Going for the gold

[Betterthanfinegold]

This is my first attempt at a gold recovery, please advise if my PLAN below will work.
Materials: Approximately 350g Ram fingers, 150g Slot card/any non RAM card i could find etc, around 150g of monitor board fingers. One or two old cellphone button boards sans chips.
And maybe 40g random flashing-plated circuitboard cuttings and a little whole Celeron CPU (intact now but will be removed when plated pins are stripped)
I begin with 1 gallon HCL in a bucket with hole in bottom, inside another intact bucket. There currently is just enough to cover all materials completely.
I added too much hcl due to my bucket not sitting inside the other well. PLAN: wait another 3hr 1/2 for a total of appx 4 hours of HCL soak. Adjust the buckets so less hcl will be needed to cover the material, reduce to ~ 1/4 gallon or appx 946Ml . Then add Nitric 70% qty 190Ml. Wait for material to fully reach saturation in solution. [Then when Home Depot is open get some] SMB add as needed(i know not to overdo it) to drop the gold. Wash with Distilled water thoroughly.
Question: During or after which stage(s) should i filter the product?
When gold sludge or powder is obtained, wash with HCL up to 4 times to increase purity. Further "refine" product later. Ok guys how bad is this plan? -Jared

 

[Shark]

Since you plan to do a HCl soak, why not just make it into AP (it will do it on it's own given time or add a tiny amount of peroxide only once to kick start it.) and remove the gold foils. Filter it then you have cleaner gold to deal with, and a smaller volume of AR waste to deal with, plus you have a reusable solution of AP for another "soak" of new boards you get later. A gallon of HCl will hold quite a lot of copper and can do several more boards.

 

[Betterthanfinegold]

Very logical i decided you are right. If i want to chemically put gold in solution i should wait until i can reduce the volume to only foils. Gettin my H2O2 out to add once. Thanks! Will update with results tonight.

 

[Betterthanfinegold]

Maybe i overdid it but added 1/4 gal h2O2 to the gallon of HCL. Is this way too much? I can always add more HCL.

In a parallel experiment i have 127gr. Black flatpack (black tops only, tin soldered bottoms removed) ground down (not too fine but i tried) and soaked for 12 hours in 100ML Nitric Acid. Now i just added HCL 600ML and ~90ML nitric(didnt measure) to fill the 1L beaker to the ~850ml mark.
Solution is Reddish purply pink. Cant take photos due to broken phone camera.
Will wait for any gold to go into solution to add SMB. Then see the first step's gold( probably super super tainted but gold) my hcl was recycled from removing RAM ic chips and probably is loaded down with copper and other base metals. Oh well.

 

[UncleBenBen]

Yes, 1/4 gallon of H₂O₂ is too much. You most likely dissolved some gold. A capful in a gallon of HCl is enough to get the reaction started. No need for SMB, any dissolved Au will be reduced or cemented out of solution by the Cu on the boards. It will appear as a dark, almost black powder. Collect it with the foils once they all come loose.

my hcl was recycled from removing RAM ic chips

This HCl is going to contain tin from the solder. As in stannous chloride. The pinkish/purple probably is your gold. The AR you made dissolved the gold but the tin reduced it to a colloidal state. Meaning it is now suspended in the solution as a solid but in tiny clumps of Au atoms. I would do a search for gold colloid to find how to deal with it. You would get a much better explanation than I could give.

 

[g_axelsson]

Maybe i overdid it but added 1/4 gal h2O2 to the gallon of HCL. Is this way too much? I can always add more HCL.

In a parallel experiment i have 127gr. Black flatpack (black tops only, tin soldered bottoms removed) ground down (not too fine but i tried) and soaked for 12 hours in 100ML Nitric Acid. Now i just added HCL 600ML and ~90ML nitric(didnt measure) to fill the 1L beaker to the ~850ml mark.
Solution is Reddish purply pink. Cant take photos due to broken phone camera.
Will wait for any gold to go into solution to add SMB. Then see the first step's gold( probably super super tainted but gold) my hcl was recycled from removing RAM ic chips and probably is loaded down with copper and other base metals. Oh well.

