Please help
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I have never tried it and I would never test it. I would expect base metal oxides and other garbage in the sludge and it's easy to do a final refining when you have it in a fine powdery form.
What is your problem?
Göran
What is your problem?
Göran
What does "fitter" mean and what are "slugs"? From a sulfuric cell I get black "slimes" (unless you mean sludge) which is the gold from the plated material. It often contains other remnants of base metals as well.
What material did you run through your cell?
How much material did you run?
Did your HCl and Bleach change colors?
There are other questions need asking, but I think we can start with these.
Edit:
Do mean filter instead of "fitter"?
I hate to sound like the spelling police, but it can make it easier to understand what a person is trying to explain if proper spelling and words are used. International language barriers can be a real pain at times.
What material did you run through your cell?
How much material did you run?
Did your HCl and Bleach change colors?
There are other questions need asking, but I think we can start with these.
Edit:
Do mean filter instead of "fitter"?
I hate to sound like the spelling police, but it can make it easier to understand what a person is trying to explain if proper spelling and words are used. International language barriers can be a real pain at times.
A sulfuric cell is for gold plated materials such a cheap jewelry, computer pins, and the like. Whole boards won't work very well, if at all this way. I am still a bit lost as to how you processed the boards in a cell, as well as how you used the HCl and bleach.
I am not that good at whole board figures, but unless you had 500lbs or so of computer boards, maybe more, you won't even be close to two ounces. A sulfuric cell will leave the best gold with the boards in the form of chips such as IC's and BGA's.
Just saw your reply while typing....
If you have the black powders from a sulfuric cell, the HCl and bleach should put them into solution and turn it from a yellowish color to deep red color, depending on how much there is there. Even then, I don't like and hardly ever use bleach, just to much trouble for me. I do use it some, I just don't like to.
I am not that good at whole board figures, but unless you had 500lbs or so of computer boards, maybe more, you won't even be close to two ounces. A sulfuric cell will leave the best gold with the boards in the form of chips such as IC's and BGA's.
Just saw your reply while typing....
If you have the black powders from a sulfuric cell, the HCl and bleach should put them into solution and turn it from a yellowish color to deep red color, depending on how much there is there. Even then, I don't like and hardly ever use bleach, just to much trouble for me. I do use it some, I just don't like to.
Have you tried wiping the boards off? I'm still not sure how you would use a cell for boards. Are you sure the gold came off the board? It may be that some base metals came off from the acids, and then plated back to your board covering the gold. I found that Telstra is an Australian telecommunications company, so I would think the boards were pretty good, but not two ounces good, especially with the other components removed from them. I could be wrong though.
Shark I am very great full for your time spent with this on me and appreciate your help.
Please can you help me just to get this to were I can melt it down to be able to cash it in. Purity not important to me. I’m on a pension and just want to put some food on the table for my two young daughter’s and my wife.
I thank and appreciate it if you could help me out.
Trevor
Please can you help me just to get this to were I can melt it down to be able to cash it in. Purity not important to me. I’m on a pension and just want to put some food on the table for my two young daughter’s and my wife.
I thank and appreciate it if you could help me out.
Trevor
Hopefully, you kept everything, the old boards you think that you have stripped gold or metals from, solutions, and powders, sludge, trash...
I cannot see how you can successfully strip all of the metals from the circuit boards, maybe the ground path which is a major part of the circuit trace that can be a continuous unbroken circuit, but even then that circuits continuity will be broken as a section of that trace goes into solution thus breaking the circuit or connection to the positive of the power supply, so that part of the circuit board trace is no longer part of the anode of the cells circuit and then would only be subject to acid attack for any oxidation,until the free acid in solution was reduced, but more likely these traces not connected to the positive of the power source would be a source, or place (reducing agent) for reduction of gold ions from solution to cement onto taking the gold from solution (not in the anode sludge that may or may not contain any gold...
Many circuit boards are multilayer, they will have copper traces sandwiched between the layers of fiberglass and resin epoxy, the through-holes, layers of metals under solder mask, there are many places for unreacted metal to hide and collect gold to hide it (any hidden copper the gold solution can find it will gladly reduce on its surface as a black coating which can easily hide from sight.
