- Joined
- Jul 4, 2017
- Messages
- 108
I have had a problem with adding to much sodium metabisulfite (SMB) and the AR going dark and then changing to light green or yellow. I can never seem to recover after that. What is happening?
1. It is usually when I have refined or leached something and I don't know how much gold is likely there. My understanding is that you can use the same amount of SMB in grams as the amount of gold you have in solution, but as I said, I don't know how much is there.
2. The gold concentration is too low and I should probably be evaporating and storing it to add to something else later.
3. There was more nitric acid than I thought and the solution chews up alot of SMB and then all of a sudden I've added too much. I've used urea to try to kill the nitric acid but I think I'm doing something wrong there because it doesn't work. I'll add carefully until the urea doesn't react anymore but the gold continues to redissolve when SMB is added, and then, poof!, too much and yellow/greenish fluid.
Questions:
1. Can anyone tell me what is happening chemically when too much SMB causes the gold that appears to be coming out of solution all of a sudden re-dissolves and I end up with this light yellow to green solution? That solution will test positive for gold with stannous chloride (if you add more drops than usual to the test solution) so the gold is still there but it hasn't precipitated and it's like it's hiding in the solution now.
2. Is there a way to recover if this happens? What should one do next if this happens? I've tried alot of things with no success.
3. If there is excess nitric acid, what are some ways to neutralize it and get the solution ready for dropping the gold? I know it would be best to only add juuuust enough nitric acid so there is not a lot of excess. But if it does happen, what are some ways that work well to kill the excess before adding the SMB?
I have successfully refined with AR; placer gold of at least an ounce or more; inquarting (about two ounces of pure gold yield), and others, but always there was a significant concentration, it was very clean to start with, and and storm precipitation was very suddenly evident, dramatic, and easy. No real risk of overdosing the SMB was present in those cases. But every time I've worked with a real dirty sample (leaching black sands for example) and the actual concentration/quantity of gold was questionable I end up overdoing the SMB and can never seem to recover from there.
Open to feedback and suggestions.
Thank you very much
1. It is usually when I have refined or leached something and I don't know how much gold is likely there. My understanding is that you can use the same amount of SMB in grams as the amount of gold you have in solution, but as I said, I don't know how much is there.
2. The gold concentration is too low and I should probably be evaporating and storing it to add to something else later.
3. There was more nitric acid than I thought and the solution chews up alot of SMB and then all of a sudden I've added too much. I've used urea to try to kill the nitric acid but I think I'm doing something wrong there because it doesn't work. I'll add carefully until the urea doesn't react anymore but the gold continues to redissolve when SMB is added, and then, poof!, too much and yellow/greenish fluid.
Questions:
1. Can anyone tell me what is happening chemically when too much SMB causes the gold that appears to be coming out of solution all of a sudden re-dissolves and I end up with this light yellow to green solution? That solution will test positive for gold with stannous chloride (if you add more drops than usual to the test solution) so the gold is still there but it hasn't precipitated and it's like it's hiding in the solution now.
2. Is there a way to recover if this happens? What should one do next if this happens? I've tried alot of things with no success.
3. If there is excess nitric acid, what are some ways to neutralize it and get the solution ready for dropping the gold? I know it would be best to only add juuuust enough nitric acid so there is not a lot of excess. But if it does happen, what are some ways that work well to kill the excess before adding the SMB?
I have successfully refined with AR; placer gold of at least an ounce or more; inquarting (about two ounces of pure gold yield), and others, but always there was a significant concentration, it was very clean to start with, and and storm precipitation was very suddenly evident, dramatic, and easy. No real risk of overdosing the SMB was present in those cases. But every time I've worked with a real dirty sample (leaching black sands for example) and the actual concentration/quantity of gold was questionable I end up overdoing the SMB and can never seem to recover from there.
Open to feedback and suggestions.
Thank you very much