Help with a mess

[lubovgeorge]

I'm new guys and gals, be gentle :lol: Last summer I bought the Shor kit and tried it out on a lot mixed together of pins,cpu's and some other odds and ends. Anyway, I got side tracked and the stuff sat all winter. Anyway, I recently got back into this wonderful but frustrating hobby. I looked into my plastic container and sort of leaned it over to look past the solution to see whats in the bottom of the container. It seemed to have formed light green crystals with yellow spots all over them. I called Shor and they were not pleasant people to talk to. So I watched some of the awesome videos on how to recover gold and seen (I think his name is Steve) add muratic and clorox together so I did and mixed it with the crystals. Now its back to a dark green liquid with a urin yellow color around the edges, oh, and a nasty smell with it! What I got from Shor was the green crystals was copper and I used too much persipitant. Is there anyway to recover this mess? I hope somebody can understand this. Can somebody help? Thanks, George M.

 

[nicknitro]

George,

Sounds like my first mess I made. Unfortunately, it is really hard to recover your gold from this slurry. It would help if you added details as to the materials that were processed " odds and ends".

Did you check the original solution for any PM with a stannous chloride test?

If nothing other than pins and cpu's, and there is no gold in solution, you could probably filter the solution, incinerate, then start over again.

I assume you expected gold flakes from this original process with your Shor solutions. If so, I deffinitely wouldn't have gone with HCL and Chlorox, as this will dissolve the flakes and put them in solution with all the copper,zinc, etc. The gold will most likely slowly precipitate out along with all these mentioned metals making it like finding a needle in a hay-stack.

If you have't already done all the crystals from your original solution, which I also expect to be copper nitrate, first look into incineration. From there, warm water wash, then you may be able to recover your original gold flakes with like a HCL wash to put only the copper / zinc into solution.

Good Luck, Welcome, and expect a lot more help,

Nick

 

[nicknitro]

George,

Sorry, seems I recall now the Shor system is more like poorman's AR which would be dissolveing everything as well.

Sorry for misleading you.

Nick :roll:

 

[butcher]

One way, You can always use a metal to replace the values from solution, such as copper, acid will dissolve the copper and when it can not hold any more, the gold, silver and PGM's would precipitate out, onto some of the copper,this powder can be incenerated to oxidize base metals, washed well in acids (I would use hot HCl for any tin, and boiling water for lead) and filter then re roast, and nitric for any silver and Pd, then Aqua regia for gold and PGM's (if using HCl/bleach for gold and PGM's eliminate any nitric in powder first), after all gold and PGm's if any dissolved, evaporate off nitric, 3 evaporations to syrup, Hcl to wet in between evaporations(Harolds trick of gold button works great), dilute at least 3 times with water, then use your chemical precipitant of choice(SMB, sodium sulfite, ferrous sulfate , SO2, Etc.), testing solutions with stannous chloride to see if your gold is hiding in the liquids, ammonium chloride and sodium chlorate if PGM's