Gold gone forever?

[bob2064]

Hello everyone.

For the past few days I have been cleaning a batch of dust. Due to time restraints i have been letting the dust soak in water, the next day draining out that water and adding new water, and repeated on the 3rd day. The day following that I drained out the water and added HCL. When i did this it had a reaction, and smell of HCL-CL and all my dust disappeared immediately. And the solution turned yellow.

I assumed it was the same reaction as HCL-CL (maybe chlorine from tap water) and that i could just precipitate it again. However after testing the solution, it came back negative for gold.

The only thing i can think of is that it wasn't gold at all, but before precipitating that solution it tested positive for gold. And after a few water baths the dust went from a dark brown to a more gold like yellow...almost the color of beach sand.

But my question is....is the gold in that solution lost??

I attached a picture of a similar batch, but not the one that failed me.

 

[butcher]

If it was gold it would not be lost, and if for some reason you had enough chlorine in your water to dissolve the gold, heating the solution would drive out chlorine, try that and retest the solution, if positive for gold in solution, you could use SMB or ferrous sulfate to precipitate the gold, if all else failed, the gold would also cement out with copper, again that is if it is gold that the HCl dissolved.