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I

IGutYa

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 18, 2010
Messages
58
Ok, so i made a sulfur cell to deplate the parts i been having trouble with & it worked wonderfully. but now i am stuck with 2 problems.

1) i have 2.37g of black gold dust that i cant get to dissolve into hcl+clorox hot or not.

2) the deplated parts have more gold inside of them. but i cannot get the outer metal to dissolve. ive tried H2SO4, AP, 30% H2O2 AP, HCl, & now Hot 70% nitric & RFNA and not one of them does a bit of damage to it. a density test comes rather close to Ti, but have any of you known radio connectors to be made of gold plated Ti??

i also realized that using RFNA on Ti (if that is what it is) can produce a pyrophoric reaction. so i quickly canceled that one after about 5 minutes.

Now ive read that Ti has no effect to AR, however i know that AR will dissolve this metal (leaving behind gold foil). it is only Slightly magnetic (to a super magnet stack), and it is silvery like nickel.

could it be Stainless Steel? all that Hot Nitric did was clean it & deplate any remaining gold. not one bit of the base metal will go into solution & no red-brown NO2 gas is made.

any ideas on how to digest it so i can get the gold from within? i would rather not make ar just for that.

i thought i had read hokes book, but i had it mixed up with the Handbook of Chemistry. Ah simple mistake. so i am now reading the correct one. im about half way threw but i figured i would pop the question in here too just to be safe.

Thanks for the help.
 
Seems like you spent more money than the little bit of gold your after is worth.
ive tried H2SO4, AP, 30% H2O2 AP, HCl, & now Hot 70% nitric & RFNA
Click to expand...
truely knowing when to stop the chase could be considered part of refining . No?.....
 
shyknee said:
Seems like you spent more money than the little bit of gold your after is worth.
ive tried H2SO4, AP, 30% H2O2 AP, HCl, & now Hot 70% nitric & RFNA
Click to expand...
truely knowing when to stop the chase could be considered part of refining . No?.....
Click to expand...



perhaps, but all in all it is a Learning experience. you can only learn so much without doing.

really ive only uesd about $10 in chemicals so its not that big of a loss.
 
30% h2o2 can be made by boiling 3% h2o2. so $3 worth (wally-world) boiled down is PLENTY.
RFNA costs about $15 per pound to make (that is $6 per lb of kno3 x2 + $5 per half gal of H2SO4)
then add a little water to make the 70% nitric ( 0 $ )
hcl is $3 a gallon at lowes

and i only used a total of 100ml RFNA, ~500ml HCl, ~800ml H2O2, and 300g of KNO3 (nitric distillation, got 150ml RFNA), putting me at less than $5 in chemicals.

honestly, i dont see the costs here?
 
Palladium said:
Cost money to get an edu- ma- cation.
Click to expand...

you can spend years being edu-ma-cated and never learn what you need to know. ive had a chemistry class & have a gen. chemistry book that i have read 3 times now. i also have a nice book on metallurgy, plus all your books (Forum). not to mention the Fact you dont need a chemical background to be a refiner. you learn by doing.

i can study all the books i can get my hands on, but until i go and DO, ill never have a good understanding.
 
what was your feed stock ( pictures would help )
then show us the feed stock after stripping
did you manage to retrieve any gold at all from your HCL+clorox ?
how many pounds of feed stock did you strip?
these are good questions you will need to answer so that some good help can come your way?
my earlier comment " truely knowing when to stop the chase could be considered part of refining . No?....." was from something I learned early on.
good luck
stay safe
 
i started off with 1.102 lbs (500g) of plated parts. from that i got 2.37g black powder from the sulfur cell (external only). that black powder in hcl+clorox does nothing. hot or not. i did a stannous chloride test on the hcl/clorox & it was negative so i filtered the black powder to save & disposed of the hcl+clorox.

i understood your first comment. and i feel it. haha. but when i look at how much ive spent, it really dont hurt that bad (for now).

as for the pictures....

What i started with (not the full 500g):
http://www.mediafire.com/i/?mo1f0ynzhzj

Before & After Sulfur Cell:
http://www.mediafire.com/i/?mlnza2xzzzj
http://www.mediafire.com/i/?lj4trymnjnz
http://www.mediafire.com/i/?nztzzzdfhwr ( one is partially deplated )

After Sulfur Cell:
http://www.mediafire.com/i/?n4nwqjvogrl

Before & After showing inner Gold:
http://www.mediafire.com/i/?ngmojn3g2z4

Nitric washes:
http://www.mediafire.com/i/?yihllanzcvo
http://www.mediafire.com/i/?j2zzzigmifw


New & Post Acid Peroxide:
http://www.mediafire.com/i/?4wwd1c0gcvm


Now i did try AR before i made the sulfur cell as a means of deplating as AP & nitric had no effect on the New. the AR quickly digested the parts leaving me with a golden mud in the bottom of the AR (i managed to get a little sample of the mud too) & upon filtering i found the following:

After AR:
http://www.mediafire.com/i/?wozwgjmgni2

Before & After AR:
http://www.mediafire.com/i/?dndzlmmgjit

Foil after AR:
http://www.mediafire.com/i/?lzidqdxt0y2


The AR photos were of only 20 individual parts as a test run. first it was 20 in AP, then the same 20 in nitric, then added a little hcl to the nitric to make AR & that finally did it. which is what i am considering doing with the nitric leftover from the hot washes in the first photos, after filtering the gold foils first.
 
