What the heck.....

[imp.hacene]

Hello dear friends.......
I was disappointed when i tried to wash my brown drop gold ( precipitate dirt ) , what happen is when i mixed the dirt with HCL the dirt was dissolved and i was left with white dirt , what's going on ?

 

[upcyclist]

Imp: We'll need more detail, and preferably a few pictures, before we can really help. Points to consider, both in your process and to consider giving us details on:

What was your starting material? Karat gold? N-S BGA Bridges (notice I didn't just say 'e-scrap'--what type is important)? What was the starting weight?
What was your process? Again, details count.
Did you test the [presumably] gold chloride solution with stannous chloride before you precipitated, to ensure that it actually contained gold?
Did you test the solution after your HCl wash, to see if it contained gold? In other words, did it really dissolve?

One possibility that comes to mind: if your 'brown dirt' wasn't actually precipitated gold but iron or copper (at least in part), then HCl would dissolve it quite readily.

 

[Geo]

It sounds like (if you had gold) it redissolved when you added HCl. Test the solution with stannous chloride to see if your gold redissolved.

 

[Lino1406]

Brown dirt could be monovalent copper which dissolves in HCl

 

[imp.hacene]

Very interesting.....well what i did next is i melt the white dirt and i end up with brown dirt ,so i put it in HCL then in few minute i saw a lot of small yellow nugget , i don't know if it's gold or not ?
NB: the material was e-scrap "ram fingers" which was dissolved in AP than HCL+ bleach and dropped with copperas.