Linden
New member
Hi my name is Linden , I'm new to the group. I am interested in both recovering e-waist and recovering natural gold from the earth (prospector). Like others I started a journey with only partial information thinking I was educated enough to extract gold from e-waist. I have downloaded Hoke's book and have started reading. I know now that I only knew enough to be dangerous. I need to educate myself a lot more but I need to save my mixture if I can. Here is where I am at: I started with 5.5 oz. of fine green circuit board material with gold flicks in it which I recovered from boards using just hydrochloric acid. I did not weigh the gold but estimate about a half ounce. I also added about a half ounce of scrap 10k jewelry. I used an Aqua Regia mix of 3 parts hydrochloric and 1 part nitric acids to dissolve the gold. I now have a gallon of very dark amber liquid. The ph is 8.5 and the stannous chloride test shows high AU content. I took 1/2 cup of this liquid and tried to balance the ph using urea. Once there was no reactions there was a white-gray sludge building up in the bottom. Filtered some of this and used sodium metabisulfite on both mixes and nothing is dropping out. At the same time I took about 1/2 oz. of crushed ore (95% AU) used the same Aqua Regia mix on the ore. Neutralized it with urea without any trouble. Diluted it to a pale yellow added sodium metabisulfite until the mix quit reacting. Filtered off the black powder in the bottom (looked kind of like iron filings) put it in a crushable and melted it into a button of gold. I know I screwed up. What can I do to save my mix while I'm educate myself better?