see her book mentioned repeatedly here on the forum for good reason. It is probably the best book ever written for the beginner who wants to learn refining. It is written in layman's terms and will provide a solid foundation that will help you understand everything you read here on the forum. You'll also find a tremendous amount of information in the two Forum Handbooks compiled by aflacglobal, Forum Handbook Vol 1 and Forum Handbook Vol 2.

If you follow these links and read the material you find, you'll have a good idea of how to clean up your current problems. If I tried to give you the answer in one post, I'd have to rewrite everything you'll find in those links.

Dave

 

[adrsinop]

You are the best! Thank you guys! I hope i didn't do anything wrong...I will read them all and perhaps i'll ask you again if i am not understandig something and if it's not bothering you of course..

 

[kurtak]

Art & Dave (FrugalRefiner) are right in the advise they have given you - you need to learn & understand what you are doing before you start doing it

Dave (FrugalRefiner) is also right in telling you that you started with a refining process when you should have started with a recovery process

another words you started with AR (HCL plus nitric) which is used for refining --- AR dissolve both base metals & precious metals (PMs) --- what you want to do is remove the base metals first in order to recover your PMs --- then dissolve your PMs in order to refine them

You have not lost your PMs by making this mistake so don't throw it away --- do as Art & Dave said --- set it aside & start reading & doing some research (Hokes book & here on the forum as well as the links provided by Dave) then when you have a better understanding of what this is all about you can start asking questions because then you will be able to ask right kind of questions that we can actually help you with

Here is a hint about your problem --- AR dissolved both your gold & some of the base metals - but because it did not dissolve all of your base metals the remaining base metals cemented your gold back out of solution - that is what the brown dust that looks like rust is --- its the gold that cemented back out of solution because of the base metals that did not dissolve

Kurt

 

[nickvc]

We understand that those members whose first language isn't English do sometimes have problems with understanding some of the information which is available here, I suggest you edit your profile and add your country so members know that your questions are perhaps because of translation difficulties and not due to laziness, yes we get new members who expect us to walk them through every process, we don't, we expect everyone to read and search the forum as most subjects have been covered in depth many times. The search function is on the top right of your screen.

 

[adrsinop]

Thanks Kurt! I have read many articles since i posted and i didn't find something that really helps me to understand the next step after my mistake. I'll keep reading hoping that i'm not the only one who did it..My question is is how seperate the desolved gold in the solution from the other metals..I'll keep searching...

 

[adrsinop]

We understand that those members whose first language isn't English do sometimes have problems with understanding some of the information which is available here, I suggest you edit your profile and add your country so members know that your questions are perhaps because of translation difficulties and not due to laziness, yes we get new members who expect us to walk them through every process, we don't, we expect everyone to read and search the forum as most subjects have been covered in depth many times. The search function is on the top right of your screen.

You gus are very good people i can tell and you are doing a great job by giving advises to those who need them. Thant's why i personally rate this forum one of the best that i have subscribed to. My english level is good but the enemy of "good" is the "best", so i'll try to make easy to understand as far as i can in order to take the right answers.. Thanks again!

 

[nickvc]

Thanks Kurt! I have read many articles since i posted and i didn't find something that really helps me to understand the next step after my mistake. I'll keep reading hoping that i'm not the only one who did it..My question is is how seperate the desolved gold in the solution from the other metals..I'll keep searching...

Slow down and do the reading and you will understand it and many other things that as yet you don't know you need to know to be successful in your endeavours.

 

[adrsinop]

I'll try to put some photos today just to see what happened.. If i'm not wrong this white powder is silver chloride isn't it? (The rest?? )

 

[butcher]

The white powders can be several metal salts depending on the metals that were in the reaction and the conditions of the reaction, some possibilities of the white powder, NaCl, CuCl, PbCl2, AgCl, are a the more common, when you make a soup of acids and metals you will have a soup of metals, recovery and refining is separating metals from each other, not making a soup.

The advice you have been given will help you learn, this is not an easy science that you can tell someone in a few pages how to do it, it takes a lot of study to understand the principles, and learn this art.

Right now all you have is a dangerous mess, or toxic soup of metals, you also have made it more difficult to get your gold (with tin from solder dissolved in solution it can lock up the gold in solution making it very hard to get back).

