That's good point. It should be that much mercury at all even if there is some and there is definitely an awful lot of precipitate. I'll try to re acidy the flask later this evening and see where that gets me.
Red Solution - what did I do?
- Thread starter didit
- Start date
Help Support Gold Refining Forum:
Looking up reactions, it appears that mercury oxide is indeed synthesized by the addition of alkali to aqueous solutions of mercury cations. It is a yellow to red solid and fits very well with what you have there.
It's possible it's also platinum chloride, which is insoluble in neutral to basic solutions not containing amonia.
Last edited:
Yes it does doesn't it.
I just got home from work and am about to add some HCl to re-acidify the solution as suggested by Yggdrasil and see if the remaining precipitate goes back into solution. I will update you all shortly.
I added that it could also be platinum chloride, since that's insoluble in neutral or basic solutions, unless sufficient ammonia is present.
Both platinum chloride and mercury oxide will go back into solution with HCl, so that won't be very telling. The mercury will become a chloride salt again.
I see your point Alondro. I would however like to get my gold. If there is more mercury or platinum in solution could I not just add Sodium Hydroxide again after I drop the gold. If using SMB it should only drop the gold correct?
Anyway, I already added a dose of HCl to one flask solution and this is the result.
pH is about 1 now.
Attachments
Last edited:
I do not think Gold forms Hydroxides at this pH.
But it is yellow like this:
https://www.samaterials.com/gold-hydroxide-powder.html
