lye in my AP solution

[jimmyreece]

what would happen to an active AP solution already in progress if it had gotten contaminated with a small amount of sodium hydroxide ?

 

[Barren Realms 007]

If enough of it was put in your solution it would neutralize your acid and drop everything out of your solution.

 

[acpeacemaker]

I tried this once it left three layers of a mess. Something like clear, blue, and black. Gold was left suspended in the bottom layer.

 

[jimmyreece]

it would drop the copper too correct ?
the addition of sodium hydoxide wasnt intentional when i added additional material to the solution some of the items were contaminated with lye which cleared my whole solution and what looked to be copper dropped mixed with the gold that was stripped. but some items appear to have been cemented with copper too.
so my AP is dead right ? so filtering and boil in hcl should clean it up, yes ?

 

[Barren Realms 007]

Yes if you add enough it will drop the copper and everything else too.
You will possibly end up reprocessing it all again.

 

[jimmyreece]

thank you again barren. so really all i have to is filter out the gold foil/copper, rinse and put back into another AP solution. and of course rinse clean the material that wasnt completed.

 

[jimmyreece]

would that be true with all common chemical based gold refining solution meaning sodium hydroxide being a precipitent ? i know its not selective in what it precipitates, i was just curious

 

[Barren Realms 007]

Let your material settle and then siphon off your solution it will be easier and less time consuming to get to your material.

Yes pretty much with all of it when you raise the PH.

 

[dtectr]

Since sodium is the only metal whose hydroxide form is soluble in water, it is used to drop other metals from solution, indiscriminately. However, the precipitate is flocculent, very "fluffy", for lack of a better word. It also acts as something of a buffering agent, allowing the metals to remain mixed & difficult to separate.

 

[Acid_Bath76]

Since sodium is the only metal whose hydroxide form is soluble in water, it is used to drop other metals from solution, indiscriminately. However, the precipitate is flocculent, very "fluffy", for lack of a better word. It also acts as something of a buffering agent, allowing the metals to remain mixed & difficult to separate.

With this is mind, would this a good way to reduce the waste generated with all this refining? I would have to see how much lye it would take to neutralize "X" amount of AP, but having a dry solid and then a liquid that I could get rid of would be pretty nice. I'll have to look on here with a a little more detail. I'm sure someone has asked this before. If not... throw some knowledge my way