recovering the gold from my first attempt at AP method

[tommylee1282]

Hi all, so my first attempt at the AP turned into a total noob disaster about 9 months ago before i found this site and put everything down and started reading hoke and what i could on here. I got the idea to do recover gold from computers from mike the scrapper or one of those youtube guys, following theyre crappy instructions i cannot count on two hands the number of mistakes i made if i wanted pure gold. I started off good with gold fingers in a coffee pot about 2 pounds worth...i never took the gold out of the coffee pot i just threw in whole processors with the metal backing and pins solder and all so i not only mucked up my gold im beating it up from foils to fine grit everything went off the rails at that point i just kept getting more hcl and more hydrogen peroxide and wound up with 4 5 gallon bucket almost full of ap that has a bunch of sludge at the bottom and a coffee pot that had a good amount of gold on the bottom despite my mistakes the ap in the coffee pot and the buckets was blackish so i just kept adding peroxide didnt realize i was dissolving the gold not cleaning it then i dumped the coffee pot back into the ap and put copper wire into it hoping the gold would show up on it...and then i found this site...so after 9 months of learning and trimming solder off of gold pins id collected another 15 computers and had 3 pounds of trimmed pins and a pound of trimmed gold fingers and wanted it to start nice and easy recycling the AP after i filter it. starting with gold fingers trimmed pins and processor pins done in seperate mason jars...is this a dumb idea? should i just make some new ap? pretty poor so recycling the old ap is the idea that doesnt get my wife up my ass...the ap has returned to an emerald green color and all the sludge on the bottom, if i filter the ap can i re use it without bringing any contaminants to my new batch? will any of the gold i dissolved be precipitated back out? is there any chance there is iron in the ap or will it have been replaced by copper? my original batch was 55 computers 10 cell phones and 15 laptops just to give you an idea of how much i wasted...any advice would be appreciated i dont want to waste more material and fully expect a good ribbing for all my past mistakes and thank you to maynman1751 for the link to hokes book

 

[MarcoP]

I would first recover all values as none it's lost. You probably have gold in solution, recoverable, and also gold as black powder mixed with a lot of lead chloride and probably some silver chloride sitting on the bottom of your jar. After all this study you have done you should know how to handle this. Personally I think its the way to go, in fact, most likely you will have to do the same in your next batch unless you process different material using different methods and not just dumping all in it. However it would be still a great way to get acquainted with processes, separation of values from the sludge, recovery and refining of dissolved values.

By doing so, fixing your mistake, you would also learn how to properly dispose of your spent solution.

You have a great chance of learning from your mistake and get confident with your next batch.

 

[Pantherlikher]

Hello tommylee1282
And hello MarcoP

MarcoP, Your English needs some work to convey what you wish to say so it is understood. But great you learn the right way to advance in this field and find the shiny gold.

tommylee1282, You have been a member for a little while now. Have you read posts about How to properly use AP,(HCL+Peroxide)?
AP will last a long time dissolving Copper if you put in the right material. Properly prepped that is.

Even a mess of what ever in the AP can be recovered with good results if you learn the AP process the right way...Which is by reading and not just asking for a quick answer.

Anything can be fixed and prevented if you learn how and why it is done as the kind and extremely generous people before us have shared.

Both of you should also look into waste and what we can do with it before disposing of it.
Like removing base metals from our starting material.
Search "The elephant in the room". That search seems to narrow the results down to posts that allot of us have shared as far as what we do with "Spent Acids".

Good luck in everything and hopefully we see your nice work.

B.S.

 

[tommylee1282]

Pantherlikher thank you for the response i have in fact looked up the methods for removing silver and lead from my fine gold...my question was more about the wild card of using the recycled AP and if i would experience any difficulties in using it...used it on ram sticks yesterday worked perfectly already have clean foils and i put all the sludge from the bottom of the ap into a coffee pot and will begin with a boil in hcl to see how much that cleans it up...i do enjoy this site im on it daily checking out all the new posts for new insights into the process start to finish...to change the subject a little i recently picked up an electric kiln for free off of craigslist, i currently cant hook up to my electric cuz i rent but the guy also gave me some stuff called "kiln furniture" you can use to create a shelf in the kiln would it be possible to fashion a crucible out of one of these(i can post pics if it helps)

 

[Geo]

reuse it until it is black and wont dissolve more metal.