Inquarting Gold with Aluminum if not intending to recover?/Chloroauric Acid from Hydrochloric acid and Hydrogen Peroxide?

[CookLawrenceat325f]

Hi Everyone, I'm new to this whole gold refining business, but I was wondering if I could inquart gold with Aluminum if I had no intent on recovering the aluminum? As it stands, I have a limited amount of copper that I don't want to use cause I scrapped it all myself from trash appliances, and it was super difficult, But I have huge amounts of aluminum from melted down pop cans and aluminum fixtures from the aforementioned scrapped appliances.

I don't have all my equipment yet, but it is in the mail, along with impure gold bars from computer pins.

I would also like to know if I can make Chloroauric acid from Hydrochloric acid and Hydrogen Peroxide, as well as use it on the inquarted aluminum and gold mixture? Nitric acid is super hard to get for me right now, and I can definitly find Hydrogen Peroxide a lot closer to me than Nitric Acid.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Hi Everyone, I'm new to this whole gold refining business, but I was wondering if I could inquart gold with Aluminum if I had no intent on recovering the aluminum? As it stands, I have a limited amount of copper that I don't want to use cause I scrapped it all myself from trash appliances, and it was super difficult, But I have huge amounts of aluminum from melted down pop cans and aluminum fixtures from the aforementioned scrapped appliances.

I don't have all my equipment yet, but it is in the mail, along with impure gold bars from computer pins.

Thanks in advance.

No, Aluminum do not dissolve in Nitric.
And I'm not sure if it alloys well with Gold either.
Silver is the preferred metal for this, due to the reason that it is almost always already in the alloy
and it needs just a quarter of the amount of Nitric comparing to Copper.
You just need a few grams of Silver so it will not be too expensive to buy it.

 

[Elemental]

along with impure gold bars from computer pins.

These are likely not going to hold any gold and are likely just brass bars. This is a common scam on many sites like e-bay. Sorry, I would do a test on them before you begin working on them.

Elemental

 

[Yggdrasil]

Hi Everyone, I'm new to this whole gold refining business, but I was wondering if I could inquart gold with Aluminum if I had no intent on recovering the aluminum? As it stands, I have a limited amount of copper that I don't want to use cause I scrapped it all myself from trash appliances, and it was super difficult, But I have huge amounts of aluminum from melted down pop cans and aluminum fixtures from the aforementioned scrapped appliances.

I don't have all my equipment yet, but it is in the mail, along with impure gold bars from computer pins.

Thanks in advance.

Welcome by the way.
We like our new members to read C.M. Hokes book on refining jewelers scrap.
You will find it here: Screen Readable Copy of Hoke's Book
The safety section in the forum and the dealing with waste.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Hi Everyone, I'm new to this whole gold refining business, but I was wondering if I could inquart gold with Aluminum if I had no intent on recovering the aluminum? As it stands, I have a limited amount of copper that I don't want to use cause I scrapped it all myself from trash appliances, and it was super difficult, But I have huge amounts of aluminum from melted down pop cans and aluminum fixtures from the aforementioned scrapped appliances.

I don't have all my equipment yet, but it is in the mail, along with impure gold bars from computer pins.

I would also like to know if I can make Chloroauric acid from Hydrochloric acid and Hydrogen Peroxide, as well as use it on the inquarted aluminum and gold mixture? Nitric acid is super hard to get for me right now, and I can definitly find Hydrogen Peroxide a lot closer to me than Nitric Acid.

Thanks in advance.

If you bought impure Gold bars, as Elemental says there is no reason to believe there is any Gold in them at all.
One of the oldest tricks in the book.
If it was from Ebay I'd ask for a refund.

 

[Martijn]

I don't have all my equipment yet, but it is in the mail, along with impure gold bars from computer pins.

As elemental said, there is probably one microgram of gold to be recovered in those online purchased scrap bars.
The nice yellow color is just brass. Copper and Zinc.
Cancel the delivery if you can or be prepared to be disappointed.
If you're stuck with them, don't dissolve a big bar to find out. Saw off a piece and test that.

And HCL with H2O2 can dissolve gold, but is not really usefull to dissolve a bar of basemetals.
You could use Acid Peroxide, but that takes a crazy long time on a metal bar.

Good luck.

 

[andu]

All my googling leads me back to ths forum, lol.

