My gold is black and floats. No matter what I do

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Rreyes097

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So I got about 2-3 grams of gold from my wastes. Well most of that came from wastes but my problem is that the gold keeps dropping totally different than what I'm used to. This gold is black and very fine. It floats and the liquid it sits in is also dark, almost black. It takes all night for it to settle and when I move it to decant the rinses it's a frustrating problem because I feel that the dark liquid is actually gold. Very fine particles. So I'm sure my coffee filters are letting it right thru. So I try my best to keep the larger particles. I've used dish soap and that seems to help only slightly and with that only larger particles. Somewhere I heard that this is happens when it comes from a dirty solution. So I went ahead and dissolved it.
I figured it would for sure drop like normal. It did not.
So I thought I'd leave it for now and went ahead and dried it. It dried black which is also new to me.
Well I took that black gold and just mixed it with a little bit of gold I had dried already. Then I melted it to see what kind of karat quality I'd get out of this weird gold 🪙 of mine. Needless to say it didn't look great so I dissolved it again!

I dissolved it into this beautiful yellow/ orange color and I thought it would be very pure drop. Well it wasn't. It came out the same way. It took a lot of sulfamic acid to get the nitric out of the way. Like a lot. But that's because I was heavy handed when trying to make this gold button dissolve. There was quite a bit of settlement that did not dissolve and I took that as the impurities. Boy was I wrong. Anyone know what's going on?
Oh I used HCl and nitric well aqua regia to dissolve every time and sulfamic acid and smb. So I'm not sure what to do now.
Those 2 pictures are from tonight.
 

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So I got about 2-3 grams of gold from my wastes. Well most of that came from wastes but my problem is that the gold keeps dropping totally different than what I'm used to. This gold is black and very fine. It floats and the liquid it sits in is also dark, almost black. It takes all night for it to settle and when I move it to decant the rinses it's a frustrating problem because I feel that the dark liquid is actually gold. Very fine particles. So I'm sure my coffee filters are letting it right thru. So I try my best to keep the larger particles. I've used dish soap and that seems to help only slightly and with that only larger particles. Somewhere I heard that this is happens when it comes from a dirty solution. So I went ahead and dissolved it.
I figured it would for sure drop like normal. It did not.
So I thought I'd leave it for now and went ahead and dried it. It dried black which is also new to me.
Well I took that black gold and just mixed it with a little bit of gold I had dried already. Then I melted it to see what kind of karat quality I'd get out of this weird gold 🪙 of mine. Needless to say it didn't look great so I dissolved it again!

I dissolved it into this beautiful yellow/ orange color and I thought it would be very pure drop. Well it wasn't. It came out the same way. It took a lot of sulfamic acid to get the nitric out of the way. Like a lot. But that's because I was heavy handed when trying to make this gold button dissolve. There was quite a bit of settlement that did not dissolve and I took that as the impurities. Boy was I wrong. Anyone know what's going on?
Oh I used HCl and nitric well aqua regia to dissolve every time and sulfamic acid and smb. So I'm not sure what to do now.
Those 2 pictures are from tonight.
Why did you melt the powders??
You should just have added a few ml HCl then a few ml of Peroxide or a drop or two of bleach, ending up with not much more 10ml liquid.
Then cement it again, getting rid of what ever metal oxides you have in there.
Most likely Iron compounds of some kind. They can have some tantalising golden colours.
 
Since it is from your waste, there is a possibility that it is not gold but another pgm. I seen this in my waste a lot before I knew how much rhodium and other pgm’s can be found in gold filled.

I am with Martin though, hot sulfuric. Be very careful, that stuff is very unforgiving.
 
So heat and add a drop or 2 of sulfuric acid?
Yes, the Sulfuric drops seems to clean the surface of the particles somehow.
What is important is a gentle low boil that will bring the particles to coalesce better.
 
So just a drop or 2?
Depending on how much liquid you have yes.
A quarter a bottle cap or so for a Liter.
It is not an exact thing, a splash, 1-2ml or so.
The purpose is to dissolve/remove what ever layer is stopping the agglomeration of the particles.
 
Depending on how much liquid you have yes.
A quarter a bottle cap or so for a Liter.
It is not an exact thing, a splash, 1-2ml or so.
The purpose is to dissolve/remove what ever layer is stopping the agglomeration of the particles.
So as soon as I put a few stops into solution, all floating particles dropped. So just right there helps tremendously. Thanks everyone! I appreciate it very very much.

About how long should I boil?
 
So as soon as I put a few stops into solution, all floating particles dropped. So just right there helps tremendously. Thanks everyone! I appreciate it very very much.

About how long should I boil?
Until it clears up a bit and then let it sink and siphon off what liquid you can.
 
I have had black gold that takes a week to settle a few times
After I dissolved it in aqua regia again and dropped it with smb it was normal cinnamon colored powders.
Once I re-dissolved and cemented it out with copper and that worked very well too.
I have also had palladium from catalytic converters do the same thing, days to settle.
A splash of hydrochloric acid and a little heat helps also.
 
I am with Martin though, hot sulfuric. Be very careful, that stuff is very unforgiving.
Very dilute addittion of H2SO4 and only a couple of ml (10 -20) per liter of solution. That brings it to just over boiling point of water, but not much. A gentle simmer is needed. Not strong boiling!!
Still warm sulphuric in solution but much less aggressive compared to concentrated 98% hot sulphuric.
Look at it as dish soap in hot dish water. Cleans everything up nice and shiny.
 
Well it's still black in color after I rinsed a few times and dried. I'm not sure what's it is going to look like when it's melted though.☹️
Did you rinse it? A solution? Or is the black powder filtered out of solution?

I meant: heat the black solution with 10 to 20 ml of concentrated HS2O4 for ten minutes and you should see it clear and settle to the bottom.
I would not melt black powders. Wash them until light brown or dissolve again and wash again.
 
So I got about 2-3 grams of gold from my wastes. Well most of that came from wastes but my problem is that the gold keeps dropping totally different than what I'm used to. This gold is black and very fine. It floats and the liquid it sits in is also dark, almost black. It takes all night for it to settle and when I move it to decant the rinses it's a frustrating problem because I feel that the dark liquid is actually gold. Very fine particles. So I'm sure my coffee filters are letting it right thru. So I try my best to keep the larger particles. I've used dish soap and that seems to help only slightly and with that only larger particles. Somewhere I heard that this is happens when it comes from a dirty solution. So I went ahead and dissolved it.
I figured it would for sure drop like normal. It did not.
So I thought I'd leave it for now and went ahead and dried it. It dried black which is also new to me.
Well I took that black gold and just mixed it with a little bit of gold I had dried already. Then I melted it to see what kind of karat quality I'd get out of this weird gold 🪙 of mine. Needless to say it didn't look great so I dissolved it again!

I dissolved it into this beautiful yellow/ orange color and I thought it would be very pure drop. Well it wasn't. It came out the same way. It took a lot of sulfamic acid to get the nitric out of the way. Like a lot. But that's because I was heavy handed when trying to make this gold button dissolve. There was quite a bit of settlement that did not dissolve and I took that as the impurities. Boy was I wrong. Anyone know what's going on?
Oh I used HCl and nitric well aqua regia to dissolve every time and sulfamic acid and smb. So I'm not sure what to do now.
Those 2 pictures are from tonight.
I did a side by side experiment with the same AR solution. One was cold/ambient and the other was hot 220F. The cold on the left after one hour vs the hot on the right.
SMB was used for this second refine experiment.

Janie
 

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