Gold Fill and copper chloride

[Jmk88]

Dear All,

Thank you in advance for any replies and efforts of help.

I’ve been reading the forum for a long while but only recently joined.

I have successfully removed/recovered a bunch of fouls from a range of filled material; I used a copper chloride solution with a bubbler and peroxide top ups. The process couldn’t have gone better for the removal.

I have since begun to filter and again, am extremely happy with what I have. However, I have a a black smudge which goes almost a grey colour once I let the filter drain and dry. Would anyone be able to help with what this is? And will it adversely affect what I intend to do next?

I intend to use a hcl/bleach method to dissolve and then drop with SMB once I have a 1-2 ph level.

Do I need to remove this sludge first or can I proceed with dissolving and dropping?

Many thanks,

 

[FrugalRefiner]

I have successfully removed/recovered a bunch of fouls from a range of filled material; I used a copper chloride solution with a bubbler and peroxide top ups. The process couldn’t have gone better for the removal.

It might have gone better without the "peroxide top ups". Adding more peroxide to a copper chloride leach may have caused some of your gold to go into solution.

I have since begun to filter and again, am extremely happy with what I have. However, I have a a black smudge which goes almost a grey colour once I let the filter drain and dry. Would anyone be able to help with what this is? And will it adversely affect what I intend to do next?

It could be that a bit of your gold went into solution when you kept adding peroxide, and it may have cemented back out as a very fine black/gray powder. Or the powder could be tin or other base metals from the original material. It's hard to say because there are many different base metals used in gold filled.

I intend to use a hcl/bleach method to dissolve and then drop with SMB once I have a 1-2 ph level.

That may or may not work. HCl/bleach is fine for powders and very thin foils like those from fingers and other gold plated material. While the foils from gold filled look thin, they are many times thicker than those from plated goods. Foils from gold filled are also alloyed gold, not nearly pure gold like the foils from gold plate. The only way to know if it will work for you is to try, but I'd recommend a small trial first; like test tube size.

Do I need to remove this sludge first or can I proceed with dissolving and dropping?

Since the sludge might include some gold, I'd probably try to dissolve it along with the foils, but again, I'd try a small amount first.

Dave

 

[Jmk88]

Hi Dave,

Thank you so much for your reply.

I’m 99% sure I haven’t dissolved any gold; I have used in total 300ml of 5% peroxide to 1200ml of 35% hcl.

What is strange is the powder does seem to be coming from solution so you may be correct - although I certainly have not visualised any reduction in gold, only more as the process works.

If it did I believe it’s minor. I think it may be solders etc which any help with would be great. I thought copper chloride should dissolve these.

I have dissolved a batch in hcl/bleach which has gone a lovely golden honey colour but the ph is still reading towards a neutral acidic. I’m heating and cooling to drive off chlorine and reduce ph.

I guess my main query was does anyone think that the substance will affect my dissolving and dropping? I intend to filter with boiling water twice and leave to soak in hcl for half a day prior to adding chlorine.

I must say I was overwhelmed at the success of the recovery stage with the fill; I had a very pessimistic expectation following all my reading.

I have only added peroxide when the chloride was saturated (even with a bubbler) which seems to remove any debris immediately. I’m trying to avoid false optimism but again, am almost certain I haven’t dissolved any gold.

Thank you again and in advance.

 

[Jmk88]

Dave,

I forgot to add; I have seen people refine placer gold using the hcl/bleach method as well as ore.

My understanding is that these would be a much higher grain size than anything possible on a filled piece of jewellery?

Have I got the wrong end of the stick there?

Thanks,

 

[Jmk88]

Finally dropped!!

It’s my first ever reclaiming process and I’m happy to discuss the AP (I don’t like calling it that) method and gold filled jewellery if anyone is interested.

I believe I made the common beginners mistake of adding too much bleach (and possibly hcl too) and essentially having a 500ml solution.

I believe this was nearly double too much which slowed down the dissolving as well as the dropping.

It was beautiful to watch the drop after 4 days of intermittent heating and cooling.