It is known gold and aluminium do alloy, it makes purple gold, beautiful yet crumbly and pretty much useless for jewelry. I think I seen a vid on youtube where dude just get's rid of aluminium with HCL, this would be really nice for inquartation, if i could only test it, would save on quite a bit of nitric.

Perhaps heat from the reaction given alu is so reactive would also help dissolve some copper if present with the hcl alone.

As a funny note, gold and indium make a similar crumbly alloy which is bluish ¨.
https://www.luciteria.com/elements-for-sale/blue-goldhttps://www.luciteria.com/elements-for-sale/purple-gold

 

[Martijn]

All my googling leads me back to ths forum, lol.

It is known gold and aluminium do alloy, it makes purple gold, beautiful yet crumbly and pretty much useless for jewelry. I think I seen a vid on youtube where dude just get's rid of aluminium with HCL, this would be really nice for inquartation, if i could only test it, would save on quite a bit of nitric.

Well, if you 'inquart' with aluminum and leach with HCl, you will end up with exactly the same silver/gold/copper/? alloy you started with?
The silver and copper will still be there, and if there was no silver or copper, there was no need to inquart?

 

[eaglekeeper]

All my googling leads me back to ths forum, lol.

It is known gold and aluminium do alloy, it makes purple gold, beautiful yet crumbly and pretty much useless for jewelry. I think I seen a vid on youtube where dude just get's rid of aluminium with HCL, this would be really nice for inquartation, if i could only test it, would save on quite a bit of nitric.

Perhaps heat from the reaction given alu is so reactive would also help dissolve some copper if present with the hcl alone.

As a funny note, gold and indium make a similar crumbly alloy which is bluish ¨.
https://www.luciteria.com/elements-for-sale/blue-goldhttps://www.luciteria.com/elements-for-sale/purple-gold

I don't have much experience alloying metal, but I found this interesting. Maybe it'll be good for a discussion.

 

[orvi]

I don't have much experience alloying metal, but I found this interesting. Maybe it'll be good for a discussion.

Yup I seen this today, and I am quite interested in it Very interesting stuff, AuAl alloys feel bit strange to the first hearing.

Aside of NileRed inexperience with many aspects of pyrometallurgy (and also many times chemistry in general), this is very nice illustration of the purple gold existence and some properties. At least, he can admit his mistakes, which is really nice to see nowdays in the "YT world".

I quite like the fact that only certain crystal structure of AuAl2 matrix show that violet hue. If I still had argon cylinder and induction furnance, I would give it a shot. Sad that I do not need engagement ring and wedding rings anymore I let them to be made from my own placer gold, alloyed by myself to boring yellow 14k... This would have much more style

PS: That stirring of the melt with stainless steel spatula truly got me By this, you can clearly distinguish between inorganic and organic research chemist As orgchem guys tend to develop this bad habit that stainless steel is good for everything And then you see guys in the lab measuring concentrated HCl by drawing it through needle to the syringe Or weighing iodine with stainless spatula to the aluminium boat... Swearing why it is so sticky and brown... Followed by: "Why that *** reaction don´t work..."

 

[orvi]

Well, if you 'inquart' with aluminum and leach with HCl, you will end up with exactly the same silver/gold/copper/? alloy you started with?
The silver and copper will still be there, and if there was no silver or copper, there was no need to inquart?

Exactly. Maybe in some rare cases and without silver present, it could potentially be used to leach out copper and other base metals. I maybe tried some sort of iron (III) chloride leach or AP style bath... But I do not see any benefit of doing this, since the chance you would have something for inquart that is silver free is negligible.

 

[James Ball]

Yup I seen this today, and I am quite interested in it Very interesting stuff, AuAl alloys feel bit strange to the first hearing.

Aside of NileRed inexperience with many aspects of pyrometallurgy (and also many times chemistry in general), this is very nice illustration of the purple gold existence and some properties. At least, he can admit his mistakes, which is really nice to see nowdays in the "YT world".

I quite like the fact that only certain crystal structure of AuAl2 matrix show that violet hue. If I still had argon cylinder and induction furnance, I would give it a shot. Sad that I do not need engagement ring and wedding rings anymore I let them to be made from my own placer gold, alloyed by myself to boring yellow 14k... This would have much more style

PS: That stirring of the melt with stainless steel spatula truly got me By this, you can clearly distinguish between inorganic and organic research chemist As orgchem guys tend to develop this bad habit that stainless steel is good for everything And then you see guys in the lab measuring concentrated HCl by drawing it through needle to the syringe Or weighing iodine with stainless spatula to the aluminium boat... Swearing why it is so sticky and brown... Followed by: "Why that *** reaction don´t work..."

