New and taking first steps slowly.

[Sheddk]

Hi, my name is Kelley. I live in Georgia and am always interested in new possibilities to learn. I have been in the scrap business for many years (antiques...with my family ....) and rode the gold and silver wave as gold rose to almost $1900 oz and silver was as profitable. I have now "scrapped", to my regret, almost all of the sterling silver and gold that didn't sell in the shop minus non-karat (1/20 1/40 10k 14k R.G.P etc.) and Silver Plate of which I have pounds of each. Also as a programmer, by education not trade, people think I can repair CPU's, which I can, but in the efforts of doing so I have amassed dozens of complete computers and hundreds of cards etc., most 1995+ which are now piled in my back yard, forget the wires, transformers and "gold plated" connectors in a huge tangled wad that Guinness would be impressed with for future books, also I have family members that think dumpsters are distribution points. None the less I have researched for over a year how to handle the "scrap" I have on hand without paying the "middle man" fee. This site has been very valuable towards my new hobby of recycling (for a profit) my junk. I have purchased LaserSteves video on Processing Gold Filled Scrap and am in the process of gathering equipment needed to make Nitric Acid...including appropriate safety gear. I have access to sulfuric acid (Auto part Store Battery Acid) and Potassium Nitrate (Thank You Lowes) and have spent 4 weeks + just looking for flasks, beakers, condensers and stands that aren't Chinese imports but on the other hand won't break me. My plan is to begin with distillation of the sulfuric acid then condensation of Nitric acid via H2SO4 + KNO3 = HNO3 as HNO3 seems to be at the heart of this endeavor....again I have studied Hokes and watched a video (which was beyond my skills at this time) from LaserSteve.
Anyhow just wanted to thank all those who have added their information on this site, although seemingly too much info at times after reading then re-reading it all seems to sink in. Advisee from here on welcome and look forward to continued reading of all posts as I progress. Thanks, Kelley.

 

[TommyA]

Hi Kelley!

My name is Tommy and I also live in Georgia. This too is my first post. I have also been taking my first steps rather slowly and have found Laser Steve's Videos helpful. I think I will go the gold foils from fingers route and skip the Nitric Acid until I get a better handle on the things I'm learning on the forum. I have been taking seriously the words of caution about envirnomental hazards and those concerning personal saftey.

I hope you find what you're looking for on the forum and look forward to seeing more from you as you share your interest.

Thanks,
Tommy

 

[Palladium]

Welcome to the forum Tommy!

 

[adamscot]

thanks for all info...

 

[element47.5]

First, welcome!

Second, there is no sin in watching the videos and studying the materials more than once.

Third...I am a little confused as to why, as your first "action" steps in the refining universe, you are thinking about distilling sulfuric and nitric acids, and working to obtain "official" lab-grade glassware.

You say you have lots of e-scrap. E-scrap can be effectively processed with two of the simpler processes the members of this forum discuss: "Acid peroxide" (or, the reco'ed new name, "copper II chloride") used for fingers and "sulfuric cell" used for pins. While it is true that the later stages of REFINING (not recovering) the products of both these processes (which are repeatedly cited as the simpler processes, eg; the answers to the oft-asked query "where do I start?") *may* require AR, the recovery process require neither advanced glassware nor concentrated acids. That's not to say that proper safety gear is a casual consideration even if more dilute acids are used. But you seem to understand that, so I will move on.

The concentrating/distillation of these acids are potentially pretty dangerous processes. From my reading of your post, you seem to be aware of that. But my point is that after you concentrate these acids, then what? You don't need sulfuric any more concentrated than what you already have for a sulfuric cell and my guess is that you probably don't need nitric more concentrated than what you already have even for AR. So my question is, why are you focused on the chemical processes of concentrating these acids when the net effect of doing so is probably just going to be slightly speeding up the refining reactions you're probably going to want to do later? And if you don't successfully recover and semi-isolate the feed materials for the later process of refining....you won't have anything to refine. There is no shortage of newbs on this forum who scream for help after they've dumped all their materials into AR and end up with a mess. And I have to wonder, just for myself, where are these harebrained newbs getting nitric acid and thinking they can play around with AR and strong acids when I have a strong degree of respect for the dangers of these acids and especially the toxic fumes they can generate. But that's just me, speaking for myself. I am not calling you impetuous or harebrained, by the way.

I mention this not out of being critical, but to suggest, with respect, you rethink your focus and the *entire* process you propose to embark on. I hope you take my comments constructively. In brief, I think you may be going to step "D" when you haven't provided for the performance of steps "A", "B", and "C".