Is this the right track?

[Barren Realms 007]

I have processed about 2 Lbs. of fingers and have the foils from that, they were processed in HCL/Peroxide and came out real good.

I have about a 1/2 Gal. bag or CPU's and packs broken apart to expose the foils.
These were soaked in HCL for 24 Hrs. and the renside 4-5 times with tap water. Using filters or course.
Then they were soaked again in new HCL and washed with water again.
They were then processed in HCL/peroxide for a 36 Hr period. The pins from the fibers fell off, the ceramic ones were not visably effected. And most of the visable gold on the packs were removed.
This was all washed and soaked again in HCL/Peroxide again for a 36 hr period ( each time this process was done about 1/3 of a cup of peroxide was added to an original 2 cup to 1 cup ratio.)
This batch was washed with water again as in the previous step.

The fiber boards and the packs were removed and set to the side.

A double hand full of ceramic CPU's have been setting in a mixture of HCL/CL for about 13 Hrs on a coffe pot hot plate.
Ratio of about 5 cups HCL/ 1 cup CL. About 1/3-1/2 cup of CL added twice about 6 hrs apart making a total of about 7 cups.
The mixture is a very dark color almost black when you look at it. You can see that it is yellow on the sedges looking at it from the top.
A staneous(SP) test shows an egshell blue.

Do I need to raise the temp to boil off the clorox? Or am I on the right track?

Am I using too much or too litle of this mix?

Do I possibly have other things in the mix. The color on the paper for the staniuos test was Yellow . About the same color as the camaro in the trasnformers movie.

I also see little circlsthe size of #2 pencil lead on the bottom of the coffee pot, What kind of metal might this be?

The CPU's are still showing the final parts of the pins lef and should be gone in 6-8 Hrs.

Unfotunately the pins from the fiber and the packs were added to the foils that had been previousely removed.

This mix is currently in it 2 nd soak of HCL and am still getting a bubbling action from the copper coming off of the pins. I figure 2 more soaks and washes and they might be clean.

Should I wash this in Nitric before I attemp to melt this mix?

Should I add the flakes and pins mix to the HCL/CL and then drop all?

 

[lazersteve]

Should I wash this in Nitric before I attempt to melt this mix?

Yes. After the nitric bath I would dissolve the lot in HCl-Cl or AR.

Should I add the flakes and pins mix to the HCL/CL and then drop all?

No.

The dark color acid is a sign of one of two things :

1. Copper Chloride saturation

or

2. Iron Chloride.

The yellow test paper leads me to believe you have more of #2 than of #1.

The black circles are what GSP has called manganese oxide (?). It's used as a primer to get the gold to stick to the ceramic. Here's a photo of some I have laying around:

The ceramic CPUs are notoriously difficult due to the iron content in the legs.

Once the gold powder is precipitated and properly washed then combine and dissolve both lots in AR a second time.

I prefer to use the modified Poor Man's AR on them after the lids are removed.

Steve

 

[Barren Realms 007]

Thanks Steve,

The pins and flake are almost free of the copper now, very little action in the container and it is a slight green color to the liquid. One more wash and soak and they should be ready to put in nitric for a soak and then put in HCL/CL.

Once I drop the gold in the CPU's in HCL/CL with SMB and then remove the copper that is in solution by electro. Would it be safe to run the gold back in the same HCL/CL or should I be safe and make a new batch?

 

[lazersteve]

Make a new batch.

Steve

 

[Barren Realms 007]

Excellent thanks for your help and forthought.

 

[Barren Realms 007]

Ok here is what I've got now.

I took the pins from the CPU's tha didn't disolve in the HCL/Clorox and added them to the finger flakes that I had. I did this because there was still a green tint to my HCL I had been trying to clean the foild with after a 4th soak and a rinse.

I had washed them downlast night and had tried to add some HCL to my water hoping the flakes would settle so I could wash in HCL again. And yes I did add a couple of drops of dawn to break the surface tension. The flakes would not settle so I put this on the hot plate to boil off so that I could resoak. Well I fell asleep and awaoke to all my flakes on the side of the jar because of the bubbling action and a black burnt mess on the bottom of the jar. I said OOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHH SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!....

Well I added some HCL to get things back back in solution and get back to removing the copper I thought might still be in there. I boiled this for about 2 hrs and filtered the solution and washed it with water. Still had a green tint so I figured I would wash again in HCL but this time I put 4 ccups HCL and added 2 cups Peroxide to speed up the removal or the copper.

Well things started foaming as would be expected bright yellow. I had the solution on boil. When I looked the gold went into solution, there was still some undisolved gold so I added another 1/2 cup of peroxide and let the fluid boil and all gold fell into solution.

This picture is the solution after I filtered it.

 

[Barren Realms 007]

These 2 picks are of the test for gold.


View attachment 1

 

[Barren Realms 007]

These 2 pictures are of the HCL/Clorox solution that the CPU's had been soaked in. The gold still needs to be dropped out of the solution.

View attachment 1

 

[Barren Realms 007]

Question I thought that gold was not supposed to go into solution when just HCL/Peroxide was used?

It is possible I got a trace of Clorox some place but I had just washed the gold with water 3 times and had let the water boil off.

