Non-Chemical Help on dirty Aqua Regia solution with Clorox

[butcher]

How does your stannous chloride test react now?

Iron can give a yellow and green to a brown chloride in solution, usually on strong heating you will see a red brown powder of iron hydroxide which becomes insoluble in solution.

Hoke's book talks of how you may be fooled into thinking iron is gold in solution, and describes how to test for iron on page 100.

I do not know if you have iron, but as yellow as your solution looked in the photo it did not look like you had much copper in solution (copper will give solutions a green color very easily).

Was there iron in your original materials?

 

[goldpete]

yes buddy , all seems like it still might be ok . what you have to do now is filter the solution. dont be concerned about the colour.............the last solution i heated turned black , i thought i had burnt it but when i filtered it , a beautiful golden colour came out ,, it was like magic. i couldnt believe gold coloured liquid could come from black horrible looking liquid

 

[robertpdickson]

Well guys; it did turn out good. Wow was that a learning curve! Again I really appreciate everyone's help.

The final result was a black powder (I thought I had burnt it as well) but filters nicely to a bit of gold cake.

 

[goldpete]

Well guys; it did turn out good. Wow was that a learning curve! Again I really appreciate everyone's help.

The final result was a black powder (I thought I had burnt it as well) but filters nicely to a bit of gold cake.

good job buddy

 

[tomiyet]

Hello seniors, I stumble on this forum while searching for a solution to my problem on recovery gold from aqua regia
I soaked scrap cell phones boards in aqua regia over nite and I filter it but I was left
a cloudy yellowish solution. I try to decant after some time but still thick yellowish, I added urea but
d color remain d same. Pls any way out. 140 pieces of boards were soaked

 

[butcher]

tomiyet,
If this were whole cell phone board you could have a mess in aqua regia, normally you would want to remove other base metals before using aqua regia.

The tin in solution from the solder on the circuit boards can rob you of your gold.

Base metals will cement gold from solution if there is any metal remaining un-dissolved, it can leave gold as fine black powder, or if everything dissolves it can make recovery of gold more difficult to remove from solution, by normal means, also you say nothing about removing nitric acid from the solution, or testing your solution for dissolved values.

At this point you have a problem and want help, the best help you will get is to be able to understand how to recover and refine properly, it would take a thousand answers to tell you everything you need to learn, but you are lucky there is a book free download in the book section that can help you begin to understand the many things you need to know it is called Hoke's book, it is very easy to read and understand, she will not tell you how to do cell phones but she will teach you everything you need to know to work on any materials you run across as long as you understand the principles she teaches.

At this point you need to put a thick bar of clean copper metal into the solution let it sit in a safe place cover it but do not seal it so gas can escape, this will cement anything of value out of solution, do not throw anything away (at this point you do not know where the values are).

Go to the book section and download Hokes book (links are also in many of the members signature lines), and start reading Hoke's (you will read about cementing with metals in her book), also read the safety section and dealing with waste.

Do not expect to get gold for a while, spend time studying and collecting scrap materials to recover the values from after you understand how, other wise you will just lose your money or values by not knowing how to recover or refine, we can help but first you need an understanding of how and why, this you will get after a lot of homework, we cannot tell you how to take every step you will need to take in this journey, but after you learn to walk we can help with the things that can trip you as you walk, and after you begin to learn to walk the forum will help you run.

Also be prepared this can be a longer journey than you think it is at this point.
there is a lot to learn in the art of recovery and refining of metals, it is not hard but takes time to learn, there are many small details that can trip you if you do not understand them, Hokes book will teach you how to recover or refine without tripping all of the time and throwing away the gold or other precious metals, and what to do any why, and how to refine what you recover to high purity, and how to keep from losing the values in your solutions, and teaches you how to tell when there is or is not values in the solutions.

 

[tomiyet]

I've downloaded the hokes book. I will try and read

 

[butcher]

when you come to the experiments, work on them they will teach you many of the things you need, notice how she pre-treat's materials, or sometimes uses different processes for different types of materials, eliminates troublesome metals like tin, and removes base metals before dissolving values, practice the testing of metals in solution like testing for gold using stannous chloride.

In her book she may say to boil nitric (this is a misuse of the word), notice she uses a steam bath which would not get hot enough to boil a solution of aqua regia, the correct word should have been evaporate not boil, as boiling an aqua regia solution would waste values, with evaporation the metals stay in the heated reaction pot.

tomiyet,
Good job beginning to study, you will be getting closer to melting a nice pure gold button, than you would stumbling in the dark and asking questions.
If you do not understand something and need help the forum will be happy to assist where we can.

 

[gold4mike]

Butcher said "Iron can give a yellow and green to a brown chloride in solution, usually on strong heating you will see a red brown powder of iron hydroxide which becomes insoluble in solution."

I believe I have a solution that now contains iron hydroxide and gold as powders on the bottom.

