Lost my gold during the process!?

[pro003]

Hi all,

As you can see I'm a new guy here and this is my first post. I'm a newbie in gold recovering and I have done few batches in the past few days and something totally weird came up along the way. I had 200 grams of cut offs from ram memory and from pci cards. I wanted to try a method with 2 parts of HCl 38% and 1 part of Hydrogen Peroxide 3%. I saw this tutorial somewhere on the internet. Anyways, I pour the 2 dl of HCl followed by 1 dl of H.Peroxide. Fingers from pci cards and memory chips were already in the glass container. I supposed to wait 24-48 hours for process to complete. Unfortunately I did see some of the gold falling off the parts but most of them were stuck on these fingers. I realize that something was wrong. So what I did next was taking out the solution and let only fingers with the rest stuff in the container. I decided to go with another method which I tried and the results were ok, and that is 1 half of destiled water and 1 half of Nitric Acid 65%. The reaction was instant and the bubbling started and the liquid turned to dark blue/green. I supposed to let this stew for 8-9 hours, I let it even more few hours. Well today I said I am going to filter and wash the gold and prepare it for aqua regia. To my great surprise there were no traces of gold in the container, neither on fingers, nor on fingers or on the bottom of container. NONE! It disappeared completely. Not even a smallest particle of gold was found. So this batch was pretty much ruined for me and I left with the question WHAT HAPPENED? Where did this gold gone? How it's possible?

So if anyone here have some thoughts and maybe an answer I would appreciate pretty much an explanation.

Thank you.

 

[goldsilverpro]

Did you thoroughly rinse all of HCl out of the material with distilled water before adding the nitric? Sounds like you didn't. It is not easy to rinse the material you are running - could take a lot of rinses, preferably hot. Nitric plus just a small amount of HCl will dissolve gold. Essentially, it's a weak aqua regia.

 

[pro003]

Hi Goldsilverpro,

You have answered my question. No, I did not rinse the HCl good, not even close to good. I just pour the first solution away and the material left in the container with very small amount of HCl and H.Peroxide. But as you said it may created the weak aqua regia and the gold was dissolved. How do you proceed when this happens? I mean I will never mix two methods again but I'm just curious how to extract gold from this nitric acid + water with some small amount od HCl and H.Peroxide, call it weak aqua regia soultion, what is need to be done if this happens?

Sorry for asking maybe to many question, but I'm just curious to know, and maybe this thread helps someone else who did similar thing that I did (hopefully not).

 

[4metals]

You have too much nitric to deal with the solution. What would be easiest is to filter the acid and add copper to the solution to eat up the excess free nitric acid and cement out any gold in solution. From there you can collect the solids that drop and process them in Aqua regia. Add copper until there is no more visible reaction and then test with stannous chloride to assure it is all out.

Actually learning for you just got easier today. Our new library of previous threads went on line today. Check it out and do some reading.

 

[artart47]

Hi Pro!
You don't proceed! You put everything away safely and start educating yourself before you injure or kill yourself.
First; download a free copy of Hoke's book, availible here on our forum. read it, read it again, and do the "get aquainted experiments untill you understand what she is teaching you. She will teach you the basics so you will know what you are doing.
Next; take the guided tour of the forum and study our safety section. Then, do a search of the forum on "copper chloride leach" ,"processing fingers"and "stannous chloride"
You disolved your gold along with the base metals and created a mess. You will continue to use the same solution to process more fingers and eventually you will recover that lost gold but it will not look like gold. You will be learning all about it as you do your studing. You will be investing quite a bit of time and effort to gain the understanding you must have to do this If you get stuck, we'll be there to help.
Welcome to our forum and good luck!
Waiting to see your first gold button!
artart47

 

[g_axelsson]

There is a big risk that some of the gold have cemented back onto the buried copper circuits of the boards. Learn how to test for gold in solution (look up stannous) and check if there is some gold left in the solution. If there is none there is no need for adding copper, the gold is already out.

I made that mistake once, having circuit boards together with aqua regia and found part of my gold on the boards.
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=17697

Göran

 

[pro003]

Thank you all for clearing things up for me and thanks for advice to read the Hokes ebook. Actually I am reading it and it says I need to add copperas to this liquid in order to get out nitric acid from the solution. Other way is to let this liquid evaporate to the point when becomes like syrup and then add HCl.

What is your opinion what should I do to get gold out of this dark green aqua regia? I think too much gold is in there so I could just leave it now as it is.

 

[FrugalRefiner]

Thank you all for clearing things up for me and thanks for advice to read the Hokes ebook. Actually I am reading it and it says I need to add copperas to this liquid in order to get out nitric acid from the solution. Other way is to let this liquid evaporate to the point when becomes like syrup and then add HCl.

I'm pretty familiar with Hoke's book. Copperas is used to precipitate gold from solutions. It is not used to eliminate excess nitric acid. If there was just a tiny amount of excess nitric, copperas would begin to precipitate the gold, and the excess nitric would redissolve it, so it would eliminate it, but it would also contaminate your solution the more you use.

Evaporating will remove excess nitric. Adding a gold button will work. Sulfamic acid also works well.

What is your opinion what should I do to get gold out of this dark green aqua regia? I think too much gold is in there so I could just leave it now as it is.

My opinion is to set your solutions aside in a safe place while you continue to study. At first, there's so much new information, it can get very confusing. As you learn more, it will start to make sense. Then you'll start to feel like you're really getting a handle on it all. Then you'll realize how much you still don't know. :lol:

Take your time. Read and study. Your gold will still be there when you understand what to do.

Dave

 

[Anonymous]

My opinion is to set your solutions aside in a safe place while you continue to study. At first, there's so much new information, it can get very confusing. As you learn more, it will start to make sense. Then you'll start to feel like you're really getting a handle on it all. Then you'll realize how much you still don't know. :lol:

Take your time. Read and study. Your gold will still be there when you understand what to do.

Dave

That is probably the best piece of advice so far.

Set it to one side, you won't lose it in solution and learn what you did wrong. Then come back to it armed with the correct knowhow to get it out and end up with a big smile on your face. 8) 8)

Jon