Thoughts on gold recovery sim cards

[booneire]

Eric

Thanks for your quick reply. Honestly I'm only seeing this now. I just figured out how to check on my posts etc. I'm on this site most days doing reading and studying. there a lot to learn.
I'll keep gathering stock and keel reading.

David

 

[andersen113]

So I thought I would finally just post my embarrassing yield. I got 0.. absolutely no gold from 10lbs of sim cards. Only smb collected at bottom of beaker again and stannous tested negative after drop but positive before. I put the solution in stock pot and solids in zip lock bag.vI never got gold from sim cards. :?:

 

[etack]

Somehow I double posted.
Eric

 

[etack]

Don’t feel bad I bought $10,000.00 of them and there was only 3toz in the 1000#.

Also you can check you post use the hamburger in the top left side.

Eric

 

[g_axelsson]

So I thought I would finally just post my embarrassing yield. I got 0.. absolutely no gold from 10lbs of sim cards. Only smb collected at bottom of beaker again and stannous tested negative after drop but positive before. I put the solution in stock pot and solids in zip lock bag.vI never got gold from sim cards. :?:

How could you get solid SMB on the bottom? It's soluble in pure water and decomposes in acid. What is the pH of the solution? SMB needs free hydrochloric acid to work effectively. If you have too little acid the gold is converted or complexed into a colorless compound in solution or suspension. It gets stuck in the colorless state but turns back into gold particles if you add more HCl.

I can't totally explain what is happening, but when you precipitate gold with SMB the solution first turns colorless before gold particles aggregate into larger particles and falls out as the yellow powder. I once had a solution that just turned colorless and never precipitated the gold. The gold dropped immediately when I added more HCl.

Göran

 

[Shark]

How could you get solid SMB on the bottom? It's soluble in pure water and decomposes in acid. What is the pH of the solution? SMB needs free hydrochloric acid to work effectively. If you have too little acid the gold is converted or complexed into a colorless compound in solution or suspension. It gets stuck in the colorless state but turns back into gold particles if you add more HCl.

I can't totally explain what is happening, but when you precipitate gold with SMB the solution first turns colorless before gold particles aggregate into larger particles and falls out as the yellow powder. I once had a solution that just turned colorless and never precipitated the gold. The gold dropped immediately when I added more HCl.

Göran

Thanks for that bit of information. I ran into that colorless solution with no drop recently, and was completely at a loss as to what was going on. I also picked up an extra three grams of missing gold when I tried the hydrochloric addition.

 

[g_axelsson]

How could you get solid SMB on the bottom? It's soluble in pure water and decomposes in acid. What is the pH of the solution? SMB needs free hydrochloric acid to work effectively. If you have too little acid the gold is converted or complexed into a colorless compound in solution or suspension. It gets stuck in the colorless state but turns back into gold particles if you add more HCl.

I can't totally explain what is happening, but when you precipitate gold with SMB the solution first turns colorless before gold particles aggregate into larger particles and falls out as the yellow powder. I once had a solution that just turned colorless and never precipitated the gold. The gold dropped immediately when I added more HCl.

Göran

Thanks for that bit of information. I ran into that colorless solution with no drop recently, and was completely at a loss as to what was going on. I also picked up an extra three grams of missing gold when I tried the hydrochloric addition.

That's great news! Thanks for letting me know it worked.

I ran into this when I had a solution of gold chloride that I evaporated until it was totally dry. I only used water to dissolve the gold, filtered and added SMB. The solution turned colorless and then nothing... after a couple of hours I realized how SMB actually works, so I added a bit of HCl and the gold just dropped right down to the bottom in seconds. Nowadays I always see to that I have the solution strongly acidic with HCl when dropping my gold and I haven't had a problem since that day.

Göran

 

[Shark]

I was boiling some powders in HCl and left it to long. When I tested it, it showed some gold in solution. I decanted it off and let it cool. When I added smb nothing happened. After some fumbling around I tried HCl and it turned brown in just a few seconds. I expected some amount of powders, but was shocked by the amount I got. The only thing I can think of is that I let some nitric slip through from the water wash and it created a small amount of AR. From boiling a bit longer than usual it must have killed the HCl as well. I have no idea if that is the case, but is the only thing that made sense to me.

 

[Lino1406]

Under some conditions, HNO3 (and H2O2 too) turn Na2S2O5 to Na2SO4 which does not precipitate gold

 

[Shark]

Under some conditions, HNO3 (and H2O2 too) turn Na2S2O5 to Na2SO4 which does not precipitate gold

Thanks, I can certainly use a better understanding of chemistry. I had never heard of Na2SO4 and had to look that up. (Sodium dithionite) I think the broad range of needed abilities is what keeps me interested in refining.

 

[Lino1406]

Sorry, sodium sulphate ! Simply