I am new to the refining process and have been using "Gold filled jewelry" to process using the AR process. After dissolving completely in the Nitric Acid, I am using Shor's sub Zero material, the solution is heavy with a dark green color, presumably from copper. There is a large amount of Copper, due to the fact that I am dissolving 19 oz of base metal to get 1 oz of gold. First I neutralized the excess nitric acid with Urea, then used the precipitant to "drop" the gold from solution, creating a brown residue on the bottom of the container. I decanted the excess solution after "dropping" and then treated with ammonia. The last two attempts have created a "milky" floating material in the solution that reacted with the gold residue. I continued to further wash the residue with water until left with only the brown residue then dried it. My problem is that this residue doesn't eventually melt down to gold when put into a crucible, it burns to a black residue rather than turning into gold. What reaction have I created? I ran the process again and again ran into this problem, getting a light brown "mud", rather than a granular darker brown residual. I took the light brown mud and redissolved it with Nitric and the solution tested positive for gold, but does not drop out of solution when the nitric acid is neutralized and precipitated. It seems that the gold ions have bonded into some other form than Gold Chloride and will not drop out. Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong?
Thanks Tomehock
Thanks Tomehock
