Yet another noob who needs help - Subzero Method

[megaplow]

Thanks for the responses,
My current solution has dissolved all the copper it can and there is no mud on the bottom. Previously I diluted my original batch with water and collected the solids. My current solution is those solids re-dissolved in HCL. I am thinking that I may have poured off my gold during that step. One thing that is nice about reducing the solution, is that I am dealing with a much smaller volume.

Bummer about the "safer" muriatic acid. Even if its less reactive, I think it got the job done. I feel with all my flailing the 1st batch may be a loss. The 1st batch started out with 10 lbs of boards. Not sure how much gold that would yield. I have about 15lbs of boards left for my next batch or two. My copperas should be here Monday I may add some of that to the solution and see what happens. In addition, I still have some Storm Participant, I was thinking about taking a sample of my solution and adding that.

Baby steps moving forward,
Joe

 

[butcher]

megaplow Joe,
My suggestion:
keep the solutions in a bucket you do not lose gold if you keep it, (add a piece of clean copper metal to that bucket), the gold will be there, forget about starting another batch, (do not start another failure). You still have more work studying to do first. Keep reading Hoke's, study also the acid peroxide process for fingers. Work on getting some gold foils, do not worry about dissolving the gold yet, concentrate on stripping the base metals from the foil fingers, and let’s take little steps to learn.

Let us not jump off the cliff all at once, it seems like to me a hard way to learn, I get a headache every time I try that method.

Once you get a nice big pile of foils we can take the next step.

 

[megaplow]

Thank you Butcher,
That is sound advise. I have added clean copper to the solution and white powder forms on it. When I lift the copper out the powder slides back into the solution. I am hoping this is the concreting process. The reason I am anxious to start a new batch, is due to the fact that this time, I have nitric acid. My plan is to use the nitric acid to remove the base metals before going after the gold. What is unfortunate about my current solution is that its so contaminated with other metals. Opportunity for learning though :lol: One of my experiments was with fingers and I was able to get a small pile of foils at the bottom. Things are looking up.

Joe

 

[butcher]

megaplow, Joe,
I am glad you found nitric, but I would not use it until you understand the reactions better.
Nitric acid has its own set of problems you can encounter not to mention the very deadly fumes.

Lets discuss this solution your working on now.

You stated:" I have added clean copper to the solution and white powder forms on it."

This does not make sense to me, if you have white powder and a solution; the copper metal is just about useless here.

Then you also stated: "When I lift the copper out the powder slides back into the solution. I am hoping this is the concreting process."

The reason is nothing is happening, this is not the cementing process.

The white powders can be many things they may also be some gold, lead, copper, tin, silver and other base metal chloride salts, I suppose the solution is green.

Rinse off the copper into this solution (dry and save the copper in a plastic bag for later).

Let powders settle, decant solution to another container (test this solution with stannous chloride (I suspect it to be barren of value).

This and waste and also the waste you will generate in discussion below can be added together, add iron and treat the waste (separating copper), and then (treat iron chloride with a base solution (caustic soda, lime or so on) of your choice to precipitate iron and other metals), from the salt water solution, (see dealing with waste in safety section for more details).

The white powders rinse powders in dilute sodium hydroxide solution, until pH is neutral, rinse with boiling hot water till water is clear this can be done in casserole dish on low heat on electric hot plate, (lower heat so solutions settle, solutions removed with turkey baster type suction bulb, after powders are well settled but solution is as hot as possible without stirring powder), after last rinse has been removed,

slowly evaporate liquid, when dry crush powders stirring and raise heat, the dry powders may fuse and become syrup or liquid again, raise heat but do not let it boil to where solution splashes from dish if bubbles pop lower heat, keep heating till dry again, crush raise heat to high let cook stirring dry powders until they no longer smoke, they may also become darker, on high heat several hours, then use a torch from the top, but do not blow powders from dish, raise heat of all of the powder to red hot stirring powder, they will change color (we do not want to melt)when they no longer smoke, and have been well roasted, lower heat and let them cool.

Add just enough water with a spray bottle mist to wet powders and wash down side of dish, add HCL to cover, raise heat to low boil stirring well, crush any lumps, after heated well add some water, lower heat but keep warm but let all powder settle well, when settled decant solution to a jar (this jar will be tested and treated for waste later we will call it decant jar), rinse with boiling hot water till water is clear, and repeat the HCl washes and hot water rinses till the solutions clear, this should remove most of the lead, tin and copper and other base metals from your gold and silver, let decant jar settle testsolution with stannous chloride, and treat as needed (waste).

