You can study the stoichiometric equations to know exactly what each formula will turn into before trying a process, it can be helpful in understanding a few of the reactions that can take place, but it will not tell you all of the different reactions that may actually be going on in a process, as we normally have many different reactions taking place at once in a process, and you would not be able to write a chemical reaction for them all.
Understanding the actual chemistry going on can be helpful, but not necessarily necessary, to be able to process your materials.
Understanding the safety, and and how to deal with toxic substances, and how a process works, and details of the process that cause problems or which are needed to be successful, is more important than being able to understand all of the chemical reactions going on, or writing balanced equations for those you think may occur, understanding what circumstances when using chemicals become dangerous and how to avoid those dangers should be the first priority.
glaucodobrasil,
You are new to this, and there are so many different dangers involved you are totally unaware of, there are so many different materials and processes, so much to learn in this field.
You need a place to begin, studying the safety is one place anybody even thinking of doing this field of work should begin with, then I suggest picking a simple process, to study and learn before taking on studying, or doing more complicated processes.
If you are looking at recovery and refining gold from electronics, I suggest studying safety first, and Hoke's book to understand the fundamentals, doing the getting acquainted experiments in the book to gain some experience in how metals react.
Then pick and study a simple and very useful process, a good one for electronic material is the copper II chloride process, and a material without much base metals to interfere with that learning process like memory fingers.
Study the copper II chloride leach (copper II chloride etching solution), (Called improperly AP leach on the forum), and using it to process memory fingers to get gold foils, study it well before attempting to process any scrap, study how best to prepare the scrap for the process, and the workings of that process, the dangers in using it and how to deal with the waste from it, problems that may occur and how to deal with them...
Then after you recover the gold move on to study how to refine that gold, studying one of the different processes that can be used, like using the HCl and sodium hypochlorite method, again studying everything you can about it the dangers involved and your safety as well as how to deal with the dangers involved, how it works and its problems...
Then study how to recover your refined gold from solution, Sodium metabisulfite here would be one place to begin again do the study on safety...
Then study how to wash and get your gold pure of any remaining salts.
Then study how to melt that gold to a button, again do not forget to study the safety portion of any method you plan on using...
Studying a simple material and methods will give you a better understanding of reactions, when you begin progressing to more complicated materials and reactions, that will take even more study to use.
What you learn from a simpler process can help give you some of that needed experience when moving on towards a more complicated material or processes, building your education in the art, as you progress learning and studying more, to learn more of this never ending study to learn to recover metals and refine them.
Study is your treasure map to that gold, without that time spent educating yourself first, you are just wasting your time, and exposing yourself and others to many different dangers, wasting your time, and losing your chance at getting any gold you come across that you could have possibly recovered or refined, if you would have spent that time to study and educate yourself so that you can gain the experience needed to be able to safely and successfully do what you have studied.
Put away the chemicals, gain the education first, the education gives you the understanding of how to safely use the chemicals to get the gold.
