Lead Iodide Mixed in with Gold Precipitate

[Kreis412]

So I finally got all the copper out of my solution made from recycled computer scrap. Mostly RAM fingers, small amount of pins. This is my first attempt at this and I'm pretty certain that there is Platinum or palladium mixed in here. There is absolutely gold here I tested with stannous. However, when I dropped the gold I got this golden rain thing goin on. From what I've heard it's lead iodide and apparently a neat experiment. I think I can remove with sulphuric acid or maybe it's sulphamic acid. I have neither. I do have drain cleaner with sulphuric acid in it but the inhibitors might screw with it. Byt the way this is AR solution dropped with smb. I denoxed sort of by accident thinking the Drain cleaner would bind with the nitric or something. It seems to have worked cause there is no more gold in solution. Please dont be too hard on me, I'm trying to learn still.
Thank you

 

[Kreis412]

So I finally got all the copper out of my solution made from recycled computer scrap. Mostly RAM fingers, small amount of pins. This is my first attempt at this and I'm pretty certain that there is Platinum or palladium mixed in here. There is absolutely gold here I tested with stannous. However, when I dropped the gold I got this golden rain thing goin on. From what I've heard it's lead iodide and apparently a neat experiment. I think I can remove with sulphuric acid or maybe it's sulphamic acid. I have neither. I do have drain cleaner with sulphuric acid in it but the inhibitors might screw with it. Byt the way this is AR solution dropped with smb. I denoxed sort of by accident thinking the Drain cleaner would bind with the nitric or something. It seems to have worked cause there is no more gold in solution. Please dont be too hard on me, I'm trying to learn still.
Thank youView attachment 53776

 

[Yggdrasil]

So I finally got all the copper out of my solution made from recycled computer scrap. Mostly RAM fingers, small amount of pins. This is my first attempt at this and I'm pretty certain that there is Platinum or palladium mixed in here. There is absolutely gold here I tested with stannous. However, when I dropped the gold I got this golden rain thing goin on. From what I've heard it's lead iodide and apparently a neat experiment. I think I can remove with sulphuric acid or maybe it's sulphamic acid. I have neither. I do have drain cleaner with sulphuric acid in it but the inhibitors might screw with it. Byt the way this is AR solution dropped with smb. I denoxed sort of by accident thinking the Drain cleaner would bind with the nitric or something. It seems to have worked cause there is no more gold in solution. Please dont be too hard on me, I'm trying to learn still.
Thank youView attachment 53776

You have given no information on how you processed this.
But according the description on the material there may or may not be minute amounts of Pd.
There is no reason to expect Pt.
If you have not added Iodine there is no Iodine in there and lead is quite scarce in modern electronics.

Please give is a better description on what you have done with this batch.

 

[Kreis412]

You have given no information on how you processed this.
But according the description on the material there may or may not be minute amounts of Pd.
There is no reason to expect Pt.
If you have not added Iodine there is no Iodine in there and lead is quite scarce in modern electronics.

Please give is a better description on what you have done with this batch.

A lot, I'm afraid. I may be wrong about iodine. So I had a hard time finding nitric acid at first so I made my own. I used potassium nitrate, copper then mixed crystals that formed with HCl. Wasn't strong enough however so maybe it was potassium not iodine. I'm sure that's confusing enough. Then I found actual nitric acid made AR and dissolved the fingers and I forgot to mention I threw a 10kt gold ring with everything. So maybe that's the lead? So I got the copper out with nitric acid filtered and then put the gold flakes and anything gold that survived the nitric and put it in AR. Then when it was a nice yellow color I through in smb but then it turned orange then brown. Palladium is what I've heard does this. Oh but I forgot to denox. So nothing precipitated, that's when I tried the sulphuric acid which seemed to work

 

[Kreis412]

A lot, I'm afraid. I may be wrong about iodine. So I had a hard time finding nitric acid at first so I made my own. I used potassium nitrate, copper then mixed crystals that formed with HCl. Wasn't strong enough however so maybe it was potassium not iodine. I'm sure that's confusing enough. Then I found actual nitric acid made AR and dissolved the fingers and I forgot to mention I threw a 10kt gold ring with everything. So maybe that's the lead? So I got the copper out with nitric acid filtered and then put the gold flakes and anything gold that survived the nitric and put it in AR. Then when it was a nice yellow color I through in smb but then it turned orange then brown. Palladium is what I've heard does this. Oh but I forgot to denox. So nothing precipitated, that's when I tried the sulphuric acid which seemed to work

Threw not through

 

[orvi]

I do not understand like half of what you are saying (with imagination on ), but I cannot find any source of iodine/iodide in your experiment. And also I cannot find source of PtPd if the material was only pins and RAM fingers. Never seen any RAM fingers or computer scrap (aside of MLCCs) containing PGMs. Some pins could be palladium plated, but again, overall not too much common.

It is true that upon addition of sulfate into the solution, some PGMs could actually form some low solubility compounds. But in the ammounts you can expect PGMs presence, this isn´t it

Hard to say what it is. Highly probable that only coloured solution after some organic junk caused salts to precipitate and appear yellow. Maybe.

