Problems with SMB

[mitchd]

I would like to give an update on what has happend with the missing gold, I checked the HCL that was added and set aside for over night and it had .16 of a gram of gold used iron sulfate to drop it out. so I found some of the gold. The other
liquid with the excess of SMB and lye etc. that turned red brown but did not drop the gold, I added more HCL and the red brown went away than I tried two small test lot of about an ounce to one I added some iron sulfate to it and it turned brown and the gold droped out and the other test lot I add SMB and got the red brown stuff again but no gold, so now I added iron sufate the the rest of the liquid and got 4 grams out of it, not the 9 or 10 grams I tought would be there but I am happy that at least there was some gold.

I am zero for 3 on using SMB, really all I wanted to do is try something new to see if it might be a better or eazyer way of doing things and I found that I just don't like SMB, even if it has worked like it should have I can't take the smell even with my gas mask the smell takes over the back yard for days.

Does any one want 5 pounds of SMB, you can have it at the cost of postage.

THANKS SO MUCH for all your help.

Mitch.

 

[maynman1751]

I would seriously question your SMB. It's quite possible that your supplier gave you the wrong product again! :shock:

 

[au-artifax]

The one time I had a problem using smb, was the one time I lost the most value and learned two big lessons:1. Don't throw stuff away, and 2, watch out for single or multiple replacement reactions while removing base metals.

Here is what happened. In a hurry, (another mistake), I was removing base metals from cicuit boards, fingers, pins etc.
So after a while I came back and saw only the color of copper remaining whete the gold once sat. So I filtered all the solution out, and tossed what I thought was merely the copper substrate
Of course my attempts to dissolve and precipitate gold failed, as what I later discovered was that copper had disolved along with other base metals as the reaction started, but then as the solution got saturated the left over base metals began a single displacemnt reaction and redeposited copper on top of the gold.

My gold never left the circuit bords and pins, and I threw those away.

Anyways, the point I am making, and my question, is it at all possible that you did not see the gold on the boards any more so you thought the reaction was complete?

 

[NeMonstr]

Add common salt (NaCl) to the gold colloid solution. Gold stick together in clumps. So struggling with the colloid.
NaCl or other strong electrolyte. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_electrolyte
С растворами коллоидов борются добавлением сильных электролитов, например, поваренная соль. Частицы разряжаются и слипаются в комочки. Мне помогало.

 

[samhain]

hope you guys can help.
a few days ago i dissolved a 5 gram bead of low karat gold in ar. when i added smb by dissolving it in hot distilled water. i got a quick black cloud that instantly disappeared. i put a very small amount of solution that i had dropped silver chloride from. to see if there was any silver in solution. now the strange part... i got busy and left it sitting for 2 days. when i went to cement my screw up with copper the liquid is still lighter blue but has literally no smell to it. what happened to my hcl or smb smell. its not on heat but rather sitting on my bench. is there anything i can do at this point to recover the gold or is it a loss?

thanx in advanced for any info

 

[kernels]

hope you guys can help.
a few days ago i dissolved a 5 gram bead of low karat gold in ar. when i added smb by dissolving it in hot distilled water. i got a quick black cloud that instantly disappeared. i put a very small amount of solution that i had dropped silver chloride from. to see if there was any silver in solution. now the strange part... i got busy and left it sitting for 2 days. when i went to cement my screw up with copper the liquid is still lighter blue but has literally no smell to it. what happened to my hcl or smb smell. its not on heat but rather sitting on my bench. is there anything i can do at this point to recover the gold or is it a loss?

thanx in advanced for any info

Gold cannot disappear or evaporate under room temperature conditions, it is either in the solution or has been precipitated out. I don't really understand what you are saying regarding the small amount of solution that you have dropped silver chloride from. If there were silver in your gold solution it would have precipitated out as chloride during the AR process. How low was the karat ?

You can always recover gold from solution with copper, it sounds like your initial drop had too much excess Nitric which re-dissolved the gold. Copper doesn't care, it will consume the Nitric and then cement out the gold.

How much HCl / Nitric did you use to dissolve the 5g ?

 

[samhain]

i believe the karat was 10-12. i did'nt use much nitric maybe a few ml. the part thats getting me is the odorless part. it literally has no smell to it, 0 chemichal smell, like it is just blue water. i put copper in last night and it has had 0 effect on it. again like i put it in water with blue food dye. i thought all the nitric was gone but some may have still been there. i am gonna make some stannos to test the solution. is it possible the sodium chloride solution i added nutralized the acids and smb smell'?

