Salt Electrolysis

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608927101la

608927101la

Active member
Joined
Jul 10, 2022
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25
I've become intent on reproducing what's show in one of Trinity Gold Recovery's videos. I believe it's appropriate for a beginner anyway. It's the one titled 'Gold recovery using Salt | Recover Gold from gold plated pins | Electrolysis Gold recovery'.

My first question is, could plate electrodes(I mean the lead piece) be better than a rod shape? Is this method seen in the C.M. Hoke book? I'm hoping this technique is legit.
 
608927101la said:
I've become intent on reproducing what's show in one of Trinity Gold Recovery's videos. I believe it's appropriate for a beginner anyway. It's the one titled 'Gold recovery using Salt | Recover Gold from gold plated pins | Electrolysis Gold recovery'.

My first question is, could plate electrodes(I mean the lead piece) be better than a rod shape? Is this method seen in the C.M. Hoke book? I'm hoping this technique is legit.
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If you value your health and the environment Trinity is not someone to follow.
Better check Sreetips videos.
Regarding Hoke’s book just read it😊
Regarding salt and electrolysis I have not heard of such procedure being effective.
Concentrated Sulfuric stripping cell yes, but not salt.
 
Welcome to the forum.
May I ask why you want to use salt , water and electricity?
By doing this you will produce chlorine gas not something to be inhaling.
We have many threads on recovery from pins here on the forum I would suggest look at them first and understand the dangers involved in any process before you start.
 
Yggdrasil said:
If you value your health and the environment Trinity is not someone to follow.
Better check Sreetips videos.
Regarding Hoke’s book just read it😊
Regarding salt and electrolysis I have not heard of such procedure being effective.
Concentrated Sulfuric stripping cell yes, but not salt.
Click to expand...

nickvc said:
Welcome to the forum.
May I ask why you want to use salt , water and electricity?
By doing this you will produce chlorine gas not something to be inhaling.
We have many threads on recovery from pins here on the forum I would suggest look at them first and understand the dangers involved in any process before you start.
Click to expand...
There is a step in the process right after the HCl is added, that I wanna get to.
 
Why and what do you hope to accomplish by this?
The Chlorine gas is not to be overlooked, it’s actually an accumulate poison.

Edit for typo
 
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It will work as the video shows. A few things that they forgot to mention are:

Working with the amount of pins he does uses a lot of electricity. Dangerous amounts! High voltage and amps.
It generates a lot of heat, potentially boiling your electrolyte. Leading to more dangerous situations.
It leaves a mixture of metals, not clean or pure gold, so you need to be really good at working with dirty gold.
And the real reason this is not for beginners.......Your electrolyte will be used up very fast. Once the salt is used up, you get an even nastier mix of salts and metals. The only way to figure it out is to waste many try's and materials to see the change occur, no warning it just starts working differently (unless you happen to own a full lab and testing facility). Once it stops working you will need to strain your material out, and begin all over with new a solution. Adding your previous material to finish it will start the process quicker of fouling and ending the solutions usability. Rinse repeat many times.
You still have a hazardous, dangerous mess to clean up.
The shear volume of waste to clean up is huge if you run any decent amount of materials. I had 5L of used electrolyte to strip .2 grams of gold from plated jewelry.
The sulfuric cell will work longer, with less electrical usage, less waste, and less time.
And for me, the number one reason is it is very, very slow. The first bits go about as quick as a sulfuric cell but every additional piece, assuming you run one piece at a time, will get slower and slower.

If you only have a small amount, try it, very carefully. Gloves and well ventilated area. Otherwise study, collect and save until you know how to safely run a sulfuric cell.

EDIT: multiply times for spelling.
 
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Are there a specific reason why you want to do this?
Watch out for the Chlorine gas it was used as a weapon during World War 1
 
The reason I'm wondering if anyone has actually tried this is because I did something similar over 20 years ago.

Chlorine gas was NOT a problem as long as I controlled the rate of the reaction. If you watch the video done by Trinity you will see there are hydrogen bubbles being formed on the lead electrode, but you don't see chlorine bubbles being fromed on the copper electrode and the gold plated pins.

I expect the reason for this is that as the chlorine gas is being formed in the "nascent" condition (you can look up "nascent" on wiki), it immediately reacts with whatever metal it is being formed on, either the surface gold plating or the underlying base metal.
 
Shark said:
I had 5L of used electrolyte to strip .2 grams of gold from plated jewelry.
Click to expand...
I spent a few days tinkering with this. My 12 volt batter charger will run continuous at a max of 50 amps. More than enough to hurt a person. Using the same size cathode to anode ratio, the salt cell uses two to three times the voltage and amperage than the sulfuric cell. I did not try using it for pins, only on jewelry. I worked in a 1L beaker as well. It took an average of 3 minutes to notice the solution getting warm. With in 10 minute’s it was approaching hot, enough to be uncomfortable. I Did not use a battery charger for it either, I used a 30volt/10amp bench lab power supply. To strip the gold reasonably quick, not over heat the cell, it ran around 7 volts at 4 amp average. Even at that it would heat up the cell enough to take time between the pieces being stripped.

I still prefer a sulfuric cell. It is quicker. Less energy used. Less waste. And done carefully the electrolyte can be reused.

Still, I think anyone interested should at least try it for themself. I had 20+ pounds of plated jewelry that needed gone so it was just a handy time for me to try it.
 
NobleMetalsRecovery said:
The reason I'm wondering if anyone has actually tried this is because I did something similar over 20 years ago.

Chlorine gas was NOT a problem as long as I controlled the rate of the reaction. If you watch the video done by Trinity you will see there are hydrogen bubbles being formed on the lead electrode, but you don't see chlorine bubbles being fromed on the copper electrode and the gold plated pins.

I expect the reason for this is that as the chlorine gas is being formed in the "nascent" condition (you can look up "nascent" on wiki), it immediately reacts with whatever metal it is being formed on, either the surface gold plating or the underlying base metal.
Click to expand...
I tried it a few years ago using a cell phone charger and karat gold. Made a nice mess trying to recover the gold as I did not know enough at the time to recover it very well. This time I did notice a faint smell of chlorine at times. I would lower the amps and that seemed to help. I was also using larger pieces to strip with more base metals as well.
 
Interesting guys, please report back when you have results, good or bad will still teach us something.
 
I spent a few days tinkering with this. (The previous sentence was meant to be a quote from Shark)

Thank you very much for the input. I place a very high value on someone's experience vs. their views. With that said I would recommend to someone new at this not to try something yet that has not gained wide acceptance on the forum.

You're probably better off trying something that lot's of experienced users can provide help with vs. a little used method with lots of potential issues.

On the other hand I always encourage careful and controlled experimentation. It's a great learning tool. It's a choice between learning and production.
 
I Agree.

If one wants to try as an experiment, try it. I would not recommend one try it with a large amount of materials until they understand more about it. I do not think this is a way for beginners to get started.
 

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