Electrochemistry Gold from DC v with Liquid fire

[ryobie1]

I am new to the forum and the PM scene. I have been reading and searching alot. First I want to say I am not trying to do this for profit! What I am after is gold in my pocket I can brag about recovering.

I made a cell with a computer power supply, copper screen, Liquid fire (H2SO4) and lead. After much searching and reading I thought I was ready. I de-plated about 700 grams of laptop parts, pins and gold plated materials with the cell.

In the bottom of my acid I found the black powder I was expecting. I diluted the the contents of my cell (slowly) with water and let the powder settle, decanted the liquid and repeted about a dozen times. The powder is still black and I can not figure out how to go from the black powder to the gold dust. I thought I could do this with out AR or Acid clorox. It don't expect .99 pure my first time around but This is just fine black powder.

How can I get from the "black powder" the the gold dust? I am sorry if this question has beed asked over and over. I konw The answer is here but I can't find it.

 

[butcher]

That is (most likely) gold dust; it just has some impurity's you will still want to deal with.

You have done the hard part by recovering this gold, now why not do the fun part and refine it.

It sounds like you may need a little more reading to prepare you for the next process.

Your on your way to a shinny button of gold do not give up now.

 

[ryobie1]

That sounds promicing. Thank you for the encouragement. I think the thing to do would be continue with what I am doing untill I have enough worth refinning. (fingers crossed) This has become a very fun hooby for me with great interest from all my friends.

Would AP would do the trick? I was hoping to stay away from AR for now. I am going to make AP soon because I have fingers and touchpads to play with from all the laptops I'm tearing apart. Also I would like a way to test my solutions for gold but I am not sure what to buy. I'm reading about people testing their liquids but none I have read mentioned the kit needed to do it.

 

[butcher]

Laser Steve's web site and posts will help you out here, his search engine button works great for finding what you need while studying your processes, look into recovering the powders from the cell, washing them and the Hydrochloric acid / sodium hypochlorite (bleach) process, it works well and much simpler than aqua regia (household bleach is much cheaper than nitric acid, and the excess chlorine is easier to eliminate).

Also remember to spend time reading Hoke's book (here is where your skills and understanding will make your gold shine, and learning to use the testing procedure’s will keep you from throwing away that hard earned gold



Saving the powders that others cannot tell that they are gold is just like having your gold in a tight safe.

Look for Hoke’s book (download in book section), look up stannous chloride in Hokes book, and the forum make stannous chloride from tin (95%) solder ( look at lead free solders, no flux or burn off flux)(hardware store) and HCl.

 

[Geo]

I am new to the forum and the PM scene. I have been reading and searching alot. First I want to say I am not trying to do this for profit! What I am after is gold in my pocket I can brag about recovering.

I made a cell with a computer power supply, copper screen, Liquid fire (HCL) and lead. After much searching and reading I thought I was ready. I de-plated about 700 grams of laptop parts, pins and gold plated materials with the cell.

In the bottom of my acid I found the black powder I was expecting. I diluted the HCL slowly with water and let the powder settle, decanted the liquid and repeted about a dozen times. The powder is still black and I can not figure out how to go from the black powder to the gold dust. I thought I could do this with out AR or Acid clorox. It don't expect .99 pure my first time around but This is just fine black powder.

How can I get from the "black powder" the the gold dust? I am sorry if this question has beed asked over and over. I konw The answer is here but I can't find it.

im sure i understand what you meant but for the new members that might follow this thread the following correction should be made. Liquid fire is concentrated sulfuric acid and not HCL acid. you mentioned using hcl in your process and this can be misleading if not dangerous. see if you can edit to show correct terms.

 

[ryobie1]

Thank you for the advice on the stannous chloride for testing.

I have read posts by Laser Steve. He has a bunch. Infact his youtube video of the Reverse electroplating is what turned me on to the idea of recovering gold.
I have a lot more to read. It seems the more I read the easy-er it gets to understand.

I'm not totally convinced I have recovered any gold yet. I touched the black powder and it is more like soot from smoke than gold.

