What to do with a witch's Brew!

[nōnāgintā trēs]

This is for anyone new or stuck with a mason jar full of Aqua Regia and SMB that won't drop the gold...

I speak from experience on this since I didn't have proper SMB for a long time and was using something similar but not right. If ever you get stuck holding a jar full of Aqua regia and it starts turning into a witch's brew don't panic! Add a teaspoon of NaOH (sodium hydroxide) and 50ml water. Make sure the HaOH dissolves all the way. Careful as this does give off hydrogen (so don't have a ciggette in your mouth). Add the dissolved NaOH VERY slowly, drop by drop until your witch's brew clears and orange/brown mud drops. This mud will be insoluble since you just raised your pH from 1 or 2 to 9 or 11 (give or take). You turned a form of AuCl3 (gold chloride) into AuOH3 (gold hydroxide). The liquid will now smell like ammonia and the mud needs only an hour or so to settle. Once settled, pour off the liquid, as much as you can. In theory one could melt gold hydroxide which does contain gold. The problem is you need an ultra hot tourch which I never had. Also it's bonded with the OH and you'll probably get charcole so don't try it!!! Once you've poured off as much liquid you can now add HCL (hydrochloric acid) again very slowly until you get a gold liquid, all the mud is now dissolved, and you again have a very low pH of about 0-3 depending how much HCL you added. You have successfully now not only killed any nitric but removed MOST of the witches brew, but we're not done yet. Set it on a warm surface, like a heater/radiator for a couple days and see if any crystals appear. These crystals could be anything that was also in your witch's brew such as urea, sugers, oxalic acid, ect,. ect,. ect,. After about 3 day the now gold chloride wil be a dark brown, and you can start again (carefully this time) with SMB or whatever your chemical of choice.

This is my personal recipe based on trial and error, and past experience. I am NOT and expert in refining but I gave a decent chemistry background.
93

 

[butcher]

nōnāgintā trēs,
I think after you study here on the forum for a while you will find a little better way to get out of that mess, and even better yet learn how not to get into those kind of messes to begin with.

 

[nōnāgintā trēs]

Thanks, I know there's several ways to clean a witch's brew but this is the one I found best. By swinging the pH we remove the impurities that can't survive in that enviroment, then we swing the pH again to remove the remaining impurities.

 

[butcher]

I did not see where this would remove very much of the impurity, what all metals are you talking about in solution; you formed base metal hydroxides then just dissolved them back into solution with acid.

Gold will not form a hydroxide with this treatment gold is not that reactive like the base metals are?
It is very difficult to form gold hydroxides.

There is a cult of so called modern day alchemist that believe and promote how they can easily form gold hydroxide with a simple solution of sodium hydroxide washes, and they tell each other it is possible, and promote this nonsense on the intranet, they try to make a white gold from swinging pH back and forth (till they end up washing out all of the gold out in their washes and throw it away, and then end up with some kind of magical white salt water), these poor misguided individuals think they know chemistry, they do not, they mix chemistry with magic and other mumbo jumbo and promote bad Ideas, they also foul the art of science that the ancients have worked so hard to learn and to pass down to us (as the science we know today), the ancient scientist worked hard and taught us from their mistakes and misguided ideas through the ages learning what did and did not work, and where they were wrong in their ideas, they found out what would and would not work, passing down better information and ways of doing things and so they passed to us the true science we use on this form. These modern day alchemist seem to want to take refining, or science backwards to a time when man had little understanding in science or mystify it to when man had less understanding of science of thought of it as a mystery or magic (when the true ancient scientist of old who were true alchemist were trying to learn more and bring their understanding closer to the science we have today trying to understand and learn how things really worked and take the mystery or magic out of it), this is why I believe modern day alchemist, give dishonor to the true ancient scientist/alchemist and also give alchemy a bad name.

Where did you eliminate nitric acid?

Lets say all we had was nitric acid and we used a solution of sodium hydroxide to swing the pH, we just make a salt of sodium nitrate:

HNO3 + NaOH --> NaNO3 +H2O

Now we add HCL to this what do we make?

Poor mans aqua regia
NaNO3 + HCl

Where did you eliminate much of any problem it looks to me like most of them are still there?
Was there a chance of tin in solution? If this came from electronic scrap I would just bet there was.

I am not saying that this method may have help in this instance somewhat to help you out with this witches brew, but I believe the method could result in high loses of value, and there are better methods

This is why I said:
I think after you study here on the forum for a while you will find a little better way to get out of that mess, and even better yet learn how not to get into those kind of messes to begin with.

 

[Pantherlikher]

"This is for anyone new or stuck with a mason jar full of Aqua Regia and SMB that won't drop the gold...

I speak from experience on this since I didn't have proper SMB for a long time and was using something similar but not right. If ever you get stuck holding a jar full of Aqua regia and it starts turning into a witch's brew don't panic! "


OK. All the posts I've read from you so far lead me into thinking you know everything and are trying to "reinvent the wheel".

The first 2 sentences you stated just don't make sense. SMB that wont drop gold is because the Nitric acid is still active. I am new to this and realized that.
second sentence, I speak from experience on this since I didn't have proper SMB for a long time and was using something similar but not right.
So what is similar but not right that you used?
I for 1 refuse to dive into something without knowing and having everything needed to finish. Well, except for room in my world to hold everything....
AND... as a last resort, why wouldn't you simply put a nice chunk of Copper in and drop everything. Followed by Aluminum or better yet, Iron to get the copper out?...

It is probably just the way you write or think. Some people tell of past experiences and come across as a "know it all", instead of sharing what they did and want to know if it's a possibility...
I'm not trying to offend or be rude or anything. I'm just trying to understand where you are comming from.
Read, learn and ask good questions and hopefully we all learn the right ways to live together.
BS.

 

[Geo]

a piece of clean copper and a little heat will effectively deposit all metals of interest out of a solution of mixed metal in a couple of days or less.this leaves you with only the metals you were after to begin with. only metals that less reactive than copper will precipitate out. neutralizing the acid in solution will cause all metal salts to precipitate. your basically no farther along than when you first started.

 

[nōnāgintā trēs]

By swinging the pH to 9-14 the gold becomes insoluble and you can dump much of the liquid that's also full of waste products. Then to drop the pH back to 0-3 add HCL. If you have other metals in with the gold a pH swing won't help but this gets rid of extra water, SMB, oxalic, and any other salts ect,. If you don't like it or something else works for you great. I managed to save several witch's brews this way. It worked for me till I got the right SMB I needed.

Bottom line... If you have 1 liter of witch's brew you can do this and get 50ml gold chloride and start over!

 

[butcher]

Check the material you dumped from that "waste" I suspect you dump some gold there, if gold is colloidal (tin) lowering the pH does not help, it can actually make things worse.

Swinging pH back and forth will give you very little gain, and can give you a big loss of gold.

If you find what works for you, then use it.

You came to the forum, because you had trouble with methods you have been using, you came here to learn.

But instead of spending time learning you are trying to teach refiners how you done things and ended up with problems.

nōnāgintā trēs,
I suggest you spend some time learning, begin with Hokes book and reading the forum.
Spend some time learning the chemistry, and the best way to do things, learn what will and will not work and why.

Please do not come here trying to teach what "think" may work, take time to learn what will work.

Learn how to recover and refine without making witches brews.