 

[Yggdrasil]

You are obviously not ready to do any refining.
Have you studied anything here on the forum the two years you have been here?
First you do not mix random chemical like you have been doing here.
If something fails you ask questions and ask how to fix your mess.
Instead you have made a mess out of a mess to such a degree you actually are not able to trace what you have done.

So now you put your solid and liquids away in a safe place and start studying.
First C.M. Hokes book Screen Readable Copy of Hoke's Book
Nest you study the safety section and the dealing with waste section.

When this is done you can start ask questions about things you do not understand.

It will be nice though if you can compile a list of what you did and what happened in each step.
At least as close as you can remember.
So then we can start thinking of ways to solve your current mess.

 

[Kreis412]

I appreciate the help. It's not that big of a mess. When I tested with stannous in a spot plate it turned orange. So palladium is what I've heard.

 

[Kreis412]

And what I did chemically is here already. I know I could have been a little more meticulous about cleaning off the fingers and, I know I put some circuit boards in with Gold in them oh and some processors with gold pins. Chemically though it's all here. There shouldn't be any organic contamination

 

[Yggdrasil]

No,

I appreciate the help. It's not that big of a mess. When I tested with stannous in a spot plate it turned orange. So palladium is what I've heard.

Orange Stannous is Platinum, and as your description it is as good as impossible for you to have Pt in Solution.

Edited for precision of speak

 

[Yggdrasil]

And what I did chemically is here already. I know I could have been a little more meticulous about cleaning off the fingers and, I know I put some circuit boards in with Gold in them oh and some processors with gold pins. Chemically though it's all here. There shouldn't be any organic contamination

No it is basically just hinting and general description.
Have you studied Hokes book???

 

[Kreis412]

Yea I just downloaded it. I appreciate it this will help a lot.

 

[Yggdrasil]

And what I did chemically is here already. I know I could have been a little more meticulous about cleaning off the fingers and, I know I put some circuit boards in with Gold in them oh and some processors with gold pins. Chemically though it's all here. There shouldn't be any organic contamination

What did you put i first numbers/weight, what chemical did you put in first, did you heat it?
What happened then?
What did you do with it after?
And so on for each step/ addition.

 

[Kreis412]

And it was potassium iodide I was thing with the title.

 

[Kreis412]

Ok let me write it down and I'll post in a bit.
Thanks

 

[Yggdrasil]

Yea I just downloaded it. I appreciate it this will help a lot.

So what you are saying, is that you have been a member for two years studying youtube videos or not even that?
And now you downloaded C.M. Hoke??

At least now you are on track to learn something useful.

 

[Kreis412]

~3 to 5 grams good
10kt gold ring
3lbs of RAM fingers
3 gold pinned processors
3 14kt earring backings
14kt gold pendant 2 grams

Boiled in 650ml of hcl and left sit for a week
I put in a few drops of h202 because the fingers weren't loosening.
Liquid was green. Tested negative on stannous.
I removed all the waste and separated all the gold foils.
I didn't weigh it.
I put the gold scrap in a beaker and added 100ml of hcl and over the course of dropping nitric in added 20mls of nitric. Probably too much.
So I thought I was good to add smb. Solution tested positive.
I forgot to denox. Added anyway. Added around 8 grams of smb to solution because I remembered there might be free nitric so I thought adding more would take care of that. Then liquid turned dark coffee brown.
I heated liquid again and it actually cleared up and I had a brown precipitate at the bottom. So I filtered the liquid. I thought there was probably some other metals in the powder so I thought I'd do the process over. This time though the solution looked more orange than I would have expected. This time only adding 5 grams of smb. This is when I tried to denox with the sulphuric acid drain cleaner of which I added 80ml. Over about 20 or 30 min while heating to help to release any extra nitric acid. Although the second time around I added 100ml of hcl and 15ml of nitric. When I added the smb to the gold solution it turned brown again. I let the solution cool and that's when this precipitation started. So I've left it over night and messaged here.

 

[Kreis412]

And yea basically.

 

[kurtak]

I appreciate the help. It's not that big of a mess. When I tested with stannous in a spot plate it turned orange. So palladium is what I've heard.

Per the bold print - A stannous test for Pd (palladium) is NEVER orange - depending on the concentration of Pd in solution it will be a dark forest green to an almost black green (black with a tinge of green IF the Pd is VERY high in concentration)

Orange may (or NOT) be Pt (platinum) depending on what the shade of the orange actually looks like

There is such a thing as "false positives" when doing stannous testing - in other words - if you don't know what you are actually looking for (in the stannous test color) you can be fooled into thinking something is there when in fact it is not there

You NEED to STOP watching You Tube for your source of information about refining !!!!

Although there are a few (VERY FEW) people out there on You Tube that actually know what they are doing MOST of what you find on You Tube is Loaded with incomplete information - mis-information & out right WRONG information --- A BUNCH of "back yard hacks" - playing with chemicals that have NO CLUE what they are doing

From what you have posted so far you are clearly following the BAD advice of back yard hacks that have no clue

I do not mean to sound so harsh - but right now you are doing nothing other then making a MESS & creating very TOXIC waste

Kurt

 

[Kreis412]

This is exactly why I don't post on forums of any kind. Thanks for the book, I appreciate the help