inquarting question

[rewalston]

Hey Everyone, been away for a while. I, as some know, am in Ontario. I'm not in a position to buy/nor make nitric acid. I'm working with electronics (can't afford anything more profitable), I've been brainstorming and came up with an idea that may or may not work. Here are the chemicals I have available; HCl, H2SO4, bleach, lye, ammonia, hydrogen peroxide as well as SMB. Every process that I will be doing will be utilizing only HCl with either bleach or H2O2 as the oxidizer.
Now I know that when we dissolve the solder in the boards using HCl prior to any kind of recover, there will be tin, lead and potentially gold and silver dissolved within the lead. I believe, that once the HCl is exhausted the gold will fall out as a black powder and the silver/lead will precipitate as a white powder, the tin should stay in solution if I'm not mistaken.
I forgot to mention, I'll have at least 4 5-gal buckets, one of Cu2Cl, one for stock w/ copper, one for waste w/ iron and one for cleaning waste with lye before discarding.
I'm not exactly sure which waste bucket the exhausted HCl from the solder removal should go into, I'm think the one with copper just in case there are any more valuables in solution.
Now comes the question mentioned in the subject. Since I am working primarily with AP (Cu2Cl) would it be possible for anything that I know has silver (or gold) in it, to melt it all down with an excess of copper, corn flake it and use Cu2Cl to dissolve away the copper and leave the silver as silver chloride?
I'm planning on using a Crockpot filled with water as a water bath and Pawnbroker Bob's AB Train to get rid of fumes, etc.
Would my hairbrained idea work? I do in the future plan on building a gold stripping cell, but that is on the back burner for now. Too many things going on in my life to work on that. Anyway thanks.

Rusty

 

[etack]

I will be hard to get it pure that way. you need a nitrate even poor-mans would be better than that. Look for nitrate of soda.

Eric

 

[rewalston]

I will be hard to get it pure that way. you need a nitrate even poor-mans would be better than that. Look for nitrate of soda.

Eric

I've looked for nitrate of soda both on amazon.ca and ebay.ca and it's no where to be found. I've found Potassium Nitrate but I want to stay away from that. I'll have to look at some of the other sites I have but if I remember correctly they want an arm and a leg for it.

Rusty

 

[etack]

Potassium nitrate works the same as sodium nitrate. It will work the same.

Eric

 

[Geo]

Spectracide brand stump remover is potassium nitrate.

 

[Geo]

Hy-Yield stump remover is also potassium nitrate.

 

[nitrous]

sources of potassium nitrate, in Ontario have become quite limited.

 

[Geo]

sources of potassium nitrate, in Ontario have become quite limited.

I instructed a member of my facebook group in Canada on how to make a nitre bed the other day. It takes a year to get the first batch of potassium nitrate but if you make multiple beds, like one per month, you will have an endless supply that you make for yourself.

 

[nitrous]

of course, there are other nitrates available.... ammonium nitrate from Cold Packs but Nitre Bed sounds interesting. Didn't they get phosphorous from cemetery bones, at one point?

 

[Edlin]

Spectracide brand stump remover is potassium nitrate.
View attachment 46129

Can’t buy this here.

 

[Geo]

of course, there are other nitrates available.... ammonium nitrate from Cold Packs but Nitre Bed sounds interesting. Didn't they get phosphorous from cemetery bones, at one point?

I'm not sure. Phosphates are mined locally here. It looks like red clay mud when it's mined.

 

[Geo]

Can’t buy this here.

That's crazy.
They have to sell some type of fertilizer. What do people put on their gardens? Any nitrogen based fertilizer should contains nitrates.

 

[Edlin]

That's crazy.
They have to sell some type of fertilizer. What do people put on their gardens? Any nitrogen based fertilizer should contains nitrates.

It is possible, but extremely difficult to get either sodium or potassium nitrate unless you are a registered end user. Same for nitric acid greater than 75%, and Hydrogen peroxide greater than 30%. Even tougher for ammonium nitrate.

Basically anything you can make explosives out of.

 

[FrugalRefiner]

It is possible, but extremely difficult to get either sodium or potassium nitrate unless you are a registered end user. Same for nitric acid greater than 75%, and Hydrogen peroxide greater than 30%. Even tougher for ammonium nitrate.

Basically anything you can make explosives out of.

You don't need nitric acid greater than 75%. Most concentrated nitric acid is around 68 to 70%, and we often dilute that with an equal volume of water. 30% hydrogen peroxide is highly concentrated, and pretty dangerous. You don't need anything more concentrated.

Dave

 

[Geo]

Check for calcium nitrate. You can't use it directly in solution for refining as the calcium robs the solution of sulfuric acid if it needs it by creating calcium sulfate. But it can be used to distill nitric acid really easily.