Renstilsken needs help treating waste

[Renstilsken]

Hello all .. just wanted to confirm if i was doing this right..I have a solution left over of Aqua Regila. And it is a dark green.. I already dropped all the gold out of it. But have this solution left over .. I do believe their is copper left in this solution. I then put iron in it.. is this enough to drop the copper or am I missing a step. B/c while it did bubble a little and something did drop.. I am not sure if it is just the iron sitting T the bottom of the jar .. or the copper..I search forum for insight.. but could not find something directly telling the proper procedure for ..if you shoot me in the right direction I would appreciate it thanks all.

 

[upcyclist]

Hello all .. just wanted to confirm if i was doing this right..I have a solution left over of Aqua Regila. And it is a dark green.. I already dropped all the gold out of it. But have this solution left over .. I do believe their is copper left in this solution. I then put iron in it.. is this enough to drop the copper or am I missing a step. B/c while it did bubble a little and something did drop.. I am not sure if it is just the iron sitting T the bottom of the jar .. or the copper..I search forum for insight.. but could not find something directly telling the proper procedure for ..if you shoot me in the right direction I would appreciate it thanks all.

Renstilsken, PLEASE do not comment on existing posts unless it is relevant.

What does your question of dark green aqua regia solution have to do with the original post (OP) about mercury and gold? We asked you to not post to the same "wacky questions" thread over and over, and now you are posting unrelated questions to other threads. That is not an improvement.

Are you familiar with internet forum usage? The basic premise is that each post contains a conversation about a given topic, as described by the subject line. If your comment has nothing to do with the conversation, it shouldn't be in that post.

Edit to add: If you are having problems with the difference between "Post Reply" and "New Topic" buttons, I suggest you ask for help, because I believe the moderators are running out of patience with you.

 

[FrugalRefiner]

Renstilsken, upcyclist is correct in what he has said. I've split your post from the thread you put it in because it was not related to that thread.

Your question is about treating your waste solution. There have been many discussions about it, including a good one in the Library.

Dave

 

[Renstilsken]

My bad hit the wrong button..it was suppose tobe a new post ... sorry about that...

 

[Renstilsken]

Thanks I will check again in waste at library.. though I check before asking and didn't see it.. but I will check again..

 

[FrugalRefiner]

Try the thread named "Dealing With Waste".

Dave

 

[anachronism]

We used to take care over spelling of chemicals and and compounds to avoid misunderstandings and dangerous situations. It's Aqua Regia, but for some reason the OP seems to have a blind spot.

 

[kernels]

For anybody reading this thread with the same question . . .

When the gold has been dropped from a gold bearing solution, there could still be other precious metals present. There is not going to be Silver in aqua regia, because it precipitates out as Silver chloride, but there could be Platinum and / or Palladium.

A good first step is to leave a copper bar / pipe in the spent solution for a couple of days, this will cement out any remaining precious metals (including any gold that did not precipitate)

At this point your waste solution will most likely be full of Copper in solution, this is when you move onto waste treatment as per the thread in the library. From memory user 4Metals wrote an excellent how-to on waste treatment.

It basically says to raise the pH of the waste solution to some level with Sodium Hydroxide, then use scrap iron to drop out anything less reactive (copper mainly), then when all the copper has dropped, transfer the liquid and then use Magnesium Oxide to raise the pH over the course of a day or two until the iron drops out of solution. Hope I remembered all that correctly, see 4Metals's post for the details.

 

[nickvc]

As an aside to kernels post I have to point out that all precipitated gold solutions can take some time for all the gold to drop, especially very diluted ones, and if you are not testing the solutions properly you could still have some good in solution so in my opinion I would put all gold solutions through the stock pot, if you recover a few grams at the clean up it will make the effort worth the time.
Testing is a very important step but it isn't always completely accurate depending on what exactly is in the solution and mistakes are easy to make without long experience and whatever values you have in your hard earned pregnant solutions should be recovered.