 

[Harold_V]

I'm not totally convinced I have recovered any gold yet. I touched the black powder and it is more like soot from smoke than gold.

It will not resemble gold. It is too finely divided. If you've recovered gold with a sulfuric stripping cell, the gold is dissolved at the anode, and self precipitates as it migrates away. It precipitates as miniscule particles, bordering on being colloidal. Such small particles do not reflect light well, and it is totally diffused, so what you see is black, not yellow.

Harold

 

[ryobie1]

Now I just need to make it gold color again so I can hand it to my wife.

 

[Harold_V]

That's correct, which can be accomplished as simply as melting, but don't advise that if your objective is pure gold. It should be rinsed well, then dissolved, filtered and precipitated, then washed. You may even wish to do that twice, depending on your objective. Only you can address what is right for you. Were it mine, it would receive the double refining. Doesn't mean that's right--and it doesn't mean it's wrong---just my particular way of looking at the matter.

Harold

 

[butcher]

Her eyes will sparkle when you spend the time to make that button shine.

 

[ryobie1]

I am happy with a gold-ish button for now. I'm keeping every microgram I recover. It will be fun to look at the purity of the buttons as I progress.
Ment to say: Wife will be keeping. I have a lot more reding to do before I refine it.

Thank you guys here again for the wealth of free knowledge. I will be a novice very soon.

I have been running the cell for a while and have about 1.9kg of de-plated materials. I put some gold plated chain in it. Turned on the power..... and nothing! Left it in there for 1/2hr and it didn't even dull the chain. The cahin conducts electricity and I even tried 1 link with out the copper basket. I have not tested it in any way but the seller was reputable. A magnet does stick to the chain.

 

[ryobie1]

I had the chain tested with a stone and acid. It is 10k gold plated chain but it will not de-plate in my cell. I have 100ft of this chain and would love to de-plate it. Any ideas?

 

[butcher]

This would be somewhat of a hard question for me to answer; I will give my best shot.

If the chain was 10 k gold (not just plated in gold),(high copper content), deplating may slow to crawl, (because of copper layer passivation).this is just one guess. (Reversing polarity for brief period may break the pasivated coating if this is case).

Gold plating has already removed and you see brass (high copper content) which looks like gold. This is just another guess.

maybe clip off a few links of chain and do test using nitric acid (in test tube) to see if any gold remains from links in test, if powder remains’ from links adding some Hcl and a drop of nitric, warm solution this will put gold into solution (if any) which could then be tested using the stannous chloride test, this may help you solve the mystery.

Many times we can not tell what is going on without testing, as just looking at something and guessing can be deceiving.

 

[ryobie1]

Thank you for the advise about posable coating. It made me heat to red some of the chain. After that it de-plated like normal. Still no idea what it was and I could not detect anything burning off and the cooled chain looked the same as the untreaed. A little heat fixed it. Thanx again.

 

[nickvc]

Much very thinly plated chain has a plastic coating applied by eletro plating to protect the thin layer of gold, if your buying this sort of chain look for the thinest profile you can as the gold % is much higher on thin profiles than on heavy ones.

 

[ryobie1]

I don't understand. Are you saying 50ft of 2mm x2mm chain has more gold than 50ft 8mm x 8mm chain? I would think the larger chain has more surface area. Please help me to understand.

 

[goldsilverpro]

Anyone know what the green check mark on this thread means? Maybe only the mods can see it.

 

[jimdoc]

Anyone know what the green check mark on this thread means? Maybe only the mods can see it.

It says topic is solved when you mouse over it.

Jim

 

[philddreamer]

"Anyone know what the green check mark on this thread means? Maybe only the mods can see it."

I have the same question... Its the first time I see one, thought it was a new
feature of sort. Tried clicking, but like Jim said, it says "topic is solved".

Phil

 

[slickdogg]

Gives the topicstarter the option of accepting one answer and mark the topic as solved. And mark the topic as unsolved again.

thread creator can make his topic solved once he got his answer.