raa
Member
So I'm new to the gold recovery game and I seem to have made a very silly and basic error.
It all started well enough. I've been reading the forum for several weeks and watching videos on Youtube. I decided it was time to start with the simplest process and run some close cut RAM fingers. I already had some HCL based patio cleaner so I used the 'bucket with drain holes within a larger container' method to etch the copper and release the foils.
No peroxide was used, I just ran a 3mm hose from a nebuliser into the bottom of the container and ran it intermittently for around 3 hours per day. After about a week the solution started going green. After 3 1/2 weeks the fingers were completely stripped of metal and the solution was a deep dark green.
I captured the foils in a coffee filter but the foils were trapped in an oily matrix probably caused by the unfortunate presence of additives in the patio cleaner. , I cleaned up the foils by roasting them (to drive off the oily detergents in the patio cleaner), then washed them in NaOH solution, rinsed them with H2O and dissolved in HCl/bleach and finally dropped with sodium metabisulphate.
For a first attempt at gold recovery it all seemed to go rather well. The gold took two days to fully settle but I ended up with 1.3g of what looks like fairly clean (based on looking at pictures of other people's gold drops) Au powder from 275g of close cut fingers. I won't melt anything until I have at least 2g of powder.
So after this good result I decided to run a second batch. I remembered reading somewhere under a youtube video that if you place stainless steel in the solution, you can remove it with copper cemented onto it thus extending the life of the etchant.
I had plenty of stainless hard drive lids so i dropped one in - big mistake! - After a few days I went to check if any copper had cemented onto the stainless . The hard drive lid had disintegrated into pieces and the nice green solution was now an ugly rusty orange colour.
I think I probably compounded the error by not removing the RAM fingers from the solution when I still had the chance before any foils had been released.
Anyway I let the solution do its work. It took a similar amount of time for the fingers to be completely stripped of metal.
I removed the stripped plastic pieces today and here is what it looks like:
It doesn't look so bad here as it has been undisturbed for a few hours......
......But give it a stir and you get this:
There seems to be a layer of some of deposit on the bottom of the container which has a 'ferrous' look.
You can also see the rusty staining of the bucket and container; before I foolishly added the stainless steel they both stayed clean.
My dilemma is where to go from here. My gold foils are in that container and something tells me that solution is definitely not going to pass through a coffee filter.
Obviously I would like to get my gold foils back out of the mess if possible. Should I let the solution settle and try to decant off the lighter fractions leaving less material to be 'worked on'?
I probably now have Chromium and possibly Nickel in the solution along with lots of Iron. What implications would this have with regard to dealing with the waste?
Any advice much appreciated
Mark
It all started well enough. I've been reading the forum for several weeks and watching videos on Youtube. I decided it was time to start with the simplest process and run some close cut RAM fingers. I already had some HCL based patio cleaner so I used the 'bucket with drain holes within a larger container' method to etch the copper and release the foils.
No peroxide was used, I just ran a 3mm hose from a nebuliser into the bottom of the container and ran it intermittently for around 3 hours per day. After about a week the solution started going green. After 3 1/2 weeks the fingers were completely stripped of metal and the solution was a deep dark green.
I captured the foils in a coffee filter but the foils were trapped in an oily matrix probably caused by the unfortunate presence of additives in the patio cleaner. , I cleaned up the foils by roasting them (to drive off the oily detergents in the patio cleaner), then washed them in NaOH solution, rinsed them with H2O and dissolved in HCl/bleach and finally dropped with sodium metabisulphate.
For a first attempt at gold recovery it all seemed to go rather well. The gold took two days to fully settle but I ended up with 1.3g of what looks like fairly clean (based on looking at pictures of other people's gold drops) Au powder from 275g of close cut fingers. I won't melt anything until I have at least 2g of powder.
So after this good result I decided to run a second batch. I remembered reading somewhere under a youtube video that if you place stainless steel in the solution, you can remove it with copper cemented onto it thus extending the life of the etchant.
I had plenty of stainless hard drive lids so i dropped one in - big mistake! - After a few days I went to check if any copper had cemented onto the stainless . The hard drive lid had disintegrated into pieces and the nice green solution was now an ugly rusty orange colour.
I think I probably compounded the error by not removing the RAM fingers from the solution when I still had the chance before any foils had been released.
Anyway I let the solution do its work. It took a similar amount of time for the fingers to be completely stripped of metal.
I removed the stripped plastic pieces today and here is what it looks like:
It doesn't look so bad here as it has been undisturbed for a few hours......
......But give it a stir and you get this:
There seems to be a layer of some of deposit on the bottom of the container which has a 'ferrous' look.
You can also see the rusty staining of the bucket and container; before I foolishly added the stainless steel they both stayed clean.
My dilemma is where to go from here. My gold foils are in that container and something tells me that solution is definitely not going to pass through a coffee filter.
Obviously I would like to get my gold foils back out of the mess if possible. Should I let the solution settle and try to decant off the lighter fractions leaving less material to be 'worked on'?
I probably now have Chromium and possibly Nickel in the solution along with lots of Iron. What implications would this have with regard to dealing with the waste?
Any advice much appreciated
Mark