Gold Disolving in Nitric

[PhillipJ]

Today I put some flattened pieces of fairly pure gold in some of Steve's homemade nitric acid recipe "to clean it up a little" before an AR process. What happened is the solution turned yellow and tested positive for gold.

I made the nitric acid with boiled off NAPA sulphuric acid and High Yeild brand nitrate of soda. I think I used tap water also. I used it straight from the jug, with no diluting it. Some salts are settled at the bottom of that jug.

My tap water raised hell with my silver and am assuming that it is doing the same thing with my gold. Is my thinking correct on this? Or does someone have any other insight on this?

Thanks for looking.

 

[Harold_V]

Tap water will have an effect on silver, of that there is no doubt. It's a matter of how much you're willing to tolerate instead of paying for distilled water. I tolerated it very well except for when making electrolyte for my parting cell, and washing the crystals after removing them from the cell. I found I wasn't happy with the small amount of silver chloride that developed. As far as dissolving silver from inquartation, there's no way in hell that concerned me, and I never experienced any problems from using tap water.

Regards some of your gold dissolving, I'm having a hard time coming to terms with the idea that it's solely from chlorine in the water. Sure, there's chlorine there, but not much. Besides, if you're working with warm solutions, it would be expected to be expelled fairly quickly, with very little being consumed by dissolving gold, if any at all. If you're getting a fair amount of dissolution, you might be wise to investigate for other sources of contamination.

Please report what you find. Could be I'm totally wrong about my assessment of chlorine in the water being the cause---and I should have a better understanding as a result.

As a closing note-----I routinely used tap water with my gold processing and do not recall one instance of gold being dissolved in nitric alone.
Yes------my water was chlorinated, in case you wanted to know.

Harold

 

[PhillipJ]

Thanks for your thoughts Harold. If it ain't the water, then it has to be something in the brand of niter I used. I remember the water caked up my pure silver, tight.

Chances are that I'll never know for sure the exact cause. I'll just use the yellow nitric and make AR out of it. 1st refinement anyways.

 

[Irons]

Depending on the quality of the fertilizer grade Sodium Nitrate, it will contain a small amount of Sodium Chloride.
NaCL+HNO3=AR.

I quit using it as the Gold around here is so fine it goes into solution in poor man's Nitric.

Bummer.

 

[PhillipJ]

Thanks Irons. That's good to know that someone else has had that happen. So, maybe if it is boiled good, it wouldn't do that. Sure is a lot of little stuff that can mess something up,

I found that SMB from the beer making supplier doesn't quite cut it either. The stuff I bought took so much to drop the gold, and then left a powder.