Hello everyone,
I am new to this and always found it to be interesting and so got most supplies, and read many forums,and watched many videos on process.
So this is my first attempt, and I am not sure where I or what exaclty went wrong.
I am using dilute nitric, and as I thought i was supposed to. I used 200ml water and 150ml nitric on 158 grams Gf jewelry.I put on heat and off it went,just as i had seen and read about many times, red fuming,and nice boil...when fumes died down, I was seeing nice foils starting to float.I drained off solution and repeated process a 2nd time..everything went well like before,but now seeing many more foils, everything looked great.
I decided to do a 3rd run just to ensure all base metals were out of foils, but this time i used 200ml water,and only 50ml nitric...Boiled for until reaction was very miniscule. Turned off heat and let it sit to cool and when went to rinse all my foils had dissolved and now I am left with only purple sludge,with millions microscopic flakes.
How can I fix this and recover the gold,and where did I go wrong? my nitric is 67% and from everything i have read and seen I was under the impression the dilute nitric would not dissolve foils or gold...So how did this happen?
I was going to try and use very low heat to try drying out the sludge, but I am afraid the steam will take my gold content away..So not going with that idea i said to self...I thought maybe try precipitate w smb..But did not want to contaminate it trying...so i split it in to 2 beakers, and had some sodium bicarbonate on hand, and had a bright idea to try a little in 1 of the beakers, and to my suprise, i got a reaction,and it fizzed for few seconds,But to my suprise, the solution started to seperate the cloudiness and seemed to drop the millions of microscopic gold particles floating around along with a darker blue cloudy like substance i believe may be silver..I was able to syphon off the clear top water until got close to the sludge, So i rinsed with water again,and was suprised how fast this was clearing up and everything settling on bottom fairly quickly...So i syphoned off the water again and repeated to rinse once more, but this is where i called it a night, since I was working on this problem most the day...Can anyone help me to identify where i went wrong and how all my foils discintergrated with dilute nitric? Was my heat too high perhaps? using hotplate on 3 out of 6 settings,which i believed was around med-med high....I can not seem to find anything on this topic and also can not find anything about dilute nitric dissolving foils...usually it is the aqua that I thought needed to be used to dissolve gold...I thought i was doing pretty good until my gorgeous very large foils and complete lengths of foil chains were turned into mush or purple sludge..As soon as I seen the dark purple solution I knew my foils were gone and somehow dissolved...I am waiting for my stannous solution to arrive, and I also need sulphuric which was going to pick up tomorrow, So I thought I had the main part of this under control and off to great start until my suprise when i seen all my foils dissolved...
I am sorry if my post is too long..Just wanted to give details best i could so maybe someone could let me know where i went wrong and how might i be able to recover my gold from purple sludge with minimal losses.
Thank you in advance...
I am new to this and always found it to be interesting and so got most supplies, and read many forums,and watched many videos on process.
So this is my first attempt, and I am not sure where I or what exaclty went wrong.
I am using dilute nitric, and as I thought i was supposed to. I used 200ml water and 150ml nitric on 158 grams Gf jewelry.I put on heat and off it went,just as i had seen and read about many times, red fuming,and nice boil...when fumes died down, I was seeing nice foils starting to float.I drained off solution and repeated process a 2nd time..everything went well like before,but now seeing many more foils, everything looked great.
I decided to do a 3rd run just to ensure all base metals were out of foils, but this time i used 200ml water,and only 50ml nitric...Boiled for until reaction was very miniscule. Turned off heat and let it sit to cool and when went to rinse all my foils had dissolved and now I am left with only purple sludge,with millions microscopic flakes.
How can I fix this and recover the gold,and where did I go wrong? my nitric is 67% and from everything i have read and seen I was under the impression the dilute nitric would not dissolve foils or gold...So how did this happen?
I was going to try and use very low heat to try drying out the sludge, but I am afraid the steam will take my gold content away..So not going with that idea i said to self...I thought maybe try precipitate w smb..But did not want to contaminate it trying...so i split it in to 2 beakers, and had some sodium bicarbonate on hand, and had a bright idea to try a little in 1 of the beakers, and to my suprise, i got a reaction,and it fizzed for few seconds,But to my suprise, the solution started to seperate the cloudiness and seemed to drop the millions of microscopic gold particles floating around along with a darker blue cloudy like substance i believe may be silver..I was able to syphon off the clear top water until got close to the sludge, So i rinsed with water again,and was suprised how fast this was clearing up and everything settling on bottom fairly quickly...So i syphoned off the water again and repeated to rinse once more, but this is where i called it a night, since I was working on this problem most the day...Can anyone help me to identify where i went wrong and how all my foils discintergrated with dilute nitric? Was my heat too high perhaps? using hotplate on 3 out of 6 settings,which i believed was around med-med high....I can not seem to find anything on this topic and also can not find anything about dilute nitric dissolving foils...usually it is the aqua that I thought needed to be used to dissolve gold...I thought i was doing pretty good until my gorgeous very large foils and complete lengths of foil chains were turned into mush or purple sludge..As soon as I seen the dark purple solution I knew my foils were gone and somehow dissolved...I am waiting for my stannous solution to arrive, and I also need sulphuric which was going to pick up tomorrow, So I thought I had the main part of this under control and off to great start until my suprise when i seen all my foils dissolved...
I am sorry if my post is too long..Just wanted to give details best i could so maybe someone could let me know where i went wrong and how might i be able to recover my gold from purple sludge with minimal losses.
Thank you in advance...
