Any percentage of Sulfuric will do, lower percentage just mean add a bit more.
If there are dissolved Lead in the liquor, it will drop as Lead Sulfate anyway.
Edited for precision.
Last edited:
On purifying sulphuric acid
- Thread starter Benjaminza
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If there are dissolved Lead in the liquor, it will drop as Lead Sulfate anyway.
Edited for precision.
I noticed my post could be misunderstood, so I edited it for clarity.
Thanks for the heads up
Daniel0007a
Well-known member
Hmm the issue is with expensive sulfuric acid from a car battery it has some lead in it and it is usually 30% it would prob work for dropping out gold with lead I prefer Purer types of sulfuric acid like 95-98% sulfuric acid. I may use it to try to drop out extra lead from my gold coin experiment in the summer because I have it in bulk,
There are never dissolved Lead in Sulfuric acid.
Fresh battery acid is around 40%, used can be a bit less, but for dropping Lead as Sulfate, it does not matter.
As far as I know you can not drop Gold with Sulfuric acid.
Sulfuric acid in general is cheap and Battery acid even cheaper, but as some say, there may or may not be restrictions on the sale to private persons.
If we think of a car battery as an electrolytic cell, we see small amount of the lead from the plates in the battery break away in the solution, in this case our sulfuric acid. Lead in sulfuric along with some heat, and the electrical charge and discharge in the battery causes the small bits of lead to convert to lead sulfate. This sulfate settles in the bottom of the battery and over time starts to use up space normally occupied by the acid, leaving less acid to be used as a battery. This eventually kills the battery, and can cause a short between the plates as well. Many battery rebuilding places simply use hot water to remove this lead sulfate, and refill with new sulfuric acid, effectively "rebuilding" the battery. The used battery acid, if it has lead in it, will be easier to filter from solution. When we add sulfuric acid to our AR solution, the lead in it reacts much the same as a battery, it converts the lead to a sulfate, and it settles to the bottom which also makes it easier to remove through filtration. This effectively means that used battery acid has no lead in it, so long as the acid has not been neutralized in some way.
Yggdrasil beat me to it...
Yggdrasil beat me to it...
Daniel0007a
Well-known member
Well I still believe you can use conc Sulfuric acid with glass pipettes carefully to drop out lead from gold solutions if you can afford it and if they sell it to individuals.
Of course you can, but you do not need to go the super expensive route.
Anyone in here know if it can be done with a suitable Sulphate salt?
I use basic plastic pipettes. They work just fine. It has been a long time since I looked, but I think the stuff I use is 93% or there about. I use it 50ml at a time when making poormans nitric acid (made in situ) from it, that is why I buy it by 1/2 gallon bottles. Occasionally I get larger bottles when I find a good deal on it. The battery acid discussion is just so others can understand it is usable when they can not access higher strength stuff. Use the best you can, it often shows in your finished product.
