green auric cloride- now what?

[Ignatz61]

I have tried the search for this topic but can't find anything. I thought I read something about it a while ago.
I screwed up, while running a batch of AP on some fingers and some HCL-CL on some other foils I put clorine in my AP soloution!
By the time I poured it through a filter the gold all disolved as did some copper. Now I have this green solution with gold in it.

How can I get the Cu out? Iron?
or will the Gold still precipatate out with SMB?

A side Note--- when I poured the clorine in the HCL I did it outside and I set the container down on the grass in order to cap the clorine. The instant the container (plastic) touched the ground worms for a 3 ft radius around the container came shooting up out of the ground and went wiggling away from it as fast as they could! I did not spill any so it must have been the fumes, But the reaction was unbelievably fast.
Good to know for next fishing season :lol:

 

[OMG]

You should be okay. Once the chlorine is gone, either the remaining base metals will precipitate the gold back out, or SMB would. Gold doesn't like to be dissolved. You might find it hard to get out though. It will probably be a fine black powder in the mix.
So works don't like chlorine hey. That's funny. You may have come up with a new worm catching invention.

 

[istari9]

I have read the once the solution is saturated with copper the gold drops as a black powder in your filter. As stated above smb or just keep using the same AP and filter each batch save the filters and after incineration you can recover the lost gold. Steve has a post about this very problem. Maybe a month ago, ck it out.

Ray

 

[Ignatz61]

Thanks,
I have the container open and I will let it off gas the Cl for a while.
I put a piece of steel in and copper has been forming crystals on it.
I tried electroplating the copper out figuring if the steel forms crystals maybe some electricty would speed things up. I didn't let it go very long, seemed to just fizz at the anode turned the steel black.

I just thought of something, I thought the black was the steel reacting with the HCL, Is it possible the gold is plating out like in the sulfuric cell?

I will try to drop the Gold out today once I get the SMB.

 

[Jehu]

that black powder forming on the cathode should be copper. The problem is that the current density is too high and it's not making a fine copper bond to the cathode.

Try using SMB to first precipitate the gold out first and then drop a piece or two of Aluminium in. It should then precipitate out the copper as Al is more reactive than Cu. I know it works with copper sulfate so it might work with copper chlorate. Just make sure you get the gold out first of course.