Newbie, Bleach HCL SMB Process Went Wrong PLZ Help.

shop deals on amazon
Shop deals on ebay
Advertise with us
xelexo
Gold Refining Forum

Help Support Gold Refining Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
M

Mg54050

Member
Joined
Jan 20, 2018
Messages
11
Good evening everyone,
I want to start off by saying thank you to everyone who has posted with problems and to those that have helped. I have learned a lot and thought, I was ready to venture on my own.
So I started off by soaking some chips into muriatic acid (HCL) and hydrogen peroxide to remove the foils while also separately of course soaking some gold plated jewelry and pins. So I recovered quite a bit of foils from both batches and filtered all of them out. I perhaps didn't rinse as much as I should've with distilled water. But anyway, I put filters from both batches into glass jar and prepped for the bleach and hcl method. I used 3 part (hcl) muriatic acid and 1part bleach. Now the initial reaction looked good. The perfect yellow color. So, to expedite the process I added a bit more of both bleach and hcl. I couldn't see any more gold in the solution so I started to filter and the solution is now turning green. Much like the color of hcl and hydrogen peroxide solution when it initially starts to react with copper. I wasn't sure if maybe it was the lighting because it was being done at night outside, so I added some SMB (stump out bonide) and there was no fizzing whatsoever. And obviously no other reaction. So the solution remains green. And I'm not sure what to do now. Plz help. Thank you
 
Sorry, forgot to mention that ,I have done the stannous chloride test and turned out to be positive. Any help would be appreciated here is a picture of the solution as it sits now, I put it back in the jar with the original filter because I wasn't sure if maybe I didn't get all of the gold out of the filters.IMG_20180120_193504.jpg
 
You said stannous shows positive and you used 3:1 on hcl/bleach. How much bleach approximately?
Also was smb dry or mixed with water?
 
Initially I used the 3:1 ratio but as I continued adding solutions it turned out to be the 2 cups hcl and 3/4 bleach
 
It sounds as if you still have some chlorine in solution so the gold will not precipitate, you need to heat your solution to drive off the excess and then you should be able to precipitate your gold.
 
You should have incinerated filter papers. They do not dissolve in HCl/Cl so if a lot of gold foils was trapped inside many layers of paper chlorine may not dissolve all of it.

Whole filter papers do dissolve only in hot AR.
 
I ran it through hcl and bleach once more this time heating it a bit to drive off the excess chlorine, after that was finished and I attempted to drop the gold once more and this time there was a reaction when the SMB hit the solution, a strong fizzle, but the solution remains the same, don't see anything that dropped...is it possible to add too much SMB? If so would it prevent the gold from dropping?IMG_20180121_044442.jpg
 
Test with stannous again to see if you have precipitated all gold.

To me it doesn't look like you have a lot of gold in solution to start with. Are you sure that you got a positive (purple) test the first time and not a false positive (brown). Excess SMB can give brown staining with stannous.

Very diluted solutions could create a fine powder, so fine that it will take a long time to settle on the bottom. You might need patience and wait for it to settle.

How much material did you start with? "Quite a bit of foils" is very subjective and doesn't say a lot about how much you actually have.

I would separate the papers from the liquid and test the liquid for gold. The papers can be incinerated and redissolved to extract the gold from the ashes.

Göran
 
Mg54050, we all have to start somewhere, and it's often with what we have at hand. I've used mason jars when nothing else was handy. Having said that, be sure to mark any glassware you use in refining so it will NEVER be used for food or drink in the future. Another hazard of using what appears to be a drinking glass is that it is all too easy for you, or someone else to mistake it for a beverage and have a horrific accident. I'm not trying to be mean, but safety is paramount in what we do. Stay safe my friend.

Dave
 
Good Afternoon Everyone,
So, I posted a few days ago about my current progress with the bleach, hcl and SMB process I was having trouble with. To summarize I used about (20lbs) of fingers and ran them through hcl (3parts) and peroxide (1part). I let them sit for 3 days til I could see that most of the foils were removed, and at the same time I had another batch of gold plated pins and some misc gold plated jewelry, roughly (9lbs) soaking in hcl(2parts) and peroxide (1part) for 3days as well. The fingers and gold plated pins/jewelry we're not being processed together. They both had a substantial amount of gold foils/flakes when I filtered them from the hcl/peroxide. After the foils/flakes we're completely filtered out I sprayed the filters with some distilled water and prepped for the hcl(3parts) and bleach (1part). I put the filters from both the fingers and the gold plated pins/jewelry together to be processed together. I started the process with hcl(3cups) and slowly added the bleach(1cup) as the reaction seemed to slow down, I added (1cup HCL) and (1/4 cup bleach) more to expedite the process. At this time my solution went from a glowing gold to a green, resembling the a/p solution. I filtered it and it became completely green. Initially I did not get a reaction when adding SMB(1cup), so I posted on here and asked for advice and was told some helpful things, which led me to heat the solution to let any excess chlorine out. After I did that, I added SMB again, (2cups) and got a very strong reaction. I let it sit and settle for about 12 hours and got thisIMG_20180121_154405.jpg

I tested the solution with stannous chloride to see if there was any more gold left in the solution. It came back positive, so I added more SMB(1cup) and got the same result after letting it settle for 10hours. What appears to be brown powder at the bottom. However when attempting to drain the solution from the powder, all of the powder does not remain at the bottom. It transfers over into the container. I was under the impression the gold is a heavy enough element to remain at the bottom when transferring out solution. Any advice on how to proceed from here? Thank you
 
Mg, I've combined your two threads since they both deal with the same issues. It's easier for members to provide answers when they can see all the information in a single thread rather than searching through other threads for it.

You're using far more chemicals than needed.

Dave
 
Can you post a picture of your stannous results? Sounds like a false positive to me. It should be purple/black and not dark brown. In my humble experience and opinion, too much SMB makes a fine, wispy, powder that does not easily settle.
 
Thank you Dave for combining my posts, I appreciate it. I wish I was home but work forced me away til the morning, but as soon as I get Home in the morning, I will conduct another stannous test. I have disposed of any of the original filters or solutions. If you're right, which makes sense either the gold is mixed with the SMB, or it remains as a liquid. Just out of curiosity, what computer scrap part holds the highest yeild besides the original Pentium processors?
 

Latest posts

Back
Top