Will stannous chloride test work on Au+ ion?

[Jwdds]

I’m attempting to make a gold electrolyte solution for plating. Was on my final step to create ammonium gold sulfite by adding ammonium sulfite solution to ammonia gold precipitate. What I was expecting to happen is the trivalent gold from the fulminate would goto monovalent gold. But after 4 days of mild heat and agitation the solution is testing negative. I stopped the agitation and poured off the liquid which should have been the electrolyte by now. Thus far the stannous test is negative . I placed smb in the solution thinking it would cause any gold in there to precipitate, but that did not happen either.

As a result I believe the solution is waste but I thought I would double check first to see if the stannous test would still test positive on Au+ ion as well as Au before I discard the solution ?

The precipitate tests positive with stannous

Any thoughts?

 

[Yggdrasil]

First and foremost.
Stannous do not test positive for any metal, only metal in solution, ie Ions.
And I think it need to be acidic, though the HCl in the Stannous may be enough to acidify the test.

 

[rickbb]

From your pictures it appears that the gold is precipitated out as a metal. No gold in solution for stannous to test.

 

[Jwdds]

From your pictures it appears that the gold is precipitated out as a metal. No gold in solution for stannous to test.

That’s the fulminate following precipitation with Ammonia. The addition of ammonium sulfite was supposed to leach the gold from that into solution but it appears that failed. After 4 days of heat and agitation the solution is testing negative for gold. Not sure whi it failed

 

[Geo]

Stannous chloride will test for ionized metal salt in solution. It will react with all precious metal salts. There are some metal salts that it should not be used on. Such as cyanide solution.

 

[Martijn]

You said in an earlier post you followed an expired patent. If you could share it, we could perhaps help better.

 

[eaglekeeper]

Does anyone know how stable that gold precipitate is?... I thought using ammonia with certain dissolved metals was a bad idea.

 

[Geo]

Does anyone know how stable that gold precipitate is?... I thought using ammonia with certain dissolved metals was a bad idea.

It is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulminating_gold

 

[Geo]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulminate

 

[olawlor]

Sulfite (from the ammonium sulfite) is a reducing agent, so couldn't it immediately reduce any gold ions back to metal? It seems like this could armor the individual grains with a layer of metallic gold, stopping any further reactions. It's not clear how the plating ammonium gold sulfite is normally prepared, some of these compounds require very specific preparation sequence (pH, temperature, concentration, etc).

(I have zero experience with fulminating gold, nor do I want any! High explosives are not to be trifled with.)