I decided a couple days ago to process some PC components in hydrochloric acid and hydrogen it all went good The first 48 hours but on the thirdit all went good The first 48 hours but on the third morning the solution had gotten a weird milkiness to it. So I dumped off the solution rinsed off the parts and pulled out the non metal material and rinsed well with distilled water. After rinsing I added a back to a beaker and added nitric acid and distilled water. Everything in it was going fine until I decided to pour off some solution I had 5 k gold shot soaking in then it also turned milkiness in the bottom. Please help me tell me what I need to do with this material.
what is up with the milkiness in my solution?
- Thread starter trever227
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Williamjf77
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Isn’t that silver Chloride
From the description of your recovery processes, it looks like you learned how to make a mess.
You learned how to lose your gold.
And now you need to learn how to get out of this mess and maybe get some gold.
Before you can even begin to learn how to recover or refine gold.
My advice is first to put away the chemicals in a safe place, cement values from solution using copper, and read dealing with waste in the safety section.
I won't waste much more of my time, but from your description, you took a bunch of metals and trash put then into a chloride solution and then took those metals and salts and put them into a nitric acid solution, where you have all kinds of chemical reactions going on, basically going from making one metal chloride mess into making a form of aqua regia in the second mess by adding these chloride salts to the nitric acid.
I will not even consider lead, tin, iron, aluminum, silver or of the many other metals in electronic scrap.
The copper chloride salt in nitric acid.
CuCl + HNO3 --> Cu(NO3)2 + HCl + NO2 + H2O
gold will dissolve in the solution above.
Now add a bunch of other metals from a pile of electronic scrap and metal chloride salts to this nitrate solution and what did you get?
You learned how to lose your gold.
And now you need to learn how to get out of this mess and maybe get some gold.
Before you can even begin to learn how to recover or refine gold.
My advice is first to put away the chemicals in a safe place, cement values from solution using copper, and read dealing with waste in the safety section.
I won't waste much more of my time, but from your description, you took a bunch of metals and trash put then into a chloride solution and then took those metals and salts and put them into a nitric acid solution, where you have all kinds of chemical reactions going on, basically going from making one metal chloride mess into making a form of aqua regia in the second mess by adding these chloride salts to the nitric acid.
I will not even consider lead, tin, iron, aluminum, silver or of the many other metals in electronic scrap.
The copper chloride salt in nitric acid.
CuCl + HNO3 --> Cu(NO3)2 + HCl + NO2 + H2O
gold will dissolve in the solution above.
Now add a bunch of other metals from a pile of electronic scrap and metal chloride salts to this nitrate solution and what did you get?
By dumped off I mean put in its own personal waste bucket. I tried putting a piece of copper in that to see if it would drop anything off but there was no reaction. It's still has a bluish green tint solution with a milky at the bottom smaller molecule than what cemented silver on copper looks like and a little whiter. With the stuff that was in that 1000 ml beaker when I added copper to it a bunch of silver cemented off into the solution but there is also still that milky or smaller molecule still floating in the bottom too. I have everything in their own personal waste bucket right now. As for the jewelry gold that went perfect. 38g of 10k gold and got 16.1g
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So you took a 5-gallon bucket full of electronic scrap, added 5 karat gold shot and 38 grams of 10 karat gold and you recovered 16 grams of gold and are left with a bunch of toxic solution with metal chloride and nitrate salts in their own personal 5-gallon waste buckets.
Besides possibly losing gold, do you know how to treat those personal waste buckets to recover any gold, and to deal with the toxic salts?
Besides possibly losing gold, do you know how to treat those personal waste buckets to recover any gold, and to deal with the toxic salts?
There was two separate projects I had going on. The computer scrap stuff was one I started a couple days prior while I was waiting for supplies to do the jewelry stuff. The stuff that got messed up was the PC stuff not the jewelry I got all the gold from the jewelry. The part where the jewelry stuff came into play with the PC is I had some PC stuff soaking in nitric acid and when I went to take some of the nitric acid wash from the jewelry that wasn't spent yet and add it to it, it made it form the white milkiness you see in the glass beaker.
I have a scrap bucket with hydrochloric acid in h202 from computer scraps and the distilled water from the washing of it. Because the computer stuff turn milky on me I decide to wash it well with distilled water and change what I was dissolving it in. Yes I know changing it from the hydrochloric acid to nitric acid most likely there was still trace amounts hydrochloric acid forming a tiny amount of aqua regia that may have dissolved a small amount of the gold into solution. Then I have another bucket with that computer scrap stuff that I tossed some copper into drop some metals out of solution. Then I have 2 other buckets with nitric acid waste runoff from my jewelry and aqua regia runoff from the jewelry. 3gal buckets none of the are even close to full. These were all just small first test runs.