Now re-incinerate your gold and silver powders (as you did above), store these in a small jar, mark label jar possible gold and silver incinerated powders, put up in your lab, finish treating your waste materials,

And then read Hokes book, keep you lab work to doing the experiments Hoke’s book teaches, forget about getting gold yet, (the real value for you right now is understanding her teaching, until you do you will not be getting gold anyway).

 

[megaplow]

Hey All,
As I am getting more clarity on the chemical processes discussed on this site and in Hokes book, I had an idea. Is it possible that my 1st batch was so large there was no gold in the solution? I used 1lb of subzero and about a gallon of hcl. The acid was only able to process about half of the boards in my bucket. Then it quit reacting leaving a lot of material still on my boards. Since gold is the least reactive of the metals in the mix, I think my 1st solution may just be a ton of base metals. The reason I feel this way is because after a successful flake removal from fingers (in a small test), I went back to my original pile of unfinished boards and noticed there are flakes all over them.

An optimistic observation,
Joe

 

[MysticColby]

yes, if all the base metals (predominantly copper) were not dissolved, any gold that was dissolved would cement out onto them. This is a big reason why it's recommended to dissolve base metals first, then the gold

To the others: given 1lb random ICB, how much gold might one expect to refine? (I get the feeling it'd be somewhere around 0.1 g)

 

[butcher]

megaplow,
In your first picture on this thread it shows whole circuit boards, some circuit boards have traces of copper between layers of fiberglass of the circuit board, also there are through holes of copper and solder, and copper under the solder mask.

By doing whole boards, not only is the solder and other base metals (besides copper) going to give you problems, but there is hardly any way to dissolve all of the copper in the circuit board, under these layers of other non metals, this remaining copper will trap the little bit of gold you had in solution with the boards, especially if you dissolve the gold into the acidic solution, as the elemental copper left can reduce the dissolved gold plating it onto the remaining un-dissolved copper.

Also remember solutions can hold more than one metal at a time, the dirtier or thicker the solution the worse it can be, a heavily laden solution of copper gold atoms may cling to copper atoms, especially if other trash or organic materials are involved (oils, carbon based materials), the solutions can hold gold and copper in solution at the same time, this is especially true even with metals like tin that can form a jell solution of gold colloids, these dirty solutions can also make testing for gold almost impossible.

I hope you get something out of this experiment, and feel your gaining an education, which is much more important than a few grams of gold, and reading Hoke's and understanding what she teaches is worth more than several ounces of gold, but unless you incinerated and crushed all of the boards and powdered them, went through all of the solutions and anything these solutions have touched, I feel you have lost much of the values the materials had before you processed them, you may be able to recover some of it, and hopefully you will, but now you can also see why we remove individual components, clean off solders, remove base metals and then refine the values,

I suggest, work to finish this project the best you can, clean up this mess, recover what you can, save dried materials (if you wish to fool with them later), treat waste solutions properly, and start fresh, doing what you have learned, practice Hokes getting acquainted, and getting the valuable things she teaches (worth ounces of gold), and learn testing practicing with pure solutions, also from what you have learned on the forum, start with a simple process, much cleaner, and easier to learn from, like clean memory fingers, working with more pure and cleaner materials you will see how the process looks and acts (without all of the problems of the dirty solutions), after you have a good understanding of principles then with more experience you can learn more about how to deal with dirty and problematic solutions.

Start fresh with your approach, now that you have learned more, and use this education to adjust how you work in your lab, take a more scientific approach (that is the advice I am giving myself also now, to revise some of my thinking, process methods and bad habits), study experiment (follow known working procedures), and gain an understanding, then going for the gold should become much easier, and profitable.

 

[Aussiemozza]

I've gotta laugh :lol: :lol: :lol:

Here's me: another noob with a witches brew and figuring out how to drop my metals back out so I start again. :roll:

For those interested, I 'semi' pre-processed my boards by clipping all gold-rich bits but have to be honest: I let way too much solder and copper tracings go into the mix.

Naturally, because I'm a NOOOOOOOB, I figured the easy way would be to hit it all with Nitric to dissolve all metals 'cept for the important ones. That worked okay with a nice blue-green solution coming off.

Next, after washing the leftovers with water, I treated the remaining boards plus gold flakes with AR.

The resultant solution was very dark green.
I neutralised the nitric with Urea, filtered then added SMB.
Adding SMB gave a substantial bubbling which rang alarm bells so I stopped - there is a white 'salt' collecting on the bottom of the container which I presume comprises different metal salts.

