Simplified Refining Instructions

[golddie]

I am not sure about this but the liquid that I will have left over from this project will be copper nitrate.
If that is the case I have a few links to good threads like

what to do of copper nitrate

.
I am thinking that if I can find a person I can sell this to than that will be the best thing.
I went to eBay and they sell copper nitrate and it looks like powder,is it always sold like that or do they sell them in liquid form as well.

 

[golddie]

I am not sure about this but now I have the silver cemented out and I have copper chloride
How will I separate these 2 I am guessing that I will siphon the liquid from the silver and rinse silver with hcl and pour it on the filter paper than dry everything and melt it and pour it in water

 

[Frankk12]

On steves web site there are the AP videos I think you can use his techniques from those 4 videos

 

[golddie]

Thanks for that info Frank
I have news about the 2 batches

Before I placed the copper pieces in the solution both looked the same
This was on the Friday and on Tuesday they seemed completely different

Batch 3
This is silver polishing dirt
After the weekend the color was dark green and it was kind of dirty looking and the plastics that I placed in there were melted
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.sitesplus.co.uk/user_docs/638/Image/Black%2520Cable%2520Ties%2520edited.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.toolsandhardwaredirect.co.uk/catalogue.php%3Fcat%3D505%26subCat%3D1163%26item_id%3D6108&usg=__P1r-gH6o6M9PMrXGWY6MrfHswbc=&h=426&w=640&sz=21&hl=en&start=15&zoom=1&tbnid=Be29niu5LB2-1M:&tbnh=108&tbnw=163&ei=oKVOTb3jFcWqlAeelezrBA&prev=/images%3Fq%3Delectrical%2Btightening%2Bplastics%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1024%26bih%3D578%26gbv%3D2%26tbs%3Disch:10%2C464&itbs=1&iact=rc&dur=266&oei=m6VOTZylN4SclgeQ4eT3Dw&esq=2&page=2&ndsp=15&ved=1t:429,r:13,s:15&tx=97&ty=48&biw=1024&bih=578
I found that a bit strange I had also tied some copper with fishing lines and those were still there and I am wondering if those plastics will contaminate the silver.

Batch 5
This is silver bench filings
The color of this after cemanatation looked like sky blue and clean
silver yield with this is much more than the other batch

 

[golddie]

I am wondering why everyone can post pictures and mine wont post and I am following the guided tour directions

 

[golddie]

I am still busy fixing up my system so I am not able to do any real refining but from what I have done so far every batch looked good even though I have not completed the project except the one where I did the silver polishing dirt with nitric and water.
I still don't have pictures but the liquid seemed cloudy and dirty and the remaining powder didn't look like the other batch.
How about first boiling with hcl and water and than washing it than doing nitric and water

 

[golddie]

PET containers are dissolved by nitric acid,be careful.

So it looks like in the silver polishing batch there was plastic dissolved.
Maybe that is the reason why the outcome was so bad

 

[golddie]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_tie

These are the things I used in my reaction and they were white and they disappeared in the acid.
It is a good thing that I was trying a batch that had only 2 or 3 dollars of silver there because it spoiled the whole thing

http://www.lyondellbasell.com/techlit/techlit/Tech%20Topics/General/PE%20Chemical%20Resistance.pdf
I did research and polyethylene is resistant to nitric acid
Than what is the material for the cable tie

 

[qst42know]

Nylon. Nylon becomes a sticky mess in acids.

 

[golddie]

Nylon. Nylon becomes a sticky mess in acids.

I still have this mess and the amount is very little but I would be interested to know how a mess like this can be cleaned up so that the solution is free from this dirt

 

[golddie]

I had a few batches that I was working on so what I did was mix all 3 into 1
I mixed nitric with HCl so if there was gold it got dissolved and went into the solution.
I have my solution A ready so I will do some testing tomorrow.
But I was happy about the results of what I got from all that dirt
It was 18.5 grams of silver and I rolled it on a mill to flatten it to test the metal
It is good enough to reuse in jewelery
The picture I took didn't come out good so you wont be able to see the details
The small one is casting from another time ,I put it there to compare but its hard to see the quality


I melted these with acetylene
Can melt gold and silver with acetylene
Thanks to Harold because I have had the Hoke book for a long time and I never was able to understand some of the things in there
http://img20.imageshack.us/i/dscf0053ln.jpg/

 

[Harold_V]

Nylon. Nylon becomes a sticky mess in acids.

I still have this mess and the amount is very little but I would be interested to know how a mess like this can be cleaned up so that the solution is free from this dirt

Incineration will cure that problem, but, be aware, burning plastics yields a huge amount of toxic black smoke.

Harold

 

[golddie]

Hi Harold
You have a special talent for taking complicated situations and simplifying them.
Thanks very much

 

[golddie]

I processed one of the batches from polishing dirt and it had very little gold.
This was the first time I cemented gold and I have sulfur dioxide gas but I don't have the coupling for the tank so I bought some metabisulfite de potassium because they didn't have SMB.

I used way too much metabisulfite de potassium. the amount of gold the cemented was less than a gram and I added 7or 8 grams of the metabisulfite de potassium.

