Ok so i know i was messing with fire when i started but im not one to shy from a challenge and work never scared me. That being said i talked to a lot of people before attempting to put a 5.5 ounce ball of e-scrap into Aqua Regia-ish solution. I say ish because my HCL to nitric ratios were off. I had closer to 50/50 in my AR-ish.
The process was started by a friend and he did a good job of collecting gold fingers, pins, and whatever else from strictly computer scrap. He separated the collections and melted them into the 5.5 ounce ball that i was given.
I took the ball to a gold shop and a guy put it on a machine with a laser and told me it was 93% gold and 7% nickel. He also told me that the gold tends to center itself when melting and that my results only prove what is on the outside.
So i put it into a 50/50 solution of HCL 38% and Nitric 69.5% and heated it for 2 days on a hotplate until i could see the bubbling stop. My solution was a neon-green color when i checked it with SC for content. I got dark brown spots from testing and was looking to capitalize.
I put ice and a little squirt of Sulfuric into a clean beaker and poured in my solution. After letting it sit for a half a day i filtered it and got a few grams of light gray powder. Then i added SMB and waited. Nothing.
After researching online i added UREA from prospecting store. It fizzed over from the initial reaction and i lost some solution. I continued to add Urea until no more fizzing. Then i added SMB and got brown fizzing on top of solution and kept adding a little at a time and checking with SC until a day later i got no visible staining.
By this time my solution is now pitch black and i could not even see a laser out the other side of the solution. I let it sit for a day and filtered again. FYI: I rinse everything with distilled water and im using borosilicate glass- 2 1000ml straight beakers and a 2000ml straight beaker and carbon stirring rod. Also i did all of this in my garage under a fume hood in winter. Its like 40 degrees in here at night if not lower.
Back to my issue. The results of the filtering gave me a good amount of brown crystallized flakes. Between .5mm to 1.5mm in size and odly triangular and flat. It looks like its frozen. I hit it briefly with a heat gun and could see and smell the gassing from residual solution. Smelled Sulfur Ish i think. It could have been chlorinated. I wasnt trying to get a wiff and only smelled it after taking off my mask. It was not frozen and there was no visible change in the shape. Also i got an immediate settling from the last filtered solution. I got white powder on the bottom followed by my dark liquid then a greenish layer and finally my distilled water rinse on top.
How should i proceed? I am putting up pics. Thanks for your time.
Probably, the reason you aren't getting much response on your situation is two-fold:
(1) No one really wants to wade through that huge paragraph you wrote. Above, I have divided it into 9 paragraphs. I actually did this for my own benefit, since it was unreadable as you wrote it.
(2) Although you show promise, I can't find anything in your process that was done correctly. Everything you did was wrong, from start to finish. I think people read this and don't know how to start helping you. The first time I read your post, I thought you had made all this up and it was April Fools Day.
However, never fear. We'll get you going on the right track. You have wandered onto the only place on the internet that is able to provide you with guaranteed gold refining truth. This stuff isn't as easy as you think it is, by the way.
That 93% gold number you got is hilarious. Even 22 karat gold jewelry doesn't run that high. In reality, the best gold fingers and pins you're likely to find run between 0.5 -.6% gold - 1% is possible, but rare. The guy with the laser??? only missed it by 15,000%.
That sludge you got is likely a mixture of urea nitrate, cuprous chloride, metastannic acid, and a tiny bit (less than a gram) of gold powder, but who cares - if you do things right, you'll never see that stuff again. Were I you, I would start over and do it right this time.
Chemically, your biggest mistake was the 50/50 AR. This was the direct cause of the urea and SMB problems you had.
Melting this stuff made everything harder to do.
Actually, using AR was a bad choice to start with. 50/50 nitric would have dissolved everything but the gold.
I'm having trouble visualizing an "escrap ball". What is a "gold shop"?
Don't listen to anybody that doesn't own a gold refinery or isn't a long term member of this forum. Beware of youtube videos that aren't made by long term members of this forum.
Ok so i know i was messing with fire when i started but im not one to shy from a challenge and work never scared me. That being said i talked to a lot of people before attempting to put a 5.5 ounce ball of e-scrap into Aqua Regia-ish solution. I say ish because my HCL to nitric ratios were off. I had closer to 50/50 in my AR-ish. The process was started by a friend and he did a good job of collecting gold fingers, pins, and whatever else from strictly computer scrap. He separated the collections and melted them into the 5.5 ounce ball that i was given. I took the ball to a gold shop and a guy put it on a machine with a laser and told me it was 93% gold and 7% nickel. He also told me that the gold tends to center itself when melting and that my results only prove what is on the outside. So i put it into a 50/50 solution of HCL 38% and Nitric 69.5% and heated it for 2 days on a hotplate until i could see the bubbling stop. My solution was a neon-green color when i checked it with SC for content. I got dark brown spots from testing and was looking to capitalize. I put ice and a little squirt of Sulfuric into a clean beaker and poured in my solution. After letting it sit for a half a day i filtered it and got a few grams of light gray powder. Then i added SMB and waited. Nothing. After researching online i added UREA from prospecting store. It fizzed over from the initial reaction and i lost some solution. I continued to add Urea until no more fizzing. Then i added SMB and got brown fizzing on top of solution and kept adding a little at a time and checking with SC until a day later i got no visible staining. By this time my solution is now pitch black and i could not even see a laser out the other side of the solution. I let it sit for a day and filtered again. FYI: I rinse everything with distilled water and im using borosilicate glass- 2 1000ml straight beakers and a 2000ml straight beaker and carbon stirring rod. Also i did all of this in my garage under a fume hood in winter. Its like 40 degrees in here at night if not lower. Back to my issue. The results of the filtering gave me a good amount of brown crystallized flakes. Between .5mm to 1.5mm in size and odly triangular and flat. It looks like its frozen. I hit it briefly with a heat gun and could see and smell the gassing from residual solution. Smelled Sulfur Ish i think. It could have been chlorinated. I wasnt trying to get a wiff and only smelled it after taking off my mask. It was not frozen and there was no visible change in the shape. Also i got an immediate settling from the last filtered solution. I got white powder on the bottom followed by my dark liquid then a greenish layer and finally my distilled water rinse on top. How should i proceed? I am putting up pics. Thanks for your time.