The way I see it you can get that little bit of value from this mess, by studying, but the real value you will get from study is an education that is worth a gold mine.

Use copper to cement any values that may possibly be in solution, dry and save the powders, start your study in the safety section with dealing with waste, practice your chemistry on dealing with your waste solution (toxic soup), keep studying to get that gold mine of an education and learn how to recover and refine metals.

 

[adrsinop]

Well after reaiding most of relative issues from the handbook i concluded that i have to use sulfuric acid on my solution. I'll take a sample first and put few drops just to see the reaction. I expect to see some dark clouds over the sample. Remaing gold will drop as a dust as far as i understood from the book. If someone here believe something different please post it! Understanding every word from this book takes several times of reading it. I read the part of waste solutions over 3 times to be use what i am going to do.

 

[joubjonn]

negative, butcher had good advise right up above. get a thick piece of copper and let that sit in the solution for a few days. the gold will take an electron from the copper and come out as a black powder. do not add any more acids to that. bad idea. your making it worse. I don't see how sulfuric will help anything except make a bigger mess. not sure where you read that, never heard of adding sulfuric to a highly contaminated AR solution like that. a clean AR solution is another story. yours is not clean.

 

[jimdoc]

Pins from from 4 motherboards aren't going to give you enough gold to even see.

Jim

 

[sharkhook]

If your using sulfuric to check for lead, don't add it to your entire batch. For one your not ready for that step yet. Following the advice to cement it out until you can read and study more will be very helpful. Do yourself a favor and don't run into the headaches I, (and many others have had) am having now. And mine was not as big a batch as yours is now. Your not going to get rich so think small for a while and study.

 

[butcher]

adrsinop,
My advice to help you get started.
Just figure this batch is a mistake, and learning tool, cement values out of the solution with clean large piece of copper, , let the powder settle and remove the waste liquid from powders, dry and save the powders and anything solid from the original batch (pieces of circuit boards...) study how to deal with your waste solution.

while you study and learn how to treat your waste you will be gaining a valuable education in your tool box, ( a tool we use often), if after studying how to deal with waste, and you still do not understand how to treat the waste solutions ask for help.

If you had gold in this batch it will be in the dried powders, you can get that tiny bit later, after you learn more of how it is done. right now it will be too hard to explain to you, and you would not understand it all anyway.

Begin your study in Hoke's book, and reading the forum.

I suggest after studying and getting yourself acquainted (by doing the getting acquainted experiments you will find in Hokes book) (these small experiments will show you how many metals react in different acids, a tool every refiner needs to understand to be successful), they also teach you how to identify metals in solution and test for values in solutions when you will no longer see them...

For a first project to get gold.
Only after the above is done first.
Get a pound or more of computer memory and study the process for preparing the close cut gold fingers, study the copper II chloride leach (also called AP or acid peroxide), and process these for the gold foils, then study the HCl/Bleach (Bleach also called sodium hypochlorite or NaClO) to dissolve the gold, and study how to prepare it for precipitation and how to precipitate the gold and then drying and melting...

Memory fingers as a first project will help you learn easier while satisfying that gold fever you have now, if done right you will not have solder lead and tin or metals that will give many problems in solution, you will mainly be dealing with copper and gold, and the process are easier to learn than aqua regia, and much easier to deal with, this can prepare you for more complicated processes that you will be reading about.

keep trying things you think will work will only lead to problems, a waste of your time trying to find out how to get out of these problems, and only will lead to you losing gold.

Studying until you know and have an understanding and using that knowledge to gain more knowledge and understanding will put gold in your pocket...

Study is the treasure map, education is the true treasure, right now you have gold fever, and are wandering around blind trying to get that gold, as long as you go chasing after that gold in a fever, you will not get the gold, focus on education which will make it easier to see where the gold is and know how to get it.

 

[adrsinop]

Thank you all! I haven't tried something yet exept putting a pure piece of cooper into the solution.

 

[joubjonn]

that's good news! I was a little worried about you.
don't worry iv had to do this also before. it takes a while for it
to work. a few days.

 

[adrsinop]

that's good news! I was a little worried about you.
don't worry iv had to do this also before. it takes a while for it
to work. a few days.

You mean you did the same mistake?