HCL/CL processing

[futurama140]

To start off, I have been reading Hoke's, and I am just making a dent in it, but I am familiar with several of the processes used such as AP/AR, sulphuric cells, and really most of the basics of the methods.

I did search but I didn't quite see what I was wondering, which is: Is it a viable option to dissolve the plating from MILSPEC and other fully plated non-ferrous pins in HCL/CL? It looks to be much quicker, because it seems to me that any other dissolved BMs in the HCL/CL that precipitate besides/along with the gold (fuzzy on the precipitation, but i'm reading) would have such a surface area that AP would work like a charm for a final refining before melting into a button.

Excuse my ignorance, but i dont believe i can understand the academic material without posing some questions about practical implementations.
Thanks!

(edited for punctuation ambiguity)

 

[Barren Realms 007]

You have to look at gold plating on pins and most any device in this manner. When gold is plated onto an item it is not applied to the item as a whole sheet of gold at one time. The gold is plated onto the item as nano particals. And there are always spaces between the particals of the gold plating.

Therefor there are spaces for the solution's to work through the gold plating to reach the base metals.

HCl/Cl is a weak dissolver of base metals and gold compared to other solutions such as AR. It takes quite a bit more HCl/Cl to dissolve metal (base & gold) than it does AR.

The HCl/Cl can start dissolving the gold but at the same time it starts working through the spaces of the gold plating and starts attacking the base metals.

The tendency of most solutions is for the base metals to be dissolved first and then the gold to be dissolved last.

This is in theory. Practical experience is your best teacher though.

 

[futurama140]

OK well I think i'll just keep using tons of cucl2 until i can afford to build the sulphuric cell then. I hear it's not efficient for pins like these but gotta work with what I have.

 

[Barren Realms 007]

OK well I think i'll just keep using tons of cucl2 until i can afford to build the sulphuric cell then. I hear it's not efficient for pins like these but gotta work with what I have.

Patience is your best friend in this field.

 

[Pantherlikher]

It's been a while but I still have pins dissolving in my waste stream.
I use HCL/CL to dissolve gold off plates, glassware, etc. It's free so just have to wash dishes...Yuck.
I also have done other small batches of stuff so I have a slow cooker for waste acid. I have lbs. of pins and not yet the safe room to set mush up, like a cell. So I put a bunch of pins in to drop any PMs in spent acid.
2 birds 1 stone toss. A/P goes in there as well so it's a nice use of pins to expel PMs and dissolve pin base metals at the same time.

I have thought about trying HCL/CL for plated pins and have watched a couple few pins disappear. Yes, it does start to dissolve gold but then stops and attacks the base metals. Leaving gold powder and flakes behind.
A/P is better as it will dissolve more base metals and you can collect nice shinny flakes.

B.S.
A question unasked is the only stupid one.