Stupid Question

[timsiggins]

for gold plated stuff can you just use Aqua Regia to strip the gold off of the items you want and then drop the gold with smb. Please don't beat me up for this I just could not find the answer anywhere. I know the correct way.

 

[Martijn]

No you can't. The gold that dissolved will precipitate out on the base metals. There will be no gold in solution to precipitate unless you waste a bunch of perfectly good nitric on dissolving all the base metals leaving you with a soup of metal salts with a tiny bit of gold chloride mixed in the lot and hard to rinse out.

AR is a refining process, not a recovery process.

For pins we use the sulphuric stripping cell or AP.
The big boys smelt it all and refine the copper electrolytical. The pm's are in the slimes.

Martijn.