Is there a way to remove the iron hydroxide or can I simply dissolve the gold away from it?

 

[butcher]

I find the brick red iron hydroxide powders almost impossible to dissolve into acid and will not go into solution much at all, while the gold will.

 

[tomiyet]

Many thanks. I've been reading the book and quite interesting. Kudos to people in this forum, since my 17yrs of recycling this forum is the best I have come across.I wish I've not soaked my whole cell phones in the aqua regia. Nevertheless I believe I've come to a place of learning where resourceful people are.

 

[butcher]

tomiyet,

Keep reading the forum is a gold mine full of good nuggets of valuable information.

 

[cableman]

Sorry to get off subject but I am new at this and was reading your thread since it applied to me. I ended up with the same yellow solution but I know I had about 14 ounces of gold in it because it tested real black with stannous and I started with about 7 of the older ceramic cpu's. My main problem was ignorance. Instead of using nitric to dissolve everything off--filter the liquid off---then mix aqua regia to melt the remaining gold and then precipitating with SMB; I wanted to do it all at once so I mixed up muriatic acid (from Lowe's in place of hydrochloric), ammonium nitrate pellets in the place of nitric acid since it is so expensive to get with hazmat shipping and all, then I heated it all together with the broken up cpu's. I just knew that I would end up with a few good grams of gold even if I had to experiment a little but ignorance knows no bounds. I ended up with crystals that I didn't know what they were or what to do with and the whole thing goaded me because I could see gold flakes all around in the coffee pot I was using. The crystals got real bad and since I didn't know what to do I set it aside for a while until I could figure it out and started working on loosening up plated foils. Well, about the time I figured out what to do I had used my hot plate earlier and I guess it hadn't cooled down enough because when I put that glass jar on that burner I heard a crack and knew what was coming. Luckily none of those acids are flamable you just don't wan
't to breathe them and I had a bucket of sand directly under the bench where it happened. As soon as I picked up that jar by the top, the bottom fell out and about a quart of liquid with all my gold filled into my hot plate and all over a rug I keep on the wood table to help with spills. I was sick to lose that much gold and still had a mess to clean up and another hot plate to get. I learned my lesson good that day but what I wanted to ask you guys about is if you do manage to screw up a batch, what is the best way to just let it all come back to metal so you can start again? Throw a piece of copper or steel in or what? Once the nitric is exhausted then you won't have any chemicals there to make a reaction. Don't sweat the answer too much if you don't know right off, I just want to know for future knowledge. Seems like we always make the same mistake twice before it's all over with.

Another tip I heard about. If you were dissolving cpu's that salt you thought you had might have been silver. It looks more cloudy like and is hard to pin down like to filter or pour off. Just precipitate it with some table salt or ammonium hydroxide---just a bit mind you. It can also be that God awful anhydrous copper(II) sulphate crystals which happens a lot because of all the copper you are dissolving. If you catch the white flakes first starting just add a little more HCL. Sometimes you can add a good bit of warm water and heat it up to dissolve but that kind of decision is made on what all is still in there and what you still want to do with it. If It happens to you again and you get the nice yellow looking liquid and are just sure it's got dissolved gold in it but won't drop; it is probably still some acid around in it. Let it sit out in the warm sun all morning and see if you don't start seeing some gold precipitation with nothing but the help of the sun. If you think of a real simple method for me to drop all my metal back into one piece so I can start over please send me a note. I would be most appreciative. Good luck with your gold. I have been doing real well with gold fingers and pins but I am looking into a way to get the gold off the boards easier. I know there is an easy way I just cant remember it and it won't come to me.

 

[butcher]

cableman,

I know you already know what I normally say read Hokes and then do the experiments, keep studying the forum, it takes time and there are many things to learn, you will make many mistakes (and have a few broken pots).

a catch basin can catch a spill.

If you have a pot crack on the stove do not move it, grab your suction tool and remove the solution to a holding jar.

Getting the values back out of sand and dirt is a long hard task, you can recover some of it, one of the problems is that the iron or other metals in the sand or dirt will cement out the gold, the material needs collected dried crushed to powders and incinerated, leached of base metals, if your dirt is high in iron as mine is (you have a costly chore), after iron and other base metals have been removed then you can put gold into solution and separate it from the sand, you will still most likely have a leach loaded with base metals in solution that you will need to use copper to cement your gold from...


Keep ammonia or ammonium hydroxide out of any of your solutions, unless you truly understand the chemical reactions, explosive compounds could result from one mistake.

ammonia solutions will not precipitate silver.

 

[solar_plasma]

I know I had about 14 ounces of gold in it because it tested real black with stannous and I started with about 7 of the older ceramic cpu's.

Just trying to understand....you got 14 ounces out of 7 cpu's and you knew, it was 14 ounces, because your stannous test was black?