So I've hit the brakes and had a piece of humble pie - tastes good...

To summarise:
I DO have Au in solution as all gold flake were dissolved in AR
I DO have a witches brew with plenty of SMB in it.
I have diluted the brew X3 and chucked in some Copper to drop out my important metals.
I am currently reclining with a downloaded copy of Hokes.

Great forum guys - will post my success story soon.

Moz

 

[Geo]

Good luck Moz. At least you are moving in the right direction now.

 

[butcher]

Aussiemozza,
We can learn from our mistakes (the hard way), and we can study so that we do not make so many mistakes, so the learning can become easier and were not just making one big mistake, after another and getting nowhere.

This may seem simple to the uneducated, but in reality like most any profession there is a lot you will need to understand, basic principles of the chemistry of these metals is just the beginning.

Beginning with Hoke's book will help you begin to understand many of the basics.

When you learn more, you will begin to see this is all much more complicated than it seemed at first, and this is something that will take a lot of education, like learning many other types of professions, learning the basic principles and building your education on them.

Like learning to play the piano, starting out with something simple is helpful, learning to play something like Mary had a little lamb, and getting it down before moving on to more complex music, is normally a good way to begin.

Forget about getting gold for the time being, (gold fever blinds us to the true goal, and can lead us down the wrong trail chasing it like chasing rainbows).

Spending your time learning about it, will get you closer to that goal, setting up your lab, getting acquainted with the metals using Hoke's simple experiments, while you study her book, learning from the forum, about the safety aspects, and dealing with waste, learning how to test for, the value and where to find what you will eventually need.

Do not just run out and buy supplies or materials until you know for sure you need them, as you may buy a bunch of stuff you will never use, or spend way too much for it, or may learn you can get by with something more simple or that you can find for free or very little cost...

Study a simple material and how to process it, when beginning (like memory fingers, or karat gold...) using Hoke's and what you learn form those experiment's, incorporate the material and your processing of them with those experiment's to get an even better understanding...

You are beginning to learn a profession that can involve several lifetimes to learn and get good at, and to learn everything about it well none of us will have that many lifetimes, so beginning with study will get you closer to that gold you seek.

I am looking forward to your posts of success.

 

[Aussiemozza]

Aussiemozza,
We can learn from our mistakes (the hard way), and we can study so that we do not make so many mistakes, so the learning can become easier and were not just making one big mistake, after another and getting nowhere.

This may seem simple to the uneducated, but in reality like most any profession there is a lot you will need to understand, basic principles of the chemistry of these metals is just the beginning.

Beginning with Hoke's book will help you begin to understand many of the basics.

When you learn more, you will begin to see this is all much more complicated than it seemed at first, and this is something that will take a lot of education, like learning many other types of professions, learning the basic principles and building your education on them.

Like learning to play the piano, starting out with something simple is helpful, learning to play something like Mary had a little lamb, and getting it down before moving on to more complex music, is normally a good way to begin.

Forget about getting gold for the time being, (gold fever blinds us to the true goal, and can lead us down the wrong trail chasing it like chasing rainbows).

Spending your time learning about it, will get you closer to that goal, setting up your lab, getting acquainted with the metals using Hoke's simple experiments, while you study her book, learning from the forum, about the safety aspects, and dealing with waste, learning how to test for, the value and where to find what you will eventually need.

Do not just run out and buy supplies or materials until you know for sure you need them, as you may buy a bunch of stuff you will never use, or spend way too much for it, or may learn you can get by with something more simple or that you can find for free or very little cost...

Study a simple material and how to process it, when beginning (like memory fingers, or karat gold...) using Hoke's and what you learn form those experiment's, incorporate the material and your processing of them with those experiment's to get an even better understanding...

You are beginning to learn a profession that can involve several lifetimes to learn and get good at, and to learn everything about it well none of us will have that many lifetimes, so beginning with study will get you closer to that gold you seek.

I am looking forward to your posts of success.

All true!

So much for my chem major at Uni...... at least it's helping with the understanding.

Tx
Moz

 

[maynman1751]

Moz, don't throw anything out yet. Some of your values may still be trapped in the remaining copper in the boards. Just store your solution safely and continue studying. Others here have done the same as you and you will find your answers here. Be patient and learn!!!!!

 

[g_axelsson]

Example of gold cementing back onto circuit board that was left in AR.
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=17697

Göran