bswartzwelder
Well-known member
- Joined
- Oct 24, 2011
- Messages
- 660
I know you guys will tell me if what I'm planning to do is flawed BEFORE I make another mistake. (My first mistake was trying to recover gold using the Shor process.)
I have been collecting cell phones and other items for rpobably a little over a year and will soon be ready to start processing. It looks like I'll have two 5 gallon buckets of bare circuit boards. I have started taking the cell phones apart and any connectors which contain no solder are being placed in one container for electrolytic cell processing. The same items which do have solder on them will be treated in HCl (with heat as necessary) to remove the solder and then processed in the electrolytic cell.
The components on the circuit boards will be removed using a heat gun. Then the boards will be treated with HCl to remove solder. Once that is accomplished, the boards will go into AP with an air bubbler to remove all base metals and free up the gold on the circuit boards traces. Once that gold has been recovered, it will be refined with Hydrochloric acid and Chlorox. After all values have been dissolved, the gold will be precipitated using SMB or SMB in a water solution. Then the gold will be washed several times in HCl and dried. It should then be ready to melt and pour into a heated mold.
I have been collecting cell phones and other items for rpobably a little over a year and will soon be ready to start processing. It looks like I'll have two 5 gallon buckets of bare circuit boards. I have started taking the cell phones apart and any connectors which contain no solder are being placed in one container for electrolytic cell processing. The same items which do have solder on them will be treated in HCl (with heat as necessary) to remove the solder and then processed in the electrolytic cell.
The components on the circuit boards will be removed using a heat gun. Then the boards will be treated with HCl to remove solder. Once that is accomplished, the boards will go into AP with an air bubbler to remove all base metals and free up the gold on the circuit boards traces. Once that gold has been recovered, it will be refined with Hydrochloric acid and Chlorox. After all values have been dissolved, the gold will be precipitated using SMB or SMB in a water solution. Then the gold will be washed several times in HCl and dried. It should then be ready to melt and pour into a heated mold.
rocess your gold the first time, using conventional means. Allow as little in the way of contamination's (metals) as is humanely possible, to be included with the gold. Use only clean vessels. Wash them well between operations-----and use Bon Ami cleanser if necessary to remove stubborn stains. Do not use other cleansers, for they scratch the glass. Filter before precipitating, and insure that the filter does not allow particulate matter to pass. If it does, re-filter, or go to a better filter grade. A Whatman #2 does an outstanding job for first refined metals, although they are not cheap. I used them exclusively for filtering first run gold chloride. I felt they were worth the extra money. At all times, keep your beaker covered with a watch glass of appropriate size, to prevent contamination from other sources.Precipitate your gold using conventional methods, collect it and wash it well. It's best to use a precipitant that does not add contamination. I preferred SO2, but there are others that work equally as well, I'm sure.First wash should be in boiling HCL and tap water. Boil for a prolonged period of time. Take up the solution with tap water, decant after the gold has settled, then rinse with tap water, which should again be brought to a boil. After it has boiled for a period of time, add more tap water to cool the lot, then decant as before. Rinse again, and do it until the wash water comes off clear. Next, wash the gold with ammonium hydroxide and tap water. Heat it until it boils.You'll notice that the solution gets discolored. How much is determined by how dirty your gold was when you started. The ammonia evaporates fairly quickly, so you can't boil very long. Add tap water to cool, decant, and follow up with a tap water rinse, again, boiling the water. Add tap water to cool, then decant. You now repeat the HCL and tap water wash. You'll be amazed that suddenly more contaminants will come off. Boil well, add water to cool, decant, repeat the water rinse, decant, then, and this is important-------start the refining process all over again by dissolving the well washed gold powder in aqua regia. I'll talk about that in a minute,but these are indicators you should have observed along the way, aside from the fact that you could see contaminants being washed from your gold powder.The gold powder, which started out quite dark, is now much lighter in color.It may have been rather loose and flocculent, but now is eager to agglomerate, so it forms lumps and settles quickly.While these instructions sound like a lot of wasted time, when you process what you think is pure gold, you'll see evidence in the remaining solutions that it was not. The evidence of which I speak will be in your solution when you've extracted the gold for a second time. It's a lot of work which is why I re-refined my gold in large lots, often as much as 200 ounces at each refining, so the time spent yielded a large return.When you precipitate for a second time, one of the things that you can do to help eliminate unwanted elements is to use a different precipitant than the first time. I never bothered with that, but it's good advice if you're fighting with a given contaminant and can't get rid of it by other means. That was never a problem for me.Wash the gold powder the second refining by the same methods and sequences as the first refining. Make sure all your equipment is scrupulously clean. Force dry the gold when it's washed by heating the beaker at a very low heat for a long period of time. Avoid allowing the beaker to achieve boiling temperature---you get minor steam explosions that blow gold out of the container. As the gold dries, it's a good idea to swish it around the beaker occasionally,which prevents the gold from bonding to the beaker. The residual matter in water tends to form around the gold and bond it to the beaker. While it's a contaminant of sorts, it does NOT alloy with your gold, so it is not a source of lowering the fineness unless you have strange elements in your water. For me, it was not a problem.
