In what way is AR better than HCL-CL

[Metaphore]

If I understand correctly from posts and videos, AR is more expensive and harder to handle, especially if Nitric is overdosed. If AR and HCL-CL worked the same, I guess no one would be using AR. Therein lies my question: how exactly is AR better to justify its drawbacks.

 

[Geo]

HCl/Cl works great for second refines where you are working with powders or fines or even foils recovered from copper(II) chloride leech but it does not work well with thicker solids. With solids more than a few microns thick, HCl/Cl can't hold the free chlorine in solution long enough to dissolve the metal. The only way to keep enough chlorine in solution is by adding more bleach. There's little chance of dissolving a whole piece of jewelry using HCl/Cl without producing huge amounts of solution.

HCl/HNO3 has enough oxidizer to dissolve heavy pieces of metal without needing large quantities of solution.

 

[nickvc]

AR will disslove most metals even large pieces of them whereas the HCl Clroute is good when you have powders or foils but fails on larger materials, it also has the benefit of having no nitric to remove to allow easier precipitation after heating the solution to remove the chlorine.
For many e scrap refining materials the HCl Cl is the method to use, it's also good for the material from the stripping cell but will be useless for karat scrap and for CPUs with gold brazed lids or items with bonding wires.

 

[bswartzwelder]

HCl-Cl will dissolve very thin layers of gold such as would be found when you remove gold foils from circuit boards. AR will dissolve gold that is much thicker. Also, the Cl in the HCl-Cl will off gas (sometimes at a very fast rate) making the solution no longer usable. I'm sure others will have plenty to add.

 

[solar_plasma]

AR is more effective, if you are leaching fine ashes without stirring. Further AR can be used at elevated temperatures to work even faster (if needed), while chlorine would gas off because of the low solubility at higher temps.

Maybe you could compare it to two different sized hammers. The bigger one isn't better, sometimes worse. But some kinds of work can only be done with the big hammer.