Is AP the right choice?

[francis32]

Hi all, my name is Francis,

somewhat new to the forum, did a lot of reading, understood some of it

Am from Quebec so pardon my french speaking writing but I live in Florida,

I have a question concerning a high power plate I have 20 lbs of. It is a ceramic base, gold plated on copper(very thick copper).

On what I've read here puts me in a direction to use AP to dissolve the copper, leaving the ceramic plate to be discarded and very fine gold dropping in the solution. The downside of these plates is that on one side, it has contaminants, some solder, small metallic components, some type of gel silicone and small pieces of solder mask.

I have tried a few plates and it seems to be a lenghty process but seems to work. It has darkened the Cu2Cl rather quickly with some brownish tint but still disolves the copper.

Thanks in advance for answering!

Francis

Included below are a few pictures, any comments are welcome!

 

[Barren Realms 007]

With that material AP is probably your best bet with a lot of patience.

 

[francis32]

Thanks for answering Barren Realm 007!

I choose the 2 bucks method with a glass pickle jar with an empty, cut alcohol container with 1/8 holes,

I started the bigger batch with my prototype Cu2Cl.

I understand I need to put air full time and then H20 plus fresh HCL occasionally right? Keeping the acid level lower than the container inside.

I'll keep going until plates won't dissolve anymore.

I may get back on this thread to make sure I am on the right path before I proceed to the filtration process.

I assume once my solution is 9 months pregnant, it will be called dirty AP? Will it be hard to refine compared to clean foils?

Thanks again your help!

 

[artart47]

Hi!
Welcome to our forum! Try one card in just HCl. Put it in a hot water bath and see if the acid turns color. You may be able to clean away some of the other base metals with the Hydrochloric before going to AP. The HCl won't attack the copper. That may reduce contamination of your AP solution.
you don't have to start your AP with a lot of H2O2. Too much will cause some of the gold to dissolve. You can start your next batch with Hydrochloric acid and then just add
a small amount of the last batch to get it going. 10 or 20 ml. is enough. then use an air bubbler.
Hope that helps.
artart47

 

[francis32]

Thanks for answering artart47!

I will try that before adding more plates to the AP, I hope I didn't contaminate it too much. I get those plates on a regular basis, this is why I am trying to recover the values of it.

For the HCL bath, what I could understand from your advice is hot HCL <100c ? For 10 minutes or so?

I should be able to use that HCL over and over to prep the plates before AP right? Once the HCL is too contaminated, I figure I could filter it then incinerate it?

I have tried plain HCL at room temp before, it dissolved with some fizzing the little contacts and the solder. and started to delaminate the copper traces from the ceramic.

Again, thanks for all your help!

Francis

 

[Geo]

The HCl does not need to be that hot. It really doesn't need to be much more than room temp to remove any solder.

Is the foils coming off in large foils or small broken pieces? I'm asking to get some idea of the plating thickness. Thick plating will come off in big, unbroken sheets and thin plating will come off in giblets. Agitation also is a factor but it doesn't look like it's being agitated that much. Then again you could be shaking the lights out of it periodically.

 

[francis32]

Hi Geo,

The gold plating seems fine, it does come off in small patches the size of a dime but dissipates once agitated.

Do you think that it could yield some gold or worthless? Apart of gold and the copper, there shouldn't be much values in these right?

I'm new to this but like as a hobby.

Thanks for the help!

 

[Geo]

Most people who deal with this stuff is just after the gold. The gold seems to be pretty thin by the looks of the flakes. Any gold is worth recovering and especially if you get the material for free. I would suggest you collect the foil and save it up for some time before you try to move on to refining. You really need enough to show for all the hard work and it's easier working with the largest amount you can come up with as apposed to doing many small dissolution. You actually lose less and misplace less when working on one large amount instead of many small ones. The gold foils will not be "just gold foils" even if you rinse all the color out of the foils, there will always be some contamination.

Good work so far. Many folks don't get this far without a few bad mistakes.

 

[francis32]

Thanks for your help Geo,

I have stuff enough to duplicate another station, pretty easy to do, I'll double the aquarium bubbler line to go in both and gradually insert my pre-washed plates in room temp HCL.

I may get back here in a few weeks(month) time before I'm ready to proceed, once the AP is fully saturated with base metals.

Thanks a lot again,
Francis