Poormans AR

[bswartzwelder]

Hi All,

I have taken Butchers calculations from one of the threads in the Data section of the forum and made several charts. If you know how many grams of gold you have, it will show how much HCL, and how much NaNO3 or how much KNO3 will be needed. It also shows how much SMB will be needed to drop the gold. These charts are only a starting point for recovering your gold. They do not take into account if there are base metals in the mix. I made the charts using Microsoft Word and tried to attach them to an email to Butcher, but for some reason, they didn't make it. Since then, I have resaved the files in an HTML format, but cannot upload files in the HTML format to the forum. Let me know if there are any problems and I'll try to work things out.

 

[kane333]

Would both the NANO3 & SMB have to be dissolved in water first and if so how much water? Also, if dissolving is recommended, would regular tap water be used or would distilled water be better?

 

[bswartzwelder]

NaNO3 is dissolved in HCl to make poormans AR. KNO3 is dissolved in HCl to form a different version of poormans AR. In the Data section of the forum, there is a discussion which I think is "Trouble with 3-1 ratio making AR with nitric substitutes". In this discussion, Butcher spends quite a bit of time explaining poormans AR. If you are not familiar with it, read it. He spent a lot of time in posting his responses and they were very thoughtful.

As to adding SMB to water, some people do it, some don't. I think that one method may produce gold powder which has a much smaller grain consistently, but I may be wrong. Someone will help us both here, I'm sure.

Distilled water would probably be best. Especially if you get your water from a well where it may contain a lot of other minerals such as calcium or iron. If you have "city" water, then for most purposes, it should suffice. There has been a lot written on the quality of water used. Good quality (distilled) water should be used for final rinses and boiling of gold in the cleaning processes, but is not absolutely necessary for much of what we do. Use the search function and read the forum. Use of distilled water has been mentioned many times over.

 

[Geo]

for me, i use dry SMB as a test to determine if i have free nitric. its not very scientific but it seems to work ok. a little SMB will produce a mildly violent reaction in a solution with free nitric and the dark precipitate will go back clear evolving the familiar NOx fumes and smell.
then again, i normally make a solution of SMB and water to use on solutions of hcl/Cl.

 

[kane333]

Thank you, bswartzwelder. I remember seeing that post. I'll have to search for that one again and reread it.

 

[srlaulis]

In my opinion, distilled water is always the way to go. With anything other than distilled water, you pose the risk of introducing contaminates into your precious metals. We are trying to refine precious metals to superior purity. There is no sense in using dirty water throughout the refining process. That is like taking two steps forward and half a step back, during the process.

 

[kane333]

We are on well water out here in WV. We have an account with a Drinking Water company that sends us (5) 5 gallon jugs monthly along with 2 boxes of mine and my gf's favorite Keurig Coffee flavors. A convenient setup. Before we started using the Drinking Water companys water for cooking and drinking, we went through 2 coffee makers and one Keurig Machine in the 5 years we've lived here. Not to mention yearly Water Heater Heating Element replacement, that's how hard the water is here. I definitely wouldn't use the water out of our well for any kind of refining purposes.

 

[bswartzwelder]

I made a mistake on the original Poormans AR file using KNO3. Another forum member was kind enough to point this out to me. As a result, I deleted that file and will attach it to this reply instead. Sorry for any problems. By the way, the correct amount of KNO3 for a 2 gram sample to be processed is 2.7 grams of KNO3 and not the 5.0 in the original file. Sorry for any confusion this may have caused anyone. I also changed the original file in the first post.

 

[Palladium]

In my opinion, distilled water is always the way to go. With anything other than distilled water, you pose the risk of introducing contaminates into your precious metals. We are trying to refine precious metals to superior purity. There is no sense in using dirty water throughout the refining process. That is like taking two steps forward and half a step back, during the process.

I use chlorinated water when i'm refining to 995. When i'm try for 999 + or when i teach karat refining i always stress distilled water. You can definitely tell the difference without a doubt. Good filtering practices and double filtering go hand in hand with this procedure.