Retrieving lost gold from huge amount of liquids.

[fenderbenderbengt]

Hi all, first time poster.

I ran in to some problems when starting my silver and gold "refinery", i think i have figured out where I went wrong but I am not sure how to fix it.

I did several things wrong during my gold recovery processes I use a standard Aqua Regia process of dissolving and putting it back together with sodium formate.
First i tried two really small batches and I could not get the gold out in hindsight after doing some research I figured (hypothesis) that the concentration of gold was to low compared to the total amount of liquids. Then I tried doing a bigger one with 200 grams of plantings that I have accumulated over a half year time to get all the metals dissolved I once again used to much acid and mixed it out with water to dilute it before neutralize it with Urea. But no result when trying to put it back together.

I have saved all acids used but.... I have saved everything in one big 25L.. That is a lots of liquids for the amount of gold that might be in the solution.

So I basically have two questions, am I fundamentally F****d and have no chance recovering ANY gold or is there a way? In that case what do I need to do?
I had a plan of putting it all bit by bit in a big cooking pot (10L) at a time and put it on a heater on low heat and slowly reducing it all until all the left over metals and all regents from the acids remains and kind of restarting from scratch. I know that if I boil it or even heat it to warm i might end up boiling away any gold and even the reactive components (even though neutralized) of the acid, I just want to get rid of the water basically. Because I want my metals and I do not want to just gas all the acids out since my morals say that it should be dealt with properly and be carried off to a disposal center.

Any input would be appreciated.
//Fenderbenderbengt

 

[Lou]

Neutralize to pH 0.5 and add zinc turnings or aluminum turnings to cement all the base metals out.

Siphon off or decant the liquids and then filter the powders, incinerate, and re-dissolve in aqua regia being careful not to use overmuch nitric.
Filter the silver chloride out of that, and precipitate with sodium metabisulfite for gold.

 

[fenderbenderbengt]

Thank you so much.
I will try this.

 

[MarcoP]

Discharge any waste solution as 4metals post: http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=1300&p=40800#p40800

 

[FrugalRefiner]

That is an excellent thread. We liked it so much, we put a copy in the new "Library" section of the forum. The original thread had 67 posts. We pared it down to 26 posts in the Library version. You can see it here Dealing with Waste.

Dave

 

[bswartzwelder]

Just out of curiosity, do you have any estimate of how much gold is in the 25 Liters of solution?

 

[fenderbenderbengt]

Impossible to say, the lost gold was from about 250 grams of gold platings. It is not all about the gold, it has a lot to do with the learning process..

There is a new sollution comming out from Sweden soon that is made for the specific purpose of drawing out heavy and base metals out of sollutions. I have not done the process yet since i have had a lot to do but i might save some sollution just to try this new product if the price is not to high. I am invited to a demonstration now in september and they are currently scaling up the production. This might be intressting.

// Fenderbenderbengt