shyknee said:
however i know that AR will dissolve this metal (leaving behind gold foil).
Click to expand...
No .AR will not leave behind gold foil.
Click to expand...


see that is what i expected too. but there was foil left in the bottom. as seen in the photos.

i would imagine the AR was totally saturated by the time it reached the inner foil. since the outer foil was gone, i figured the brown mud was it & was pushed out by the base metal (still unsure as i lost this first bit due to bumping acid). the stannous chloride test was Positive here.
 
looks like nitric did leave you with foils after dissolving the nickel-plate(or silver-plate) the color of the nitric says nickel-plate.
with a spray bottle use distilled water to knock the foils free one by one.
then use AR on the foils.
use AR on the black powder from the cell.
500g of pins will have alot more gold than 500g of these connectors and you can expect the pins will produce about 1g this may give you an idea of the total out come(total gold to expect) of your experiments
 
these are military radio connectors from india. the nitric wash was after running them threw the sulfur cell. what you see is the foil the sulfur cell missed. the first time i did a nitric wash on them (before the sulfur cell), they had no reaction to the nitric.

they are press fit together, and contain just as much gold on the inside as the outside. as all the parts are double side plated inside-and-out & press fit.

so far i have a total of 2.52g of black cell powder & foils. not counting what is in the nitric wash or the internal (estimated ~2.5g).

so if it is nickel, why wont it digest into the nitric? it will gladly digest if i add some hcl. the nitric shouldnt be saturated as it has only dissolved about 1g of metal, if that.

is AR the best way (at this point) to extract the inner foils?
ill AR the foils & the black powder tomorrow, should i do them separate or will they be fine in the same batch of AR?
 
In your sulfuric stripping cell what concentration of sulfuric acid were you using?

If using AR on these it is important that all base metals be digested completely. The crusty coating on the remains you show is likely much of your gold. Foils remaining after AR indicates that one or the other of your acids were depleted.

From your photos I see you are working in a canning jar this is risky as some chemical reactions can create enough heat to break these.

Nitric acid, HCL/Cl, and AR, any of these solutions will work better when you can heat them. A second hand glass coffee pot in good condition is a better choice to process in. Then perhaps you can run some of your processes to completion.

I feel you are going in many directions with these but missing some of the important fine points.
 
IGutYa said:
these are military radio connectors from india. the nitric wash was after running them threw the sulfur cell. what you see is the foil the sulfur cell missed. the first time i did a nitric wash on them (before the sulfur cell), they had no reaction to the nitric.

they are press fit together, and contain just as much gold on the inside as the outside. as all the parts are double side plated inside-and-out & press fit.

so far i have a total of 2.52g of black cell powder & foils. not counting what is in the nitric wash or the internal (estimated ~2.5g).

so if it is nickel, why wont it digest into the nitric? it will gladly digest if i add some hcl. the nitric shouldnt be saturated as it has only dissolved about 1g of metal, if that.

is AR the best way (at this point) to extract the inner foils?
ill AR the foils & the black powder tomorrow, should i do them separate or will they be fine in the same batch of AR?
Click to expand...

Since you added yourlittle bit of HCL to your nitric you might have hard time getting rid of all your nitric to recover your gold.

I feel it will be easier for you to stick to the HCL/Clorox road to disolve your powder and flakes. You might want to try HCL/calcium hypochlorite(pools shock) that way you are not diluting your HCL with the water from the clorox. Heat your solution to about 140F and slowly add the dry chlorine, stirring constantly. You will think your getting now where but then you material will go into solution. Make sure you let it set in the sun to burn off the excess chlorine when you are finished.

I don't know if this will work but years ago I soaked some 3/4" 316 SS bolts in some HCL, I forgot about them for a few days and when I came back to them the HCL had eaten the chromium out of the bolts leaving very light swiss cheese looking bolts.
 
qst24know
I found IGutYa's statement perplexing
i started off with 1.102 lbs (500g) of plated parts. from that i got 2.37g black powder from the sulfur cell (external only). that black powder in hcl+clorox does nothing. hot or not. i did a stannous chloride test on the hcl/clorox & it was negative so i filtered the black powder to save & disposed of the hcl+clorox.
Click to expand...
Thank for your help on this " that black powder in hcl+clorox does nothing. hot or not "
 
It seems to me, (and this may only be my perception) Igutya is rushing all these processes, and running none to completion.

It is difficult to find a solution when so many directions are pursued at once.
 
I have ran hundreds of these RF connectors through the sulfuric cell and they never looked like yours do in the pic's. They allways came out a very uniform silver color due to the nickel plating under the gold. Please explain your cell setup, I'm thinking thats where
your problem lies.
 
qst42know said:
Reverse polarity and acid concentration are two big issues to check.
Click to expand...


i set up the sulfuric cell just as lasersteeve's video's show. i used the same Roto drain cleaner (98% h2so4) with the same lead cathode (negative to battery charger) with the anode (positive) hooked up to each individual part as i couldnt get them to go as one big batch.

getting the parts to deplate with the sulfur cell was no problem.
 
shyknee said:
Thank for your help on this " that black powder in hcl+clorox does nothing. hot or not "
Click to expand...


i tried first cold, then brought nearly to a boil & held. the end result was a yellowish-green acid that tests Negative for gold with stannous chloride & all the black powder sitting in the bottom.

i have no doubts that AR will be able to take care of it.
 

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