My aqua regia looks like coffee with yellow foam

Gold Refining Forum

Help Support Gold Refining Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
From: Rreyes097
Recipient: acpeacemaker

I don't think I had heat sinks in there but I did have green chips in there CPU chips. The pinless kind. I also had small pins from various things that were so small that it was too hard to take out of the plastic so I threw the whole thing in there phone boards a couple phone boards in there coaxial cable connections are RC cable connectors that were gold-plated yeah a lot of random junk so there could be aluminum if aluminum is found on any of those coaxial cable connectors RC jacks and whatnot so what do I do if there is aluminum in it cuz if there is then what is a procedure to get that out so I can dissolve my gold? Because right now it's black with yellow foam does not dissolve gold and my stannis chloride test does not show gold in the solution.


He told me it was fine to post this yesterday if I had time to respond via post so no one reading was confused on my reply. Sorry...my 17 yr old has caused me a lot of fun so ive been late at replies...(sarcasm)




I'm still inclined to believe it's not the hcl as I've used that kind before. It still has a strength of 31.45% While it might have a fume control buffer, it shouldn't cause that much of an issue.

There is another econo kind that will say "muratic alternative" and another "safer muratic" on the bottle. It is 15.725% and loaded with a surfactant.

But through info via pm. The solution is overloaded with basemetals and trash. And could still be part aluminum. The foam could be several things. Whether a surfactant, aluminum, or "whatnots". Just an example: I don't remember off the top of my head but on really old cell phones i used to sometimes find something that looked like and mlcc or chip resistor that would explode and expand and turn into a yellow mess.

But you threw a bunch of stuff in the pot expecting it to turn out good. There's the old saying put trash in...that's what's going to come out...


I mean this in the nicest way possible. I think you should slow down as well. Safety is a big thing true and it's good you are trying to be. But sometimes safety can be just that. Stopping to learn more of the process to be more efficient instead of making another mess and create more waste.
 
But nothing is showing on stannous chloride test. I know the gold disolved. I filtered the solids for the most part then heated in AR and now no gold in solution. I'm really rusty at this. Or don't know as much as I thought I did. But researching in this forum is difficult. I basically get scenarios of other people but nothing quite matches my situation. So I'm lost on what to do. So if anyone can help me with the next step that would be great.
 
Although I've never had issues in age. How old is your stannous? Are you sure you made it correctly? How are you using it to test?

If you still have a lot of trash and things like the RC jacks or coax connectors or cell boards etc. Your gold (if any) could have precipitated out prior.

Or the first solution that was overloaded with the black sediment. That could have had the gold with it.
 
I just bought the stannous online pre made. So I don't know if that's good or not. I dip a strip of filter paper in the solution and then drop one drop off stannous into the paper. And I haven't let any of the gold go , but all the junk is gone. I picked out all of the sports pieces and rinsed each one of being careful not to lose anything. The gold wasn't dissolved yet. I then took it all and added fresh HCl and nitric after cooking it in the HCl. And both times I could see the glitter of gold. I then put the solution away in frustration. Next day the gold disolved. I tried urea to denox (I have no sulfamic acid). No reaction when urea hit it so I tried to drop gold with smb. And nothing.
 
You have about 4 options here.

1. What you thought was gold wasn't really gold.
2. What was gold that dissolved, precipitated back out before testing. (Did you test with stannous at this step before using urea and smb?)
3. Your stannous isn't good if gold is in solution. Or you still have unconsumed nitric.
4. Put everything away in a container with some copper. To try and drop the pms if any are there and study more.
 
Back
Top