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Scrap-Algeria

Member
Joined
Jun 25, 2017
Messages
15
Dear friends:
I tried to refine some gold scrap with AR ,everything goes well i end up with brown precipitate, wash it with HCL then with distilled water ,so i put in furnace with borax, finelly i broke the borax and unfortunately nothing is there just black borax.
What am i doing wrong?
Some told me that i must use torch not furnace.............why ?
Thank you guys
 
Scrap-Algeria said:
Dear friends:
I tried to refine some gold scrap with AR ,everything goes well i end up with brown precipitate, wash it with HCL then with distilled water ,so i put in furnace with borax, finelly i broke the borax and unfortunately nothing is there just black borax.
What am i doing wrong?
Some told me that i must use torch not furnace.............why ?
Thank you guys
Click to expand...

How much and what type was this "some gold scrap"?
 
Scrap-Algeria said:
Actually it was 18g of gold jewellery scrap 14 karat and 9 karat.
Click to expand...
Did you inquart it and leach base metals?or just go straight to A.R.?
What Precipitant did you use?
Borax douses not go black with moderately clean Au.
 
Thank you guys for your answers, unfortunately i went straight to A.R process and then i'd used SMB to precipitate gold.
 
Scrap-Algeria said:
Thank you guys for your answers, unfortunately, i went straight to A.R process and then I'd used SMB to precipitate gold.
Click to expand...
How did you assess the alloys you started with?
I am unfamiliars with French Hallmarks and any one can put a stamp on a bit of metal so they are only ever a guide.But they help a little.A good U.K. Hallmark can normally be trusted.
There are not many low karat alloys that will go straight to A.R.
How did you prepare your A.R. Liquor?did you reduce down or use sulfamic acid?
 
i assessed the alloys with jewellery acid, and i prepare my AR (ration 1 nitric acid with 3 HCL) and i used sulfamic acid than SMB.
 
Scrap-Algeria said:
I assessed the alloys with jewelry acid, and I prepare my AR (ration 1 nitric acid with 3 HCL) and I used sulfamic acid than SMB.
Click to expand...
When you say"Jewelry Acid" I take it you mean a scratch test on a stone.
I never like to use Just Sulfamic acid to neutralize the Nitric, I always reduce down as far as possible then use sulfamic instead of a second evaporation.This is quite volatile enough but I do work on larger batches.
It is a good indicator that all the nitric has been taken care of when the reaction stops.
What detritus was left over from your original digestion ?
How much of each karat did you have? so we can work out how much value you are looking for.
 
How much borax did you use? Any pictures?

As I see it you started with gold alloy and dissolved it directly in aqua regia.

If the gold wasn't dissolved it would end up in the filter when filtering the solution. Do you have the filter and solids left after the aqua regia treatment? Were there any solid bits left?

The dirty liquid was treated and finally you used SMB. This might precipitate the gold depending on how well you got nitric acid out of the solution. Any nitric left might redissolve the gold. It sounds like you got rid of the solution so if there was any gold left then it is lost by now.

The brown precipitation you got was washed in HCl. What was the color of the liquid?

You added borax to the powder, how much? Did you use a clean crucible? Did you pour out the borax while it was fluid?

If the temperature wasn't high enough to melt the gold or the borax not fluid enough then the powder might be mixed in with the borax and impossible to see with the eye.

There are numerous threads on the forum to how to melt gold with a melting dish and a torch, the amount you are talking about is perfect for that method.

So your gold might be in the solids left from dissolving the gold, in the liquid that you discarded or in the borax in the crucible.

Göran
 
The thing I like about refining is that it takes Locard's exchange principle to extremes.
a perpetrator of a crime will bring something into the crime scene and leave with something from it,"Every contact leaves a trace".
What refiners have learned to do over the centuries is to limit that cross contamination.
Study the fundamentals and the rest falls into place.
 
Dear friends thanks for the help...g_axelsson you ask an interesting question which made me rethink.....
1- I think i used too much borax ( see the pic bellow)
2- Do you have the filter and solids left after the aqua regia treatment? no solid just little dirt.
3- Any nitric left might redissolve the gold... i used sulfamic acid (till no fizz) to make sure no excess nitric acid.........
4- The brown precipitation you got was washed in HCl. What was the color of the liquid? the color was lightly yellow.......
5-You added borax to the powder, how much? Did you use a clean crucible? Did you pour out the borax while it was fluid? Actually it was new crucible , and i mix the brown precipitate with borax in crucuble then put it in furnace...about 30 minute.

If the gold was left in the borax in the crucible what should i do?
 

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Scrap-Algeria said:
2- Do you have the filter and solids left after the aqua regia treatment? no solid just little dirt..
Click to expand...

Coincidentally, a lot of finely divided precious metals look like different kinds of dirt..

First time I showed my father in law precipitated gold, he didn't believe me until I melted it..

We cannot judge by aesthetics alone, testing is necessary for qualitative answers
 
Well unless my eyes are playing tricks on me which they could be, youve got what look like tiny bubbles and nodules in there. When I've recovered gold from borax in the past for other people those have contained tiny prills of gold.

Again it could be my eyes. That given, if you were going to get your proper yield from the materials as mentioned above I would have expected a good lump of gold in one piece.
 

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