I'm wondering if anyone could shed some light on this for me? I've been trying to find an answer on here for the last few days.
In the first jar was, the dirty gold powder from the original button that I dissolved in this thread. I had kept it in a mason jar for a while, still in the solution it was precipitated in. The lid rusted and iron possibly got into it. (approx 0.7g dirty powder, that came from IC chips)
I had a second jar with AP in it (lid rusted also, possible iron), that had approx 31g of mixed material.
The material/powder in the second jar, started out as a mix of...
9g of dirty powder left over from ~4lbs plated pins
~1g from ~3/4 pound gold fingers
Around 1 pound of small plastic/mylar strips that come off the side of a flat screen TV "screens", which have gold fingers incased in plastic or glue) After incinerating, the strips weighed ~22g
After filtering the jar with AP in it,
the total material from both jars combined was ~7.8g
I put the wet filter with the powder/material into a melting dish. There was a little plastic/glue left in it.
I added some borax, then began to re-incinerate, but ran out of fluid about halfway through. Some of it barely melted and I know some of the coffee filter was still in there "burnt".
I don't know why, but I decided to try and dissolve the material with HCl/Cl.
Made a fresh batch of stannous, and tested the solution. Negative. Added a couple more mls of Cl over the next couple hours. Still negative. The solution was VERY dark green. Total amount was approx 20ml HCL, 30ml CL.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I came back the next day and tested the solution. Negative. I'm guessing there was alot of copper etc., still in it and a possibly a tiny bit of iron, which pushed out any gold.
I filtered the material and put the negative solution into my stockpot, just incase there actually "was" anything in it.
I used a separate beaker for the powder/material. Not sure of the weight for this, which now also has some burnt filter in it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Day 3, I tried HCl/Cl again, slightly lighter green solution. Stannous positive for gold finally. I filtered the solution, rinsed it down and tested it again. Negative. :?: Ok, I must have diluted it too much.
Approx 50ml HCl, 50ml Cl and ~60ml tap water. Total solution ~160ml.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Day 4 (today) Tested negative. I figured I would try to drop the material out, to see if I did have any gold that was getting a "false positive" from iron etc.
I put sand on my hotplate, to evaporate the solution from 160ml to ~75ml, to remove the CL so the SMB works. (Hotplate with sand worked really well)
Stannous showed positive again. It looked extremely black, so I let it sit there for about 10 minutes and rinsed it off. Nice purple stain
After the solution cooled back down, I took SMB and added maybe a gram or 2. (I'm guessing there was around 3-4g of gold in the material)
Tested with stannous, positive. Added another couple grams of SMB, still positive, a couple more... STILL positive :?:
I continued to get a positive for stannous "purple/black on paper towel and on spot plate", even AFTER the SMB stopped giving a reaction "I added about 1 gram after that also". There was a strong sulfur smell coming from the solution. (the smell burns the eyes and nose a bit if anyone was wondering, actually made me sneeze, so I went out into the yard for a few minutes).
Total SMB used was between 12-15g.
I've been thinking, that since the solution was ~160ml, and ~50ml of it was Cl, when I evaporated it to 75ml, if all of the tap water evaporated, there could still be up to 25ml of CL in it, which might be why it took so much SMB, and still shows positive for gold. Unless it's a false positive.
I gave it about 5 minutes and checked with stannous again. still positive,
but this time when I used stannous , it also made an oily blue/black "grease?", that stays on top. (I have no idea what this is, possibly micro pieces of the burnt coffee filter floating on top?)
The solution is now orange-red and theres a light brown/yellow precipitate at the bottom. Looks almost like the clean gold powder precipitate in other threads.
I couldn't possibly have THAT much gold in there could I?, It has to be iron or something also? (I highly doubt there would be any PD or PL in it) There is about 1 inch of solution in the beaker and 1/2 inch of it is the brown/yellow precipitate.
I only let it settle for a few minutes, when I saw that mass of brown/yellow precipitate, so I may be mistaken on the amount. It looked like a lot.
I'm letting the solution settle for a day. There is probably alot of salt at the bottom mixed in with any gold that dropped making it look like more, since it may have been completely neutralized from adding SMB until it stopped reacting. "Even though the solution still shows positive for gold"
Anyone have any ideas?
I'm thinking about evaporating it dry and starting over with fresh AP.
The left over material, that was in the 3 filters, still has un-dissolved pieces of metal in it, which looks like alot of previously burnt filter paper "powder" and tiny gold copper flakes.
Once I get more fluid for my torch, I may just melt everything and start over. I'm going for 999 :mrgreen:
