Refined small batch of contacts several days ago and got interesting results I cant understand. There were about 20 gramms of thick gold plated contacts with solder on them. Processed with AR, filtered, added clear filtered solution left from previuos treatments (mostly, copper solution) plus dissolved precipitant and carmabide to neutralize excess nitric and drop precious metals, washed this precipitant and processed one more time thru AR process. Got nice orange solution, filtered it again, neutralized excess of nitric acid with carbamide and added chemical grade SMB powder. After gold precipitated, I noticed, that there was large amount of fine whittish-grey powder inbetween gold powder. This powder was not able to dissolve in boiling hydrochloric acid. I processed this gold-grey powder precipitate via AR one more time and got nice orange solution, but there was a huge amount of white precipitate on the bottom of the vessel (about half volume of all original precipitate). Filtered it one more time, neutralized nitric with carbamide and added SMB powder again. And again got the same result with "dirty gold" precipitate. Then I simply heated my beaker and noticed fizzing occuring mostly in the places where this "mud" was concentrated. After about 10 minutes of fizzing, grey substance dissapeared, and nice brown gold powder left.
What could possibly this grey precipitate powder be?
What could possibly this grey precipitate powder be?