Yes, you overdid it. It's a common mistake among newbies. UncleBenBen is quite right and I won't comment on that part of the procedure.

In the parallel experiment you also overdid it. The amount of nitric acid you added to the HCl is enough to dissolve way more than 127 g of pure gold. When everything is in solution you need to denox the solution to get rid of the excess nitric acid before precipitate the small amounts of gold you have there.
The color of the solution could be anything, a reaction with the plastics maybe, who knows? With that much nitric acid there is no way there are any gold colloids left in solution. What is a stannous test telling you? Do you have any gold in solution?
The excess nitric will react with the tin chloride and form metastannic acid and other tin compounds. In effect using up any stannous chloride left in solution. It might form a gel that is extremely slow to filter.

The idea about dissolving base metals first is to pour off the base metal solution to concentrate the gold. Then when we dissolve the gold we use fresh acids to reduce the volume of the gold solution, it will make it easier to extract the gold in the end and leads to less losses and a more pure product. By adding acids already loaded with tin and copper you made your work a lot harder.

Göran

 

[Betterthanfinegold]

Goran, the parralel experiments solution was filtered leaving a a Coppery mud in the filter but Gold colored aqua regia. I was a pinhead and went ahead and attempted a SMB drop before checking the forum here. I got a nice reaction with the typical gases. Solution is now settling but there was metallic particulate resembling silicone Die. Note my filter was coffe filter x2 with an automotive funnel. Some material may have bypassed funnel as my grabber may have punctured it.
Well i am left with: experiment 1:
Green bucket of hcl+H202 resembling radioactive material, some gold foils floating most just appear untouched.
Experiment 2: Gold brown AR with smb added, now settling black powder but some particulate still visibly suspended. My hcl was a gallon only used for maybe 1lb of ram so although theres tin, theres probably only a small amount (i know im kidding myself but it seems it went well so far?

 

[Shark]

Sorry for being late, but I agree with the previous advice. You over did it. With that said, so do most beginners, I know I did.

 

[Betterthanfinegold]

The positive note is, i am leaving this experiment on the backburner for the weekend and i have 7+lb high grade black mixed IC chips to pyrolize and attempt an extraction on. Also about 1lb of high and low grade CPU's(1 pentium pro 1x486 and a couple pentium black fibers)
for these i will carry my lessons learned forward and get fresh HCL and less nitric, much less h2o2 (when used).
if i can solidify the gold , albeit it will be mixed with other base materials i can melt it all together with my filter material and just throw it in with a load of circuit boards i am having toll refined in the future. Who knows?
Is it possible to dilute the hcl h202 with distilled water and have the gold crash out of the solution? Or am i dreaming? Thanks again, i expected a loss on the flatpacks but not the fingers( which are looking worse than the flatpack result)

 

[Palladium]

You don't seem to be here to learn. You are creating one problem after another and instead of studying and checking with the forum through each step all you seem to be doing is gun slinging it and then you're coming here expecting people to bail you out.

STOP what you are doing, put everything down for a minute, study, and stop sabotaging yourself!

 

[nickton]

The way you are attempting to do this is not correct. Where did you read about the procedures? It is very simple really. Put the material in a bucket with HCI, add a spot of hydrogen peroxide, and insert a BUBBLER. YOU NEED A BUBBLER!

Let it bubble until the solution is black or all the foils are loose (this may take a few days, even a week, depending on the material), then FILTER to remove a solution that is pregnant with base metals. Some foils may still cling to circuit board plastic, and you can scrub them off, using water to rinse them into a filter, or else stick them back into a new bubbling "Acid Peroxide" solution to further loosen the gold.

You will be left with one or more filters full of gold flakes, which you next place in a small amount of CLEAN muriatic acid, to which you finally add the nitric acid in eyedropper amounts only until the gold dissolves. Less nitric is better than more.

