so glad I found this site

[troyjgp]

Hi everyone, My name is Troy Patterson and I'm new to this world. So glad I found this site because the research I did led me to Big mistakes and while I go through here searching the forms I notice how far off some people are the gold is sitting there in the liquid form just taunting me haha when I got my muriatic acid and my nitric acid from where I work I didn't realize I grabbed the full strength nitric acid we had to containers in my manager said to take the one on the right but it was the full strength nitric acid and I followed the three parts to one method so here I am haha thinking you screwed up pretty bad there boy but I know this site will hold it and I'll be a member of the site for as long as it's here thanks to whoever started this site you all will be my saviour.

 

[Martijn]

Welcome to the forum.
Some punctuation will leave you a larger audience.
I think you made the classic mistake 'too much nitric'
Solution is dissolve more gold, or dissolve a solid piece of copper, cementing the gold out, and consuming free nitric that way.

What material did you process?

Do you know how to deal with waste?

Martijn.

 

[troyjgp]

Welcome to the forum.
Some punctuation will leave you a larger audience.
I think you made the classic mistake 'too much nitric'
Solution is dissolve more gold, or dissolve a solid piece of copper, cementing the gold out, and consuming free nitric that way.

What material did you process?

Do you know how to deal with waste?

Martijn.

Everything is very old computer parts from the '80s ram server parts a lot of gold-plated pins. separately I did silver plated Parts as well, I had pounds of old computer parts with silver. I wish I would have found this site before I started because at least here I would have known the proper percentages now I just have to do it the hard way I guess. Sorry about the punctuations I was using talk and text.

 

[Martijn]

If you are referring to percentages as in ratio HCl / HNO3, no ratio is correct. Cover in HCl, calculate 1ml 70% HNO3 for each gram of gold to dissolve and start with one third of that.
Dirty gold with copper will take more. But only add in small amounts and watch how long that reacts. If the last addition does not react anymore, or you can see there is no more gold to be dissolved, you don't have a bunch of free nitric to deal with and basically wasted it.

 

[Martijn]

How did you recover the gold prom said parts?
How much acid did you use for the AR on how much material?

 

[troyjgp]

How did you recover the gold prom said parts?
How much acid did you use for the AR on how much material?

I used muriatic acid from Lowes in the pool section and I used nitric acid from work it was supposed to be only 30%. Someone when they put the containers in lock up mixed them up and I ended up with 90% nitric acid. I put my ram in a beaker and added 300ml of muriatic and 100 mo of nitric when I did this I knew right away the nitric acid given to me was the full strength acid. I knew I screwed up the at was dark green.

 

[Yggdrasil]

I used muriatic acid from Lowes in the pool section and I used nitric acid from work it was supposed to be only 30%. Someone when they put the containers in lock up mixed them up and I ended up with 90% nitric acid. I put my ram in a beaker and added 300ml of muriatic and 100 mo of nitric when I did this I knew right away the nitric acid given to me was the full strength acid. I knew I screwed up the at was dark green.

You are using the classic AR recipe.
Which always gives too much free Nitric.
Next it seem you put whole boards in, which is another mistake.
We cut off the Gold plated parts and use either AP or plain Nitric to remove the base metals so the foils are liberated. We then dissolve the foils in a solution of HCl by adding Nitric on a drop by drop fashion.

Edited for clarity.

 

[troyjgp]

You are using the classic AR recipe.
Which always gives too much free Nitric.
Next it seem you put whole boards in, which is another mistake.
We cut off the Gold plated parts and use either AP or plain Nitric to remove the base metals so the foils are liberated. We then dissolve the foils in a solution of HCl and add Nitric more on a drop by drop fashion.

I now know that this is what happens when you follow people that don't give exact instructions. I made a huge mistake but I know the gold is still there. I basically wanted to try this because where I live in the contacts I have I have an unlimited Supply servers and computer scrap so I have the ability to just keep going and never have to look for it. I thought this was something I couldn't turn down I learned a lesson and I will be going through this all this vast knowledge on this site before I start again. I am so glad that I actually found this site because everyone here the knowledge I've seen is quite amazing

 

[troyjgp]

What can I do in this situation to correct my mistakes?

 

[eaglekeeper]

I assume your near Ottawa?....Check your local hardware stores and see if they carry Sulfamic acid, usually sold as a tile/grout cleaner. Sulfmic acid is what is used if you use too much nitric acid. There is plenty of threads here on the forum on how it works and how to use it.

I think Lowe's carries this brand:

 

[Martijn]

how much

What can I do in this situation to correct my mistakes?

as i said:

Solution is dissolve more gold, or dissolve a solid piece of copper, cementing the gold out, and consuming free nitric that way.

How long that takes depends on how much material you put in. 100ml HNO3 70% is good for 25grams of copper or 100grams of gold (roughly, and depends on factors).
do you have more plated clean items? not on PCB's?
then slowly, one by one or only some together, toss them in to digest the nitric and get the gold off as a bonus. Clean copper would be wasting the acid.

Be very careful with nitrile gloves and concentrated fuming nitric acid, they will catch on fire!
Video's of it can be found on you tube.