Need some advice

[kearneydude1968]

I recently forged some IC chips and BGA tops. Grinded them up to a fine powder and used 300 mls HCI and about 30mls of nitric acid and a small amount of concentrated sulfuric acid.
Heated it up for about 40 minutes to about180 degree’s.
I let it cool down and then added urea to see if I got all my nitric out of the solution which there was no reaction so I only added a small amount.
Then I used some SMB and put in a beaker and mixed in distilled water and stirred.
Poured it in the mixture and added a bit more distilled water to the whole thing .
I checked on it this morning and it is a light green solution with about a few inches on the bottom of white unknown stuff on the bottom. Where I was hoping my cement gold would be was a thick white substance.
The green color is almost florescent color.
The water should of been clear.
So what do I need to first?
Please help I am new to this.

 

[kearneydude1968]

I probably didn’t add enough nitric to get my gold into solution huh?

 

[butcher]

You used enough acid to disolve about a troy ounce of gold.
Forged? what does that consist of? Burning to carbon or ash, hammering the metal in a red hot almost molten state?

Urea will only make the salt of the nitric acid called urea nitrate, in small amounts it can help tie up free nitric acid, but normally will not work to remove all of the nitric and leaving salts which can easily reform nitric acid with an acid or hydronium ion, only causing trouble.
Urea most likely is useless in your case.

Have you done a stannous chloride test to verify you have gold in the solution? This test is also a good indication "if" the gold in the solution can be reduced with a chemical precipitant, as the stannous also has to be able to overcome the oxidizer (free excess nitric acid in solution) to be able to reduce the gold (convert the gold to metal) in this case a purple color of the light reflection of the suspended gold metal clusters of atoms, which cannot settle out of solution staying charged or polarized the gold keeps itself from settling and stays constantly on the move, where the clusters of atoms cannot join to form the brown powder or larger cluster of gold atoms to overcome gravity and sink out of solution.

If you dissolved tin (solder) with your gold, you could have locked some of your gold up into colloidal form very difficult to detect or to recover, tin metal can steal your gold without your knowledge, do not dissolve gold and tin together.

Normally you will have dissolved other metals, some like lead will try to precipitate as salts and need time to settle, then you can decant the solution (pour off the liquid with disturbing settled powders) then filter from solution if the solution is hard to filter tin is most likely your problem, other metals will stay in solution as salts, or may give color to the mix.

Your problem I suspect is the solution still contains free nitric acid and nitrate salts (which with any further acid addition will again make or be converted back into nitric acid in the solution) keeping the gold oxidized keeping you from turning it into an atom or metal (powders of gold atoms clustered together as a brown powder, or black powders if contaminated with base metals).

You can use sulfamic acid to remove nitric acid, the chemical reaction forms some sulfuric acid in solution (with heating this helps to acidify nitrate salts to make them back into nitric again after the water evaporates the nitric acid breaks down to several different NOx gases (deadly gases some clear and invisible and some red depending on the oxygen bond), the heat of slow evaporation ( no need to heat to a boil in fact a lower temperature will do the job best say around 100 °F,
(37.7778 °C), using a shallow dish with a large surface area can help the process, the sulfuric will also help to precipitate lead as a sulfate, the sulfuric can also help if you evaporate the solution too far by mistake, as it will keep the salts from losing all acid if left unattended where you can scorch or fuse the salts, the sulfuric or its sulfates will keep the salts from fusing as sulfuric or its sulfates have low volatility and would need very strong heat and time to drive them from the salts.

Copper metal in a displacement reaction can use up free nitric acid and will give you a way to recover your gold if you cannot get it precipitated otherwise.

I am more concerned about how you are planning on dealing with the toxic chemicals and waste products or byproducts, how are you keeping yourself and your family safe from slow poisoning for a little gold lost in this mess? what happens to this toxic mess?

 

[GoIdman]

I recently forged some IC chips and BGA tops. Grinded them up to a fine powder and used 300 mls HCI and about 30mls of nitric acid and a small amount of concentrated sulfuric acid.
Heated it up for about 40 minutes to about180 degree’s.
I let it cool down and then added urea to see if I got all my nitric out of the solution which there was no reaction so I only added a small amount.
Then I used some SMB and put in a beaker and mixed in distilled water and stirred.
Poured it in the mixture and added a bit more distilled water to the whole thing .
I checked on it this morning and it is a light green solution with about a few inches on the bottom of white unknown stuff on the bottom. Where I was hoping my cement gold would be was a thick white substance.
The green color is almost florescent color.
The water should of been clear.
So what do I need to first?
Please help I am new to this.

Hi kearneydude,

I dont see any separation of materials before acid treatment in your description.
Did you pour the acid on the mixture or did you separate the material by sieving, separate the carbon/ash, separate the metals as magnetic/non-magnetic and then treat it stepbystep with acids to remove base metals and then went to AR?
If you did not separate then I think you have dissolved everything from copper to iron to gold in AR, which will give you a mess, a headache and a real problem with waste disposal.

 

[Martijn]

I probably didn’t add enough nitric to get my gold into solution huh?

Way tooo much probably.
And way too much YouTube and not enough GRF.
Sorry, but your actions and statements clearly show you should not have even started to dissolve metals in acid.
What to do first? STOP! set the mess aside and start reading.
study material:
Here are some links to help you:

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All, If you are reading this then you are likely a noob. This is the 1cent tour post for those of you that are overwhelmed with the volume of information here. The typical posts I refer newbies to. Lazersteve's DVD Details Must Read Forum Rules- Things to know to keep you out of trouble...
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Help where do I learn these skills? : Dealing with waste can also be found here.

Help where do I start to learn these skills?​

We wish to learn a skill to find to recover and refine gold from scrap and electronic trash. These skills take many years to learn, and many more years to get good at it. So where do we begin? We do not begin by mixing acids with metals, trash or rocks, as this is not only dangerous but just...
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Acid Peroxide Process Information Thread Q & A's
The purpose of this thread is to begin to consolidate the vast amount of questions and answers related to the Acid Peroxide (aka AP) recovery process. First and foremost, the name for the process, Acid Peroxide is a misnomer as the active ingredient is actually copper II chloride (CuCl2), so it...
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Hoke's book updated. Screen readable version from Frugal refiners signature:

Screen Readable Copy of Hoke's Book​

About 9 months ago I posted my printer friendly version of Hoke's book. In the process of creating that version I corrected many errors that had been generated by the OCR software when the book was originally digitized. I also rescanned all of the photos and drawings and included some text...
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Start small, small mistakes, small losses, small mess to clean up. Have a plan before you jump in, ask here first before attempting anything.

Have fun. Be safe.
Martijn.