unsure of pentium pro precipitate

[steeranoff]

I have been working 2 pentium pro cpu's. My first stage was 6 days
in AP, with a water rinse, followed by a dilute nitric bath to finish
the base metals and to remove the trace of silver. What happened
was a greyish-white clumpy precipitate that is a lot more than I
expected. Could it be silver nitrate prematurely precipitated? Or
possibly tungsten? Something else? I wanted a solution that I could
pour off then go to hcl/cl. Any ideas as to what it is, and how to
deal with it?
thanks,
steve

 

[butcher]

if you went from HCl (AP) to nitric without an inceneration in between you most likely made a form of aqua regia, even chloride salts and nitric can act this way. rinsing is useless here it will not replace inceneration.

two cpu's is such a small amount of material it may be hard to recover the values without loss.

you would have solder and other metals in solution also.
I would tell you you have base metals in solution and an aqua regia solution.
and if that much nitric eliminating nitric or cementing could be a hassel, I would probably let settle, decant nitric and use that nitric for recovery, or to distill a new nitric solution with, incenerate the powders and remaining cpu, put these in a jar, untill I had more collected to work with, and in the mean time read up on HOKE'S BOOK.

there can be several different ways to deal with what you have, but what you need is an understanding of the process, the small amounts of powder you might retrieve from two cpu's is meaningless, your true value will come from reading and understanding this process.

I really do hope this helps.
without knowing details this can be hard to answer, were the cpu's whole broken crushed? how much nitric?

 

[steeranoff]

the CPU's are broken. Any idea of what the whiteish
Clumps are?

 

[steeranoff]

also I expect a Hair over 1 gram yield

 

[butcher]

?? lead --silver chloride ??? who knows, there are test to determine what, but why?,

I hope you get a gram,too
every time I go panning at the river I hope for a few ounces...

 

[steeranoff]

Why wouldn't I want to know?
Thanks anyway

 

[Barren Realms 007]

http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=62

Here are a couple of PM's Steve sent me on the PP processor.

With Pentium Pros I always torch off the bottom cover. I've a very detailed post about processing two of these. The top plate is a copper tungsten alloy which is very resistant to most acids, but sulfuric and peroxide will loosen up the gold plating, then you can use any of the normal methods to dissolve the legs, foils, and remaining cpu housing gold. The solder has some silver in it.


Be careful mixing sulfuric and peroxide, especially when applying heat, the mixture can corrode glass beakers and bubbles violently.

The cpus will strip in the cell if you can get a good electrical connection.

Be sure to read my post on the pentium pros before using the peroxide sulfuric mix.

 

[butcher]

I would not care, I did not mean you may not want to know, sometimes the way I say things and the what I mean dont always come across. to me these are just base metals in the way of progress at the moment, if our goal is pure gold.

if you want to see if it was lead or silver here is one way. decant powder,and since you had nitric and these will contain nitric salts incenerate to drive off nitrates.
add couple drops of HCL, add water about 3 times volume,let settle,
this if sodium chloride would dissolve, now heat till it just steams, lead chloride powder would dissolve, silver chloride will not, although if aggitated it may float around as powder or a milky solution so allowing it time to settle and keeping solutions temperature up hot.
now if you carefully decant liquid solution and move to another jar letiing this hot liquid cool you will see crystals of lead chloride form when it gets cold,
The silver chloride powder can be incenerated to drive off chlorides, dissolved in nitric acid, and then precipitated with HCL as white cottage cheese silver chloride
there are other more detailed chemical tests also you can use to determine what you have

 

[steeranoff]

that's what I was looking for.
Thanks!
Butcher