So stumped...

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spacedude98

Member
Joined
Jul 8, 2019
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10
Ok so I think I did everything right up to aqua regia... dissolved jewelry in nitric acid. Filtered and produced gold flakes. A good amount I felt like. Did the aqua regia part and it all dissolved... filtered out the in organic material and I have this gold urine clear liquid to work with.... I add potassium metabisulfite and no reaction..... ok so I go on here and told to try urea on it... no reaction when the urea hits.... so I try cementing out with copper... I have some wire here and it seems to react.. black flakes and coating on the wire is happening... I go to test this material and it doesnt dissolve in nitric.. good sign.. I regift it with aqua regia and I'm left with a lot of black flakes that wont dissolve... get some more golden yellow liquid and use sodium metabisulfite and urea... and now I have some sediment that looks like milk a quarter inch on the bottom but the liquid is still golden yellow.

I'm at a loss

Please help.
 
No I dont have any stannous here. But I did have tons of gold flakes.... and it was dissolved in hcl then added nitric with the flakes in hcl first.
 
How much is tons of gold flakes ? How much Nitric acid did you use to dissolve them ?

You know you can easily make Stannous Chloride by dissolving some Tin in Hcl, Tin can be fairly easily sourced from either circuit boards (solder balls under BGA chips) or fishing sinkers.

How sure are you that you cemented all the Gold out of the first solution onto the Copper, it can be hard to tell without testing the solution. In my experience the early cement is black, but you should end up with brown powder from cementation.
 
I didnt think of fishing sinkers.....


I didnt think unused much nitric. Stopped once I saw the gold dissolve. 10 ML sequences so maybe 100?

Here's a pic. Half a coffee filter and a cm thick
 

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spacedude98 said:
Ok so I think I did everything right up to aqua regia... dissolved jewelry in nitric acid. Filtered and produced gold flakes. A good amount I felt like.
Click to expand...

You dissolved jewelry in nitric acid and ended up with gold flakes? What kind of jewelry is this? Is it karat gold, gold filled, gold plate? Is it rings, bracelets, chains, etc? Do you have any pictures of the original jewelry?

Dave
 
100mL of nitric acid is a incredibly large amount, that would likely be enough to dissolve 3 ounces of pure Gold! It is obviously hard to judge from your photo, but in my experience with ram foils you are probably only looking at 5 to 10g of foils there.

Gold filled would probably be thicker foils than Ram, but I would be surprised if you are looking at 3 ounces of Gold there.
 
So it sounds like you probably used vastly too much Nitric acid because you were doing it cold. AR can be quite slow to get started when cold, you really want to heat the HCl to around 70 deg C (in a fume hood) before adding the HNO3. And you want to be adding the HNO3 in 1ml increments for small amounts of Gold like this.
 
Ok makes sense. Rookie problems....

The copper seems to be cementing the gold... how do I go about after I let this happen. Seems its gonna take days.....
 
When cementing onto Copper you want to heat the solution to around 40 degree C or so (outside or in a fume hood), your problem is that the excess HNO3 will first consume around 50g (or so) of Copper before the Gold will cement out fully. This will definitely take some time (a few hours) and create a lot of fumes!
 
Using wire to cement is not really the best thing, it would work quicker using sheet or flattened pipe.
 
And if you are going to use a flattened pipe, cut it open first so you don't trap cemented Gold inside it. For the huge amount of Copper you will have to consume, a decent Copper bar is really the way to go.
 
spacedude98 said:
Ok makes sense. Rookie problems....

The copper seems to be cementing the gold... how do I go about after I let this happen. Seems its gonna take days.....
Click to expand...

You need to make that Stannous and test your solution before you make or do anything else.
 
anachronism said:
spacedude98 said:
Ok makes sense. Rookie problems....

The copper seems to be cementing the gold... how do I go about after I let this happen. Seems its gonna take days.....
Click to expand...

You need to make that Stannous and test your solution before you make or do anything else.
Click to expand...

Best advice ever!

Furthermore, you can't judge a solution containing gold by its color. Iron gives a nice yellow color too, so use stannous or you are joking yourself.
 

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