Ah, the old intrachemistry rivalry between org and inorg. I am worse - I am a bio-org with a silver metal inorg hobby.

 

[Dreamer]

I really enjoy watching this guy . He explains the reactions and stoichiometry along the way for those of us that need that kind of thing. Does anyone have any insight into why the annealing was necessary. What change it effected on the surface crystyline structure to homologize the color?

 

[Dreamer]

Another thought. You should be able to make 3x more white 10k rings with Aluminum as a base metal...right? Add a little chromium and cobalt for ductility? Just throwing it out there.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Another thought. You should be able to make 3x more white 10k rings with Aluminum as a base metal...right? Add a little chromium and cobalt for ductility? Just throwing it out there.

I believe that is oversimplifying things.
If I'm not mistaken these blue and purple Gold alloys are not workable at all.
You can cast them and grind them, but that is it.

 

[Alondro]

All my googling leads me back to ths forum, lol.

It is known gold and aluminium do alloy, it makes purple gold, beautiful yet crumbly and pretty much useless for jewelry. I think I seen a vid on youtube where dude just get's rid of aluminium with HCL, this would be really nice for inquartation, if i could only test it, would save on quite a bit of nitric.

Perhaps heat from the reaction given alu is so reactive would also help dissolve some copper if present with the hcl alone.

As a funny note, gold and indium make a similar crumbly alloy which is bluish ¨.
https://www.luciteria.com/elements-for-sale/blue-goldhttps://www.luciteria.com/elements-for-sale/purple-gold

Nilered just did a long vid on his experiments to make a purple gold ring. He finally managed it, but it was a long and painful process!

And his first step was an additional purification of the gold bar he bought which likely got it to 5 9's purity... THEN HE RUINED IT BY PUTTING ALUMINUM IN IT!!! (sobs)

 

[goldshark]

Simply for discussion purposes, could one inquart with Aluminum, dissolve out with HCL, leaving a very porous sponge, wash well, then dissolve out the Silver, Copper, etc. using only Nitric?

 

[Yggdrasil]

Simply for discussion purposes, could one inquart with Aluminum, dissolve out with HCL, leaving a very porous sponge, wash well, then dissolve out the Silver, Copper, etc. using only Nitric?

Aluminum has a bad habit of becoming a gelatinous mass in HCl.
If these conditions promote that I do not know.

 

[Ultrax]

This problem usually occurs due to the dual mechanism of hydrolysis of aluminum chloride (and its other salts too, generally). In addition, when dissolving the Gold-Aluminium alloy, you are guaranteed to lose from 3 to 5% of gold, which will be impossible to completely precipitate from the solution due to trace amounts of hydrated aluminum ions.

If AlCl3 is dissolved in aq. acidic solution, the hexaqua complex ion polarises the water molecules that are attached to the aluminium ion. The complex ion is deprotonated, causing the solution to be more acidic.

(1) AlCl3(s) + aq → [Al(H2O)6](3+) (aq) + 3Cl -(aq)
(2) [Al(H2O)6](3+) (aq) + H2O(l) → [Al(H2O)5OH](2+)(aq) + H3O(+) (aq)

 

[orvi]

Simply for discussion purposes, could one inquart with Aluminum, dissolve out with HCL, leaving a very porous sponge, wash well, then dissolve out the Silver, Copper, etc. using only Nitric?

Seems plausible to me. Then, even more interesting thing arise - could sodium hydroxide be used ? Or, moreover... ammonia with some oxidant ? To not just leach out Al but also copper, or even silver ?

As aluminium is much more reactive than other metals in inquart, other metals should hold well and untouched. I indeed did one similar kind of inquart, but with 20% PtRh aluminium alloy, with sodium hydroxide etch. It went nicely, even tho sponge disintegrated into black dust. But it nicely clumped together during reaction.

This is just my "from top of my head" idea... Not thoroughly thought yet.

Anyway, I have seen very strange behaviour of very very tiny clusters of metal in various circumstances (like Pt dissolution during inquart, or Pt cement dissolution in nitric, even copper dissolution in boiling HCl without air), so maybe some strange behaviour on the surface of this highly active sponge will do something unexpected.