Dummies Guide to GOLD bullion refining at home as a long term precious metal investment - made EASY

reply to post by lonegurkha


Q. I take it that adding more water will not make the acid too weak to keep the metal in a dissolved state.

If so, does this mean the dissolved metal is protected inside a chemical bond?

Originally posted by Skewed
reply to post by tauristercus

 

How well does just melting it down from the beginning work? What would be the result of putting the material in a pot and melting it all down if the material is all metal, as an alternative to using chemicals. Separating it could be a challenge but I think the different density of the metals could be used to help separate it. My metallurgy experience only goes as far as some bullet casting.

I wouldn't imagine that melting would be practical as the 3 most common metals in say, jewelry as an example, have melting points all within approximately 100C of each other so would all melt roughly at the same time.

Gold = 1063C
Copper = 1084C
Silver = 961C

Originally posted by squandered
reply to post by tauristercus

 

Q. How long does it take to dissolve away the impurities of a, say, heavy 14k gents ring?

If you simply drop the entire ring into nitric, it's going to take a long time for anything to happen as the outer gold content will resist the acid and not allow it to penetrate.
Instead, I'd cut the ring up into many small pieces which will then give the acid a much gretaed surface area to attack and consequently speed up the dissolution of any silver, copper, etc.

Q#2, have you encountered gold+platinum alloys, yet? Platinum tends to 'take over' if you remelt an alloy containing the two (found in some high-end white gold alloys).

No, most of the "raw" material I use has been obtained from gold nuggets so platinum contamination hasn't been an issue for me.

Last question / point = now what?
If you sell it, it still has to be assayed and while your investment is raising in price, you will still have to sell it at a discount.

All the gold (and silver) that I process is for personal LONG-TERM investment purposes e.g, 2, 5 or even more years. By the time I do get around to selling any of it, hopefully it will have increased in value sufficiently to allow a slight loss due to "discounting".

Also, selling on eBay always seems to find a buyer willing to pay at, and occasionally slightly above the going market rates.

reply to post by squandered


That's not how acids work.

When it dissolves something such as a metal it makes it go into an aqueous solution.

All adding more water would do would dilute the solution, the gold would stay in solution it would just decrease in Molarity, so instead of having 1 gram of gold per 500ml you have 1 gram of gold per 1000ml.

That is why you need to add other chemicals to make the gold "drop" out of solution.

Basic HS chemistry.

reply to post by tauristercus


It's easier for me to melt the lot and burn off what I can with acids etc (refiners get the slag) and then reduce that ingot to filings. This is how I will occasionally clean platinum, using just nitric acid.

My job is about keeping the alloy at it's current purity. I use an ultrasonic to clean out the gum. Run a magnet over the filings, then straight to pure nitric overnight. I'm after tin oxide because a trace amount can make the alloy crack later. If I melt Pt filing which have copper alloyed it may be over karat but still hardened. Copper scavengers the impurities so you do a little more than just dissolve copper. Just thought I'd go into detail in case it is interesting. The scrap I'm working with is already very clean.

Thinking about platinum and gold in the same alloy, both dissolved in aqua regia. I guess they are stuck. Platinum improves gold alloys but it's going to look whiter. You should have had this problem with rhodium which is plated on white gold jewellery.

Thanks for the info about Australian half pennies too. Great find.

You guys have no idea how long I've wondered how these dissolved metals are separated.

Do you know is gold dissolved in cyanide separated?

First off, thanks for posting such great information.

I don't think it was asked, and it might be a dumb question, but can you mix white and yellow gold together when you are refining it? Like if I had one white gold ring and one yellow gold ring, should they be refined separately or is it ok to do them together? Sorry if this is a dumb question.

Originally posted by squandered
reply to post by lonegurkha

 

Q. I take it that adding more water will not make the acid too weak to keep the metal in a dissolved state.

If so, does this mean the dissolved metal is protected inside a chemical bond?

Adding more water, as long as it is a small amount, shouldn't effect the acids ability to hold the metal in solution.

The metal is dissolved in solution just like sugar is dissolved in your coffee. To get the solution to drop it's gold you need to remove the nitric by either reacting it away or driving it off. There is a chemical bond with chlorine.You can get the gold to drop if you remove the nitric and break the bond with the chlorine. The gold in solution is actually gold chloride. If you get this on your skin it will turn your skin purple. It's just a stain. I've gotten gold chloride on my hands due to leaky rubber gloves many times and never suffered any harm. However I wouldn't recommend the pratice.

Truthfully adding water should be unecessary as this will just increase the amount of waste fluid that you need to get rid of.

reply to post by lonegurkha


Thanks for the info. My rhodium solution comes as a concentrate and we water it down. All that matters is the actual amount of rhodium in the solution. Adding water won't alter the reaction, at least at the usual amount.

Still, it seemed to me that the acid could be so weak the molecules couldn't hold the weight.

It wouldn't matter if you poured a 500ml beaker into an Olympic size swimming pool. Could you get at it with electrolysis?

reply to post by squandered


I don't honestly know about electrolosis. But it may be possible if the solution was pure gold chloride. You may be able to get the chloride to split off the gold that way. I'm not actually sure about that ,but it could work.Might be dangerous as I think that the water would break down too and the oxygen and chlorine would come off the same electrode. Not sure what happens when oxygen and chlorine mix.

ciao hey, well iv tried 4 times to get the gold out and ive lost it ................... now i hope that if i do it like ive read i small question what % is the gold after the 1 step ? only with nitric acid it seams good and gold ?


i have 15 cpu and 40 stiks from p III. AND 30, 64 MB RAM

i will try again give me some help thankz........ps i now the spelling lolo

well , can some1 give me a hand in this process will try it again in a few days and i hope to get the gold this time ....
again what % is the gold after the first step?

and after the second step i can just use a small Electric stove for melting gold.

reply to post by tothegold


According to what you're dissolving you might only have the tiniest amount - just a few grains.

i wondering how to extract gold from myself now

hey and well just a few grains. from 15 cpus and 40 clipings from all tipes of ram and outher bords only a fiu grains????????????????????

ive sean what the slide show made 1.5 g and i have more and better stuff

i will post a pic to see what you guys thing ok latter

bad picks sorry

here is some tuff that i will use..

reply to post by tothegold


Thanks for the photo's. This side of things is new to me too. I'm also interested to hear what is said.

Hey, first off great post! very interesting indeed, didnt realise it was so easy. so well done.
i have a few questions, i have tryed your process with some pc parts i had just for fun if nothing else. anywho the liquid i get at the end is green and not yellow like yours, im assuming this is because there is some left over copper i didnt fully get rid of? will this effect the process any?
also, how do you know how much sodium metabisulphite to use if you have varing amounts od gold/liquid than in your example is there any kind of rule to follow on this?can you just keep adding it untill all the gold is dropped?

thanks again

good Answer i put to much also and i think that the first rule is time time and more time i always rush it and its a no no today i will try it again Thursday...... no Answer on what % is the gold after the fist step... i mix the 2 acids the i let it sit like 4, 5 hours and after its done i use urea then ,, after that it should be all till you put smb right............

Although I highly doubt I will ever do any of this in my lifetime, this was still very interesting to read through nonetheless. Very, very cool stuff here.