Mythical Gold

[Rmwatson78]

Ok so some of you have read my prior posts and obviously I'm still doing something wrong. When I heat this stuff up with a torch I swear it looks like it's about to turn into what I'm after, I see a color change and everything....but once I let it cool down it turns back into this crap. I've tried dusting it with borax and sodium chloride but every time it looks like I see gold it cools down and disappears.

 

[solar_plasma]

If it is gold, it is not pure enough. 8K jewelry will look the same after beeing melted

 

[jeneje]

What is the feed stock? How are you processing your material? What type of process are you using?

Ken

 

[Rmwatson78]

What is the feed stock? How are you processing your material? What type of process are you using?

Ken

This is a combination of all the resultant powders from processing gold filled jewelry with nitric, then agua regia; black powder removed from the bottom of a sulfuric cell after basing with soda ash and adding distilled water; and gold foils and pins processed with HCL and hydrogen peroxide and a fish tank bubbler. The powders were boiled gently in HCl in an attempt to remove remaining base metals. The powders were then filtered and incinerated. When the remaining powder after incineration and then melting in a table top melting furnace produced a similar looking product to those pictures I decided to redissolve the material in a 1:4 ratio of agua regia and filter until I had a dark emerald green yet clear liquid. I then added methyl isobutyl ketone and shook the loosely capped contents vigorously, followed by an extraction of the organic layer. The organic layer was washed with an almost equal amount of HCl and the top layer was extracted again. To this I added a strong mixture of pure sodium hydroxide and just enough water to dissolve it. This was supposed to give me gold hydroxide that was then again washed with HCL to return me back to the gold chloride solution I started with. Then I added oxalic acid and allowed to sit for a couple days while awaiting gold precipitation. I washed the remaining product powders with HCl twice and distilled water three times.

 

[solar_plasma]

after basing with soda ash

there you would have precipitated every basemetal that was dissolved in the sulfuric as hydroxides or carbonates as well, which would not make the gold cleaner

I decided to redissolve the material in a 1:4 ratio of agua regia and filter until I had a dark emerald green yet clear liquid

trash in, trash out - after one good refining step this should have been yellow if dilluted, or maybe reddish if concentrated, not green. Plenty of contaminants.

Don't use any hydroxide route as a refining step - you would precipitate the garbage as well, dissolving the gold hydroxide will dissolve any basemetal hydroxides as well - so nothing was won.

Forget what you believe to know and have learned. After reading Hoke, you will exactly know, what to do and how to do. Read about SMB and about sulfamic acid. Also read about Harold's washing technique "pure gold shining" with the only modification, that you use smoking HCl in the cold instead of boiling. Then boiling water washes. Melt in a slightly borax glazed dish without anything else.

 

[nickvc]

All I can say reading your post is that you are attempting too many things at once.
Slow down and go for the easy material first, mixing different recoveries is fine if you know what to do to refine them, I'm not picking on you, I want you to succeed, but your using far too advanced techniques for your experience, stick to the basics like using SMB or ferrous to precipitate your gold, once you can do this without a problem look for other methods if you need them, which I doubt you will.
Read Hoke her book is for people like you and I, non chemists with little understanding of exactly what's occuring, I ran my own refinery for years and still don't fully understand the whys or how's but I know what works, when I started I didn't even have access to the forum or Hoke, I learnt the same way you are, and I'll tell you it's expensive and frustrating, you learn because it's costing you money and time but there is an easier way, read Hoke to gain a basic understanding, follow her methods and it's easy, when you have that off pat start reading on the forum, it's full of advice from the smartest people in the world concerning recovery and refining, better still it's free.
Dump the chemicals and start to read and learn, you can't do this without knowing what's going to happen or could possibly happen and if things go wrong how to correct them, it's not hard once you know.
Please read, please show us your first button, we all want you to be here in 10 years advising others with what you have learnt... You can do this.

 

[jason_recliner]

After all that, you'll have the right idea that your powder is ready to melt into at least a fairly bright gold button, when the powder is a light, tan colour. Some say cinnamon, but the cinnamon I have is much darker. There are many example images around the forum. Good luck!