Help please to recover lost gold

[oldtimmer]

I am working with friend that has a 40 acre farm and no close neighbors. We have read most of the forum and most of Hoke's book.

Today I found almost a gallon of dark greenish liquid that has a yellowish tint on the side of the white bucket. This is because my friend got a little caried away and broke up 50 CPU's and dissolved them in AR and not Nitric acid as per instructions.

I took 2 beakers of 300ml of the solution, one I used urea but got no foaming action, even when heated. The other one I tried to boil down, add HCl and boil down. I then tried some SMB in both. Aproximately 4gr SMB in water for each container. I did not get any gold to drop. The one that was boiled down turned to a pale blue/green color, had the smell of sulphur, but not gold to drop.

What do we need to do to recover from where we are. I have read of how to recover, but could not find the reply on how to proceed.

Thanks, in advance, Dave

 

[butcher]

be sure to eliminate the nitric from solution, evaporation works best in my opinion, then from dilute solution your SMB should precipitate gold, you should smell SO2 gas from solution.

 

[Harold_V]

Today I found almost a gallon of dark greenish liquid that has a yellowish tint on the side of the white bucket. This is because my friend got a little caried away and broke up 50 CPU's and dissolved them in AR and not Nitric acid as per instructions.

Dave,

What it looks like doesn't matter. How it tests does. Have you tested the solution (stannous chloride) to ascertain that it contains gold? If all of the base metal wasn't dissolved when AR was introduced, it's entirely possible that all of the gold is still in the container with the pieces, but may not be recognizable as gold. It will have precipitated as a dark powder, possibly black in color.

Before making any further attempts, determine where the gold is. That will save you from chasing your tail.

Harold