lost gold fingers

[Cap1]

Hello All,
I'm a beginner at gold recovery. I watched many videos about gold recovery from finger boards. I got about 500gms of fingers, covered with 1500 ml of HCL (33%), added 150 ml of Hydrogen peroxide and an air bubbler. The next day I saw 1 floating gold flake and thought I was on the right track. I came back 2 days later and the HCL was dark bluish-green and no gold in sight. The boards were stripped clean, all the copper traces were gone and no gold floating or at the bottom of my container. I thought AP solution could not dissolve gold. Maybe the gold has cemented inside the pc boards?

What do I do now?

 

[nickvc]

Chances are you dissolved the gold if all the copper has dissolved . Test your solution with stannous that should reveal whether that’s true.

 

[jadedalex]

Cap,
Stop watching videos. You have no idea what was done off camera so you don't know what REALLY was done. Stick to studying the Library on this Forum. The people who built the Library have been doing this work for years. If you have questions, ask the Mods but be specific and tell them every step you made. Clarity helps immensely...

 

[willworld.whr]

What did you end up with out of 500g of fingers?

 

[Liquidau]

500 g fingers should give about 2g gold. Use Stannous test. If all the gold flakes dissolved (you used way too much peroxide) the Stannous test will show black. Because there is no nitric, just drop the gold now with SMB or ferrous sulfate. But first, heat the solution to drive off as much peroxide as possible. Add some distilled water (300 ml) and some more HCl (maybe 100 ml). This is crucial—-you must drive off the peroxide first or else the gold will stay trapped in solution). It might even drop on its own….

 

[GoldUser]

If you do get heavy-handed on the oxidizer you will put gold into solution. You basically don't need any extra oxidizer to dissolve your Copper.
Copper and Nickel do not react with HCl so nothing will happen at first. But your solution will start absorbing oxygen from the air (which it would get from the H2O2) and oxidizing the copper to copper oxide. This further will react to copper chloride with HCl.
If you just put an air bubbler in your solution and be patient enough it would do the job. I would suggest to put just a bit H2O2 to the Acid and then let the air bubbler do the rest.

In your case I would stop doing whatever you are and read Hokes book first and about AP
https://goldrefiningforum.com/threads/question-about-ap.29019/