Problem with cleaning gold powder from cell

[muddle171965]

First I would like to say hi to everyone on the forum! I hope i'm not breaking any rules by introducing myself and at the same time asking for help?! I have been recovering gold for about a year until about three months ago, when I found the forum! Since then I have been reading Hoke and as much on the forum as possible! I have recovered a lot of black powder from using a cell and have been trying to clean my gold powder with Hcl hopefully to dissolve with Hcl/cl and then recover. I have rinsed first with three or four washes with H20 and i'm now on my fifth wash with Hcl. My problem is, the hcl is still looking yellow/green even after all the washing and there seems to be less and less gold powder after each wash! Being a complete newbie to the forum and recycling, I have de-plated over 4kg in weight of various plated items, so I have a lot of money and time invested and i'm worried about losing my values! I would really appreciate some help and I can't express how much I appreciate all the previous help given which has helped me so much already! So here's a big thanks from me

 

[samuel-a]

Test your washes with SnCl, hopefully you kept them.
If negative, all you are dissolving is more and more base metals. If thet's the case (which i think it is), obviously you will have less and less powder each time as you are removing base metals.

If positive, precipitate the gold seperatly.

btw, You didn't mentioned if you are washing cold or hot.

 

[muddle171965]

Hi Sam
I have kept all my hcl washes thankfully because they were looking very yellow in colour! I have not tested them yet because my first attempt at making stannous chloride was unsuccessfull as I was not sure if it was strong enough or infact it was showing negative! I did the first couple of Hcl washes cold but the final one was warm. I have only recently looked at doing it hot and was unsure if it would dissolve any values? I made a mistake when I boiled the cell powder when I took a phrase too literally, which lost some of my values! Do you think I should wash my powders in Ammonium Chloride? Thanks for your advice, I really appreciate it!
muddle171965 (Leigh)

 

[maynman1751]

What liquid did you boil the cell powder in? You can first boil it in H2O to rinse out the sulfuric and follow that with boiling in HCl. You will not loose values in HCl. Please use proper designations when posting (it's HCl not Hcl). The wrong letters can be misleading.

As far as making SnCl you simply dissolve some 95/5 solder in warm HCl. You can't put in too much solder. It will simply quit dissolving when it reaches saturation. You've got to have it. It's your eyes to what's in solution.

 

[samuel-a]

muddle171965

You should make a standart gold solution to test your SnCl solution.
Steve have a post on cleaning gold from a cell. you can also look for Harold's washing technique.

It's all here, all you need to do is to find it. use the above terms.

As to ammonium chloride wash, i can't see how you'll benefit from doing that...

 

[muddle171965]

It has taken some time to learn how to navigate the site and i'm still learning! I have also just realised what I just put, I meant to say, would it improve my values by cleaning it in an Ammonia solution, (household 3%) I have read that it will clean any left over impurities?!

 

[lazersteve]

Welcome to the forum,

Check out the Guided Tour Link below. Therein you will find the Reaction List which has a section on Black Powder from the Cell.

No need for ammonia wash with powder from the cell.

Steve