I seriously doubt you can effectively recover gold in the cell as you described unless you can show pictures or some proof of the process, or how you are doing it different than a conventional electrolytic cell set up would connect the anode connection to all of the circuit paths of the boards..
I cannot see much gold coming from this unless you were working with tons of scrap.
I want you to teach me how your cell works and show me that it works.
Have You studied Hokes Book or searched her book for answers to your questions?
from conventional recovery or refining cells
Without knowing what you are doing, what you have or how you got to where you are now. it would be very hard to help, as what your doing is not the way it is done normally, and we cannot see how it would work at this point.
I cannot see how you can successfully strip all of the metals from the circuit boards, maybe the ground path which is a major part of the circuit trace that can be a continuous unbroken circuit, but even then that circuits continuity will be broken as a section of that trace goes into solution thus breaking the circuit or connection to the positive of the power supply, so that part of the circuit board trace is no longer part of the anode of the cells circuit and then would only be subject to acid attack for any oxidation,until the free acid in solution was reduced, but more likely these traces not connected to the positive of the power source would be a source, or place (reducing agent) for reduction of gold ions from solution to cement onto taking the gold from solution (not in the anode sludge that may or may not contain any gold...
Many circuit boards are multilayer, they will have copper traces sandwiched between the layers of fiberglass and resin epoxy, the through-holes, layers of metals under solder mask, there are many places for unreacted metal to hide and collect gold to hide it (any hidden copper the gold solution can find it will gladly reduce on its surface as a black coating which can easily hide from sight.
I seriously doubt you can effectively recover gold in the cell as you described unless you can show pictures or some proof of the process, or how you are doing it different than a conventional electrolytic cell set up would connect the anode connection to all of the circuit paths of the boards..
I cannot see much gold coming from this unless you were working with tons of scrap.
I want you to teach me how your cell works and show me that it works.
Have You studied Hokes Book or searched her book for answers to your questions?
from conventional recovery or refining cells
Without knowing what you are doing, what you have or how you got to where you are now. it would be very hard to help, as what your doing is not the way it is done normally, and we cannot see how it would work at this point.
I did use a copper mesh in some of it and the taps are made copper. The boards have a copper layer under the gold the one kilogram bares are copper with gold plated on them as well. I don’t know how to upload pictures onto the site. All I have done since then is diluting the sludge with plain water. I used a battery charger that’s pretty standard. Thank you for your help. It seams I have probably gone completely the wrong way about this. 
You may have removed some gold and have it contained in the sludge depending on parameters of the cell use and its operation, but I would expect a lot if not most of the gold just plated or coated to any remaining undissolved hidden base metals hidden on the boards (that you believe are stripped of gold).
I cannot see how you can maintain a good connection or contact with all of the metal traces of the circuit with the positive of the power supply.
You would only have a good connection or contact of the traces involved of the circuit board that physically touched the copper screen anode mesh which is your connection between the anode bar to complete circuit of the cell, any portion of the circuit or circuit boards metal traces that were not in solid contact of your anode connection and thus the positive of your power supply would not be part of the anode of the circuit and would not be part of the cell.
It would be similar to hanging a piece of wire in the electrolyte with no connection to the anode or cathode of your cell.
Much of the gold on plated on the traces of circuit boards are just a flash coating the gold plating is so very thin, it may look like a lot of gold to the eye, but there is hardly a trace of gold, you would have to have an awful lot of them to make much of a noticeable recovery at all.
I cannot see how you can maintain a good connection or contact with all of the metal traces of the circuit with the positive of the power supply.
You would only have a good connection or contact of the traces involved of the circuit board that physically touched the copper screen anode mesh which is your connection between the anode bar to complete circuit of the cell, any portion of the circuit or circuit boards metal traces that were not in solid contact of your anode connection and thus the positive of your power supply would not be part of the anode of the circuit and would not be part of the cell.
It would be similar to hanging a piece of wire in the electrolyte with no connection to the anode or cathode of your cell.
Much of the gold on plated on the traces of circuit boards are just a flash coating the gold plating is so very thin, it may look like a lot of gold to the eye, but there is hardly a trace of gold, you would have to have an awful lot of them to make much of a noticeable recovery at all.