As I say I’m more than happy to discuss my experience with anyone!

Best regards

 

[FrugalRefiner]

I'm glad to hear the HCl / bleach worked to dissolve the foils. I may have to do some testing on that when I'm able.

Happy for your success!

Dave

 

[anachronism]

I'm glad to hear the HCl / bleach worked to dissolve the foils. I may have to do some testing on that when I'm able.

Happy for your success!

Dave

Oh it dissolves foils beautifully as any rookie refiner could tell you Dave. :roll: :roll:

 

[nickvc]

If you were working with 9 carat gold filled the sludge you mention could well be silver chloride .
You didn’t mention any testing using stannous which should reveal any gold in solution.

 

[Jmk88]

Thanks for the positive comments.

:wink:

I found with my second batch that the dissolving process was a lot quicker when I really cooled the gold chloride.

My only moan about everything, if you can call it such, is the filtering process which was quite time consuming.

But I think it’s like most things this game, keeps things as simple as you can. I find overthinking can lead to mistakes.

 

[Shark]

I am bad to say "the quickest way to success is to mimic success".

I try not to over think things when I can find good instructions from a place such as this forum. I am no chemist so I tend to follow proven methods. After many runs of the same materials you may start to see things that you can make small improvements on, but the basics very often remain the same.

Congratulations on your successes.

 

[Jmk88]

Thank you again!

Yea I completely agree; i also find a level of adaptation is required mentally as sometimes different parts of different advice need applying or not.

Looking at things black and white so to speak, doesn’t help I find.

 

[anachronism]

Thank you again!

Yea I completely agree; i also find a level of adaptation is required mentally as sometimes different parts of different advice need applying or not.

Looking at things black and white so to speak, doesn’t help I find.

Actually... The best advice IS to follow the instructions chapter and verse until you understand what and more importantly WHY you are doing something. When you're learning something you're really not in any position to be decided what parts need applying or not, you're just trying to make something work. This advice is from from harsh experience here as there were so many times I thought a step could be added or taken away, or that I could do something ever so slightly differently and it would improve things. It didn't an in most cases there was a real mess on my hands.

Then the epiphany was learning the chemistry behind the processes. That's a game changer. To be fair you have two choices:

1. Be a good operator who follows a process properly and gets great results without truly getting into the nuts and bolts of what's going on.
2. Learn the chemistry of why things are happening and then work out calculated improvements yourself.

You can't improve until you understand. Anyways sermon over- enjoy the ride. 8) 8)

Jon

 

[Jmk88]

Yes I completely agree.

I think it’s things like when dissolving; I had read initially that cooling the hcl/bleach allows the chlorine to stay in solution for example. However, when I had a large pot of foils, maybe 14 grams worth, this wasn’t the case.

I found by heating gently the gold dissolved at a much faster rate.

But I by no means think I’m there. Although my initial results are certainly better than I anticipated.

Another example is people stressing about peroxide; I haven’t seen evidence that additions now and then dissolve gold but I’m adding in 30-50ml quantities.

I guess the point I was trying to make is experience is key.

 

[GoldrecoveryNoob]

I'm new to this so I had gold foils mixed with grey sludge which I believe to be Copper (I) chloride. What I did was collect the foils, filters and grey stuff in a glass container and pour HCL. When I came back it was a black muck so I put it new batches of HCl but the filters wont dissolve. I found a PDF saying that Copper (I) Chloride can dissolve in HCL and then rinse with water till wash water was 100% clear. How should I rinse the muck?

Below attached is where I got the info from. Check page 9

 

[butcher]

Most chlorides are soluble, lead and silver are not, If a solution is saturated and diluted you can even have some insoluble copper I chlorides, and then you could have some gold that dissolved and precipitated back out of solution as a black powder.

Copper I chloride will dissolve in HCl.

lead chloride is fairly insoluble in cold water, but much more soluble in hot water (cooling of the wash water the needle like crystals will reform.

Silver chloride will not dissolve in HCl or in water hot or cold.