Maybe it wasn't Nitric Acid

[rczmiller]

I am not a seasoned expert on using nitric acid for gold recovery, but I have successfully recovered gold from Gold-filled jewlery a few times before. Unfortunately when I went to smelt the gold using my kiln I included some material that was not processed yet - did I mention that I am not a seasoned expert. Since I planned to have to reprocess the material again, I threw in some more gold-filled jewlery and melted it all together.

Well to recover from my mistake, I ordered some 70% nitric acid in a properly labeled bottle from a vendor on eBay. This time my results were different. First while I was using the nitric acid to remove the non-gold, a clear/blue crystal formed at the bottom 1/2 inch of the glass jar incasing the material. I had never seen that before and when I contacted the vendor they informed me that there were too many variable to explain what was happening. I found that when I poured off the acid and filled the glass jar with water the crystal was disolved. However, when the crystal was gone i also noticed that there was no gold visable in the jar just black fine sand (waste?) at the bottom.

I read that Aqua Regia would disolve gold so I contacted the vendor again to ask if that what was sent, but he again informed me that it was nitric acid and then tried to sell me a book on how to refine gold. I didn't have alot of gold but I know there was about a 1/2 ounce before I processed it with this new acid.

Here is my plea for help. I kept all the liquid, but how do I get the gold back? I looked into how to process gold recovery from aqua regia, but this process is a little more complicated than just putting gold-filled jewlery in a bowl with nitric acid in a covered container in a tub with water in the bottom to absorb the gases given off by the reactions. Should I attempt to try to recover the gold from the liquid as if it were aqua regia or is there something else I should consider?

I would like to do this myself, but if this is just to complicated for me to attempt I can write this off as a dumb mistake and move on. Your thoughts?

 

[bigjohn]

I would start with taking the guided tour here on the fourm. Then download a copy of hokes book (also available here on the fourm). Read as much as you can and read through as many post on here as you can. Every bit of information you need on refining precious metals is right here on the fourm. The fine black sand you see is most likely your gold. Did you dilute your nitric whit distilled water? Or did you use tap water?

 

[Geo]

search for Testing solutions for precious metals using stannous chloride. stannous chloride is the best way to determine if you have values dissolved in solution. unless there was some sort of chloride present, you didnt dissolve any gold. the crystals was more than likely copper nitrate crystals and the "sand" is your gold metal.

 

[Harold_V]

What you really need to do is read Hoke's book. If you do, you'll begin to understand why nitric hasn't worked out for you. Understand, it's not that it won't work--it's that the percentage of gold is too high to work with the alloy you created, so it can't. There's an easy solution waiting for you, which you can access by reading Hoke's book.

Please do not continue this thread with more questions. Until you understand what you'll learn in her book, it will do you little good, and you'll quickly wear out your welcome on this board. We insist that readers follow our advice, even when it isn't the advice they seek. We do that because the advice we provide is what the reader needs, although in many cases certainly not what they want.

Think of it as learning to play a piano before scheduling a concert.

Harold