Gold recovery?

Les White

Less is more
2A Bourbon Hound 2024
2A Bourbon Hound OG
Charter Member
Life Member
Multi-Factor Enabled
Joined
Dec 17, 2016
Messages
8,734
Location
DavieCo
Rating - 100%
23   0   0
Anybody ever attempted any gold plate recovery with HNO₃+3 HCl? Or know small refinery local to the triad they trust?

I've been watching videos, it looks pretty straight forward - use PPE and a fume hood. I'm no chemist but I can read, comprehend, and follow directions. Found a supply house online that has all the chems I'd need minus the HCI.

I ended up with about 40lbs of plated scrap, based on weight, shape, surface area, and plating thickness I'm guestimating a 0.004 yield which works out to ~2.5oz or $3800.
 
If you end up doing this please provide us a write up.
 
Could you scrape it all off and just smelt it down with some flux and skim the impurities off like lead for boolits?
 
I've been watching videos, it looks pretty straight forward - use PPE and a fume hood. I'm no chemist but I can read, comprehend, and follow directions. Found a supply house online that has all the chems I'd need minus the HCI.

A chemical supply house that has nitric acid but not hydrochloric acid? That seem rather odd. But if you don't need a high concentration or reagent, muriatic acid is basically just 40%(-ish) HCl.

Agree with the sentiment - share what you learn!
 
A chemical supply house that has nitric acid but not hydrochloric acid? That seem rather odd. But if you don't need a high concentration or reagent, muriatic acid is basically just 40%(-ish) HCl.

Agree with the sentiment - share what you learn!

They have HCI, it's just way more spendy than muriatic at Lowes. And at 4:1 I'll need a lot to process 40lbs.
 
Could you scrape it all off and just smelt it down with some flux and skim the impurities off like lead for boolits?

Dude... It's 20000+ pins.
 
New question. Watched a video of a guy doing exactly this with the same style material. He used a boat load of nitric to dissolve the base metal (brass - same as my stuff) before moving onto the aqua Regia. It's that necessary? Can't I just go straight for the aqua Regia?
 
Do you have a place that will convert this recovered gold to cash? At what rate?
 
New question. Watched a video of a guy doing exactly this with the same style material. He used a boat load of nitric to dissolve the base metal (brass - same as my stuff) before moving onto the aqua Regia. It's that necessary? Can't I just go straight for the aqua Regia?
So you want to dissolve everything together instead of removing the impurity that is going to be over 39lbs of your 40lb starting material?
 
Do you have a place that will convert this recovered gold to cash? At what rate?

Not yet.

So you want to dissolve everything together instead of removing the impurity that is going to be over 39lbs of your 40lb starting material?

Well. Dammit. You're right. It seems aqua regia would dissolve the brass too. And enough nitric acid to dissolve just the brass is too spendy, plus all the time to make an entrance for the acid on every pin. So I'm shifting directions and looking into reverse plating with a sulfuric acid stripping cell. It'll require less nitric and more cheaper sulfuric acid - and leave the brass intact.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom