My gold flake dissolved in muriatic acid!

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If there was any nitric left (in this goo), it would have formed a dilute AR when you added the hcl, disolving your gold.

At this point, the nitric is probably in such a small amount, that you can just dilute it some with water, and precip the gold with smb.
 
Now that makes the most sense concerning my situation! The blue goo would very likely have a little nitric in it. But, wait! Uh, When I put the blue goo/ gold flake combo into the muriatic, it was in powdered form. Can the nitric still be affective after it's dried? And it only happened to a few of my batches. The other ones cleaned up nicely. I also didn't leave the other ones on the hot plate so long either.
 
Yes, you could have had "nitrates" present in your dry powder.
Which would form a mild AR when you added hcl. The extra time you gave this batch is most likely the reason "all" the gold disolved.
You most likely were disolving some gold in the other batches also.
 
yvonbug said:
Yeah, heck, I was just trying to clean up some "blue goo"! If I incenerated it, the gold flakes might just burn away, too. ?? :roll:

Incineration is accomplished well below the melt point of gold 1060C. The boiling point of gold is near 2600C so unless you severely overheat it by more than double it won't go anywhere.

Crusty voluminous base metal oxides will form and may conceal your gold but the gold remains unharmed.

From this chart you can see there is little risk of approaching the point of losing your gold heated to red hot even in full sunlight in a stainless steel pan.

http://hearth.com/econtent/index.php/wiki/Stainless_Steel/
 
All I ever do is e-scrap. The "blue-goo" is actually metastannic acid, or tin paste. What I mean by thinking that my gold foils (flakes) might burn up if I incinerated it, is that I have melted gold foils with a torch before, it being so thin. So I know it can be incinerated and possibly blown away. This is the first time I've ever seen my gold disappear in a muriatic hot wash. But I've cleaned up the blue-goo this way many times before. When all you do is e-scrap you get blue-goo alot. Now, I know my gold is in that muriatic, in that there jar. I know it's there. I just can't see it and I don't know how to get it to re-appear. Enough to filter it, anyways. I'm going to take a little of it and try diluting it a little and try some SS on it. We'll see if that works.
 
Y,

If all the solids are all dissolved you can add in a piece of solid copper and cement out the PM's.

Steve
 

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