Noobie in need of help!

[Wrighty2000]

Hi Everyone,

I could really do with some help / advice.

I recently decided to get into gold refining because I work in IT and come across a lot of computer scrap which I thought I could put to better use.

I also foolishly thought this would be easy to do lol.

So I purchased Hydrochloric Acid 4.0M (4.0N) Solution, Hydrogen Peroxide 12% Food Grade, Sodium Metabisulphite & all tools / equipment needed.

I scavenged some PCBs and scrap from about 10 old phones & a monitor and cut off all the parts with gold on.

I then mixed Hydrochloric Acid & Hydrogen Peroxide 3:1 to cover the pieces.

I left this for about 5 days, stirring every morning, lunch & evening.

I then filtered the solution out into a waste tub, washing the PCB parts and sieving through the smaller pieces with water into another container to get any flakes of gold off the scraps.

After collecting all of the gold flakes & some other pieces of scrap on the filter paper I then submerged each filter paper one by one in Hydrochloric acid & slowly added very small amounts of bleach and vigorously stirred in between each bleach add. This gave off some gas and dissolved the Gold flakes down and produced a yellowy green liquid which I then filtered out again, leaving just this liquid in a plastic container.

I then washed the cups I used to do this out & washed the filters I used to make sure I got all of the Gold Chloride out and added this to the plastic container with the rest.

I then read I needed to add some tsp of the Sodium Metabisulphite to this Gold Chloride solution & mix, which will then produce a clear liquid and brownish gold dust within as well as some gas. Well I added the powder and could definitely smell some gaseous odour but the solution did not change at all.

Please can someone provide some advise / help on my situation,

this is my first time attempting this & i'm a complete beginner in chemistry so go easy lol

Kind regards,

Jack.

 

[FrugalRefiner]

A few comments.

First, the amount of gold from 10 old phones and a monitor will be difficult to see even if you do everything right.

Try to find more concentrated HCL.

You used too much peroxide. A small splash is all that is needed to start the process. You probably dissolved some gold when you started. It probably cemented out on the base metals as the leach progressed. It would probably be a very fine black powder, or still stuck to the boards.

Dave

 

[Martijn]

I have a video showing some examples of precipitation with SMB. In one of them, the solution turns from yellow to clear. After one day there was a very thin layer of brown dust on the bottom. This is what happens when you try to refine a couple of miligrams at a time.
It's still there, just not visible.

https://youtu.be/OijBuUuj5VI

Martijn.

 

[Rocksmasher39]

Martin thank you for your reply, and Weighty you too for sharing your experience. The same has happened to me which is why I feel that unless it's huge amounts of scrap, the gold dust amount at the bottom is quite small. The gold collected from the first wash can be deceptive, I forget sometimes that it's mixed with other base metals( copper silver etc), but that's what I'm here for to learn all I can as I go along. Still waiting for a reply to my rock post. Greetings everyone!

 

[jadedalex]

Wrighty, several observations. Your solution is green. You have copper in it so your solution is contaminated. Two, you said you used bleach. What kind? Household or pure because household bleach has other additives and contaminants that cause havoc and chaos. I keep telling anyone who will listen: You are trying to "Refine" which means Purify. Garbage in equals Garbage out. Using pure product gives you much cleaner drops. There are threads in the Library that deal with botched drops. Get reading, Sir.