 

[lazersteve]

007,

Check out the chart in this post:

Dissolving Gold

from the chart you can see that AP will dissolve gold, albeit very slowly.

The foils went into solution easily due to the fact that they are thin and have a large surface area.

Steve

 

[Barren Realms 007]

I kind of understand the chart, it's only been almost 30 years since
I had science class.

Well it wasn't very slow when it happened, took maybe 30-45 seconds.

Any way I have some MSB coming so I can drop the old out.

Once I drop it out Would your advice be to melt it and then run thru some nitric and the rerun it thru AP?

Thanks for your help.

 

[lazersteve]

The speed I was referring to as 'slow' is in respect to AR and HCl-Cl as can be seen from the dissolution rates on the chart. Thin foils will pretty much dissolve quickly with any of the mixes on the chart.

After precipitating the gold it should be properly washed and redissolved in AR to further refine.

Steve

 

[Barren Realms 007]

That is my next step, I should be getting my SMB in within the next few days.

I ordered some crucibles and stir rods from you yesterday. Waiting for them to come in as well.

Also picked up some 35% Hydrogen peroxide today. Cheaper than the Qt. bottles at Wal Mart. Gotta save that extra penny. It does a good job to. I like adding the less volume to my mixes.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Barren Realms 007]

Quick question,

When making Nitric Acid can you keep remaking the formula with the undisolved Sodium nitrate until it is all disolved in the acid?

Or is there a point when the acid produced is not as strong as with the original Sodium nitrate used.

And do you need to keep it at 150F when it is going thru the whole process or just in the begining of the process for a little while?

 

[Barren Realms 007]

Steve thanks for the order of the dishes and the stir sticks. Everything came in fine.

 

[nicknitro]

BarrenRealms,

The undissolved sodium nitrate you speak of may be something else. I assume you are using Sulphuric acid and sodium nitrate to make poorman's nitric acid. If so, there is a salt precipitated from the reaction that I have been told is similar to Sodium Meta-Bisulfite (SMB). It is not the same thing, I just can't remember the correct name for it. I doubt it would be good for further nitric acid reaction, however I was also told by the same person that it could be used for gold precipitation from AR solutions. However I never tried it, as I had already purchased plenty of SMB.

Hope this Helps,

Nick

 

[Barren Realms 007]

Thanks Nick, That is some helpful info. I will have to do some checking on that.

I keep the heat on last nights run and got a lot more of the Sodium Nitrate to go into solution. I kept the heat at around 170f-190F and only had about 1/3 Sodium Nitrate left over this time compared to last batch.

 

[Barren Realms 007]

I guess I didn't answer your question correctly Nick. Yes I was using sulfuric acid diluted from the store and sodium nitrate. On my new batch I boiled down the sulfuric working on it tonight. I used that previous batch to work on some items it did a good job. But I'm having problems with a class ring. Can't get it to do a whole lot. going to put it in the new batch of nitric when it is done.

I tried to reclaim that previous batch of nitric and here are some picks on it. The battery charger I used on it was an old Dayton 6-8v or 12v with a low/high/boost for both voltage settings. Not much of an adjustment range.

View attachment 4

I had a saturated solution that I tried to remove the copper from. I got a great reaction from the charger and used some metal from some drives I had torn apart. I would recomend using angle iron tho it does a better job IMHO.

View attachment 3

I ended up with a greenish color probably still has some copper in it. It will not react with much. And it won't do anything to a piece of copper tubing. I guess I had my volage up to high and didn't take my time with it.

View attachment 2


After it sat for a few days it produced a clump of crystals. Any idea what this might be?

View attachment 1

I ended up with this in the bottom of my mix when all was said a done. I could see the gold flakes floating around when I was boiling with HCL, and this was after washing with HCL 4-5 times and I still got dirty mix.. My next step with this is to wash in nitirc to see if I can do anything with it. I had tried in HCL/CL and didn't get it to go into solution. I think I put too much clorox in it. I think part of it might be silver I can see silver when it selttles to the bottom now.



Any help on these items would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[nicknitro]

Hello Barren,

Been a while.

As far as your questions. I'm probably not the one to ask for a lot of them.

Problems with your class ring? If you still can't get it to react very much in Nitric, it is most likely a high karat of gold. For nitric to be effective on karated gold, the item would usually be inquarted, or melted with usually silver. Leaving it in an end result of 25% gold, 75% silver. Then your nitric would attack the mass more efficiently. The reason being is that gold above 6K I believe tends to shield the reaction of the nitric on the base metals.

Green crystals? Hmm, guessing dried copper nitrate crystals?

As far as recycleing your nitric. I know there are other topics on the subject. I was under the impression that the nitric ions are depleted as NO2, and NO fumes. You can try to filter the fumes with water to catch them, forming very weak acid. It's is more of a way to scrub the fumes from the air for recycleing though.

As far as your powder, it does look to be a mix of maybe some gold, and silver? This was from some nitric? What was the material you were refining?


Hope you get the answers you need,
Nick

 

[Barren Realms 007]

I used it on some stuff that AP wouldn't touch. Ceramic CPU's,a couple of watches,a couple of key chains, and some plated writing pins.