Separating from organic matter

[Night_rain]

I had a minor mishap. I'm in a rural area and I've been using the AP method to recover gold plate from contacts. I had my bucket of solution setting on a short brick out in the back shed away from people and precious things and it got knocked over.
A small amount of gold foils and flecks were mixed with soil and plant matter. I've scooped them up and now would like to know if there is a good way of separating out the organic matter.
Would hcl dissolve plant and soil or do I need to add water and attempt to pan?
It's a small amount and Thanks to all of your instructions each of my mistakes have been small like this. Probably no more than .2-.4g of gold but I want to recover all I can.

I want to add a big Thank You for this site and the way you go about helping folks. The ecouragement to read and read and to take thing slow in small tests is excellent. I am learning so much.

 

[publius]

My suggestion is to pick out the largest visible pieces with tweezers like lasersteve sells. Pan out the rest.

 

[NobleMetalWorks]

If you read Hoke, you could treat it like sweeps...

The organic material you can burn off by incinerating, a step you should take anyway. Then you can deal with the resulting material like you would sweeps.

Scott

 

[Night_rain]

Thanks guys, that sounds like a good plan.

 

[Harold_V]

If you read Hoke, you could treat it like sweeps...

The organic material you can burn off by incinerating, a step you should take anyway. Then you can deal with the resulting material like you would sweeps.

Scott

Absolutely. I wouldn't even consider anything else.
Incinerate the lot in a stainless fry pan, heated until there is no carbon remaining. Screen, to remove obvious junk (pebbles, for instance), then give the entire lot a hard boil in HCl. Do not omit this part. Rinse well, then dissolve the values with the solvent of your choosing.

If you fail to do the HCl wash, you most likely will have a horrible time filtering the resulting gold chloride solution.

Harold

 

[Night_rain]

Thank You Harold
After the other 2 gentlemen reminded me of how to handle sweeps I re-read one of your recent posts on incineration. I have confidence now that I will be able to recover the values.
I have some filter material that needs to be dealt with as well so it will be good time to learn this part of the process as well.