RECOVER and REFINEMENT are two separate processes and not done in the same bucket.

 

[nickvc]

I have said many times that recovery and refining are two totally different areas of our hobby/ work.
Harold even said you could teach a monkey to refine but only once you have a clean material the real art in what we do is learning how to recover the values economically and efficiently, if you can master that you are in a whole new position.

 

[Betterthanfinegold]

Well here's the result from the flatpacks. Whether there is gold or not is still unknown. The stannous solution is bunk, I tried it on pure gold plating and a known mlcc with no results (on filter paper.)
Also you're all correct.
Regards

 

[nickvc]

You really do not understand enough at the moment if you think putting stannous on visible gold will tell you anything, stannous is for testing your solutions to tell whether you have gold present or not !
Stop messing around and do some reading and studying to get the basics understood so you know what to expect including any dangers, this piece of advice is frequently not appreciated but it is essential for you to get further forward without endangering you, your family, neighbors or the environment.

 

[Justincase]

You really do not understand enough at the moment if you think putting stannous on visible gold will tell you anything, stannous is for testing your solutions to tell whether you have gold present or not !
Stop messing around and do some reading and studying to get the basics understood so you know what to expect including any dangers, this piece of advice is frequently not appreciated but it is essential for you to get further forward without endangering you, your family, neighbors or the environment.

Hear hear!

 

[Dr.xyz]

Wouldn't it been better for everybody to just tell him to give up now and find another hobby?

I can't see him succeeding in the near or far future, some people just don't have what it takes.

 

[Betterthanfinegold]

OK, and ok. you ran me outta dodge. My first post is my last one. No need to incite the gold refiner mob. Closing time. And yes you're all correct. Maybe hands on learning is not the right way versus learned approach, with dangerous reagents and reactions. calling it quits.

 

[galenrog]

People here are trying to tell you to stop for a while and study. Learn what to expect from different procedures. Mistakes can cost you kidneys, liver, lungs, eyes, and life. At the risk of being insulting, jumping into this with both feet, without looking, is asinine.

If you want to learn, take it in steps. The best advice I can give to to read and study Hoke. Refining Precious Metal Wastes, by C M Hoke, although 70 years old, is still the best primer available to recovery and refining of precious metal scraps. Safety considerations have changes a lot, but the techniques remain the same. Dave, Frugalrefiner on the Forum, has a few downloadable formats in his signature line. Read the book until you begin to understand the terminology. Study. Make notes. Yes, real notes on real paper. Once you have gotten that far, get back with us with questions.

Time for more coffee.

 

[UncleBenBen]

OK, and ok. you ran me outta dodge. My first post is my last one. No need to incite the gold refiner mob. Closing time. And yes you're all correct. Maybe hands on learning is not the right way versus learned approach, with dangerous reagents and reactions. calling it quits.

No need to call it quits just yet. You've stumbled into quite the rewarding hobby just know it is much harder than it looks, at the beginning. What you've been told is spot on. Refining is the easy part. Recovering precious metals especially from electronics is the hard part. But it can be done, and it can be done safely.

You just have to slow down. Take the time to study before you act. It took most here months of study before even trying the first recovery. Just know, if you do come back, that even if what you are hearing sounds harsh right now, it is the advice you need and it will become more and more obvious as you go along.

Good luck and be safe and please don't just pour those solutions you've created down the drain. A big part of learning this is learning how to safely deal with the waste solutions you create.

 

[nickvc]

As the first to be perhaps a little unfriendly it wasn’t meant to stop you but to make you pause and take the advice to read and learn and then go forward, we are quite happy to help but we want you or anyone else doing this to be safe and understand what the dangers are and can be, as I stated that advice is rarely welcomed but it is necessary, if you are looking for a get rich quick scheme refining is rarely it but it can be fun and rewarding both financially and by learning new things.
Bite the bullet and take the advice read and study and perhaps in a month or two you will see the sense in this advice.