 

[samhain]

the small amount of solution i dropped silver chloride from is waste solution that is left after adding sodium chloride to silver nitrate

 

[kernels]

i believe the karat was 10-12. i did'nt use much nitric maybe a few ml. the part thats getting me is the odorless part. it literally has no smell to it, 0 chemichal smell, like it is just blue water. i put copper in last night and it has had 0 effect on it. again like i put it in water with blue food dye. i thought all the nitric was gone but some may have still been there. i am gonna make some stannos to test the solution. is it possible the sodium chloride solution i added nutralized the acids and smb smell'?

OK, so 5g of 10k gold should be quite a bit of gold somewhere. I would leave the copper in there for a few days, it can take a while for the gold to cement out. You can also add a dash of HCl to make sure the solution is acidic - If you added enough SMB you could have depleted the HCl (but unlikely)

 

[samhain]

thanx i'll give that a try

 

[samhain]

Added around 10 ml of hcl solution went from really light blue to dark green blue. Still has almost no smell. But maybe that is nothing. I have a batch of stannos going so hopefully i can try and test tomorrow lol. Thanx for the help kernels

 

[kernels]

Added around 10 ml of hcl solution went from really light blue to dark green blue. Still has almost no smell. But maybe that is nothing. I have a batch of stannos going so hopefully i can try and test tomorrow lol. Thanx for the help kernels

No worries, sounds like you are on the right track. Testing with Stannous will give you a good idea about what is going on.

 

[samhain]

Well as an update.
I made some stannos and a solution i know has gold for a test solution. I had added some hcl to recharge the strange solution and it turned very dark. I then added a bunch if copper plates and left it sit foe days. Strangely the dark liquid. Separated and sat above the copper with a definite line. The copper did dissolve a bit but there is no precipitation. Tested the solution with the stannos that i proved works. Showing no gold in solution. The material i dissolved was a bead made from ide cable pins. The pins tested to have 10k plate on them. The bead was a really light yellow and very heavy for its size... Any othe hints lol?

 

[kernels]

Well as an update.
I made some stannos and a solution i know has gold for a test solution. I had added some hcl to recharge the strange solution and it turned very dark. I then added a bunch if copper plates and left it sit foe days. Strangely the dark liquid. Separated and sat above the copper with a definite line. The copper did dissolve a bit but there is no precipitation. Tested the solution with the stannos that i proved works. Showing no gold in solution. The material i dissolved was a bead made from ide cable pins. The pins tested to have 10k plate on them. The bead was a really light yellow and very heavy for its size... Any othe hints lol?

Hang on, how big was this bead ? To get 1g from IDE pins you will need a LOT of IDE pins. Yes, it is 10k gold plated, but how did you remove the plating from the pins ?

 

[g_axelsson]

Well as an update.
I made some stannos and a solution i know has gold for a test solution. I had added some hcl to recharge the strange solution and it turned very dark. I then added a bunch if copper plates and left it sit foe days. Strangely the dark liquid. Separated and sat above the copper with a definite line. The copper did dissolve a bit but there is no precipitation. Tested the solution with the stannos that i proved works. Showing no gold in solution. The material i dissolved was a bead made from ide cable pins. The pins tested to have 10k plate on them. The bead was a really light yellow and very heavy for its size... Any othe hints lol?

The plating on electrical contacts is basically 24k but it is so thin that if you test it on the pin it might test as 10-12k just because you see the effect from the underlying base metal. The base metal is brass so it is yellow in color.

As kernels said, to get a couple of grams of gold from IDE-cable pins you need kilos of bare metal pins without any plastic.

Göran

 

[samhain]

I made the bead when i started. It was a conglomerate of all the pins from a desktop cables and all. So i know there was other metals in it. I put it in 70% nitric till the reaction stopped then lost it for about a year lol ( found it cleaning the garage) it was very copper looking. I wanted to test my home made Chapman's flux so i melted it at that time it weighed about 7.5 g. After the melt it was a pale yellow and weighed in around 5g and my slag had a red tone i also used flourspar thinner and have seen that turn red so didn't pay much attention. That's when i put it in ar and now we're here. Like i said in the last post i tested my stannos to prove it works. And testing this solution it shows no gold. But is still like the color of cola. Also checked the acidity by putting a drop on some baking soda and it reacted very well...at this point im calling it a loss and keeping the solution till a later time so see if i can recover anything. The reactions are what threw me tho. Went from green to light blue to cola color and has very little if any smell.

 

[kernels]

OK, so that pretty much explains it, the gold from all the pins in a desktop computer is nowhere near 2g. You probably did drop the gold out of your solution with the SMB, but it's such a small amount that it would have looked like little more than a shadow on the bottom of a beaker.