I did a quick boil in HCL and the color of the solution became greenish yellow(If my memory is correct) and I did this 5 times and still the color was the same.
I thought the color of the hcl should have been white but I am not sure about that. I think thats what Hoke say to do,boil in HCL or does she say rinse in hcl

Tomorrow I will melt the powder

 

[Barren Realms 007]

I processed one of the batches from polishing dirt and it had very little gold.
This was the first time I cemented gold and I have sulfur dioxide gas but I don't have the coupling for the tank so I bought some metabisulfite de potassium because they didn't have SMB.

I used way too much metabisulfite de potassium. the amount of gold the cemented was less than a gram and I added 7or 8 grams of the metabisulfite de potassium.

I did a quick boil in HCL and the color of the solution became greenish yellow(If my memory is correct) and I did this 5 times and still the color was the same.
I thought the color of the hcl should have been white but I am not sure about that. I think thats what Hoke say to do,boil in HCL or does she say rinse in hcl

Tomorrow I will melt the powder

Did you test your solutions with stannous to make sure there were no PM's in your solutions?

 

[golddie]

Hi Barren
The stannous test showed a dark color and it looked like gold and I refined this thing and all I got was a small amount of gold.
All this took me about 1 day and it was worth about 10 dollars
From the economics side it wasnt worth the effort but I did do this to learn as well
The thing is if there is a yellowish color could that be platinum or something like that and what do you do in that case.
Harold was saying stock pot
Should I throw this refined gold into a the stock pot.
or
and redissolve some of it in AR and do more stannous test
Thanks

 

[Harold_V]

Harold was saying stock pot
Should I throw this refined gold into a the stock pot.
or
and redissolve some of it in AR and do more stannous test
Thanks

If you have recovered values (gold in this case) returning it to the stock pot isn't a good idea.

Where the stock pot shines is when you have traces of values (platinum group in particular) that aren't worth the effort to recover, and likely wouldn't recover anyway, due to these metals precipitating poorly from dilute solutions. In such a case, you pour the solution(s) to the stock pot, where the values are cemented and, ultimately, concentrated. That way you can make your time pay by processing values in substantial volumes to justify the time involved, plus you benefit by having a higher degree of concentration. You will come to understand that the platinum metals behave much better when you deal with concentrated solutions.

Harold

 

[oldzkule]

they probably failed on one common thing among most of todays refiners. greed. :twisted:

I tried downloading from your link and just got a bunch of code. I have done some of the stupidest things when it comes to recovering, everything from doing it indoors, no protective equipment, getting processes mixed up anddoing wrong steps, wrong chemicals, have ordered
'guides" that claim to be simplified. Ive got lab grade nitric, lab grade hydrochloric, ferrous sulfate, urea, borax, filters, computer servers, sulferic ,copper wire, aluminum, and on and on and on. Ive wasted so much time and energy for nothing. I do love how there are 500 people out there with 500 different ways and claim same end result. eventually ill figure it out but until then i guess ill keep dissolving gold so it will never be recovered again. Only thing I have learned so far is what fuming nitric acid is, that nitric wont dissolve gold and ar is supposed to be able to dissolve all metals. also i dont think nitric will dissolve stainless steel. i have learned not to do it indoors, and have learned i can waste as much or more platinum than gold.

 

[patnor1011]

they probably failed on one common thing among most of todays refiners. greed. :twisted:

I tried downloading from your link and just got a bunch of code. I have done some of the stupidest things when it comes to recovering, everything from doing it indoors, no protective equipment, getting processes mixed up anddoing wrong steps, wrong chemicals, have ordered
'guides" that claim to be simplified. Ive got lab grade nitric, lab grade hydrochloric, ferrous sulfate, urea, borax, filters, computer servers, sulferic ,copper wire, aluminum, and on and on and on. Ive wasted so much time and energy for nothing. I do love how there are 500 people out there with 500 different ways and claim same end result. eventually ill figure it out but until then i guess ill keep dissolving gold so it will never be recovered again. Only thing I have learned so far is what fuming nitric acid is, that nitric wont dissolve gold and ar is supposed to be able to dissolve all metals. also i dont think nitric will dissolve stainless steel. i have learned not to do it indoors, and have learned i can waste as much or more platinum than gold.

I dont know what do you mean. If you mean documents in my signature then I can assure you they work perfectly. They are just placed outside forum on hotfile servers. Choose slow download and you can get those books. Other two links go directly to two topics on forum.

 

[butcher]

Stop wasting your gold.
It pains me to think we try to help people learn to recover and refine gold, and how many people may be trying this and dissolving gold and loosing the little gold we have access to, (what miners have dug out of the ground and worked so hard for thousands of years), all of these people dissolving and loosing gold, (because they think they can do it), well this may make less gold on the market so the price may rise, also I am afraid if someone has not spent the time to learn this properly the are probably not acting in a safe manner, and possibly harming their health and others, also would they understand how to treat the waste they generated, help us all.

Link below copied and pasted from patnor1011, signature line. Reading C.M. Hoke's book until you do understand it.

http://hotfile.com/dl/14623543/1cf7898/Refining_Precious_Metal_Wastes_C11.M_Hoke.pdf.htm

Study the forum for tips on safety and dealing with waste (before even thinking of using chemicals on metals)!