How Much Gold Do You Own

[CyberNerd]

Are you going to create a lump of purest green?

Seems I've now got a green liquid (see pic). I think this is the chloroauric acid (but thought that was yellow. perhaps just green because of all the other stuff floating around...)

I also decided to heat the circuit boards in the aqua regia - there were bits that clearly hadn't dissolved proper.

IMG_20111024_125849.jpg



Heating done with a bunsen, although magnetic heat plate is recommended (couldn't find one)IMG_20111024_131544.jpg

[CyberNerd]

no gold visible after dissolving it in the aqua regiaIMG_20111024_131643.jpg

[MK-2]

no gold visible after dissolving it in the aqua regiaIMG_20111024_131643.jpg

but more importantly, what of bond, is he gone?

[CyberNerd]

but more importantly, what of bond, is he gone?

He also dissolved quite rapidly.

Next step:

After filtering the solids, the glassware was washed in aqua regia - I used about 100ml - but now think this was way too much, probably about 25ml would be better as i don't want the gold too dilute.
Then added a few grams of Urea
IMG_20111024_143049.jpg

until it stopped fizzing:

IMG_20111024_143252.jpg

Then added Sodium Metabisulphite - might have overdone it a bit, smell of sulphur dioxide was quite evident.
Anyway the solution turned black and there is a precipitate, grey/brown - this should be the gold. I scratched the bottom of the flask with a glass rod to promote nucleation on the glass and put it in the fridge next to the hydrogen peroxide and orange juice.

IMG_20111024_144652.jpg

I'll leave it there for a bit then filter it.

[Butters]

You have to love Science fridges, one potentially dangerous liquid next to the orange juice or the utterly butterly.

[CyberNerd]

You have to love Science fridges, one potentially dangerous liquid next to the orange juice or the utterly butterly.

yeah, crazy. Theres a bunch of fridges, all mixed with food and chemicals...


My latest update: Not good news.

I think I may have added too much sodium metabisulphite. I collected the precipitate and it was a bit on the black side.

It should look like this:

File:Golddust.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

but I got this:

IMG_20111024_160506.jpg

I'm guessing the excess metabisulphite caused other stuff (particularly copper) to precipitate with the gold.

I did a quick flame test and it went bright green, a sign for copper

IMG_20111024_160917.jpg


I think I'll need to re-crystalise my mess from aqua regia again.
back to the drawing board, and won't have time to do it this week. Will post back if I come up with anything.

[X-13]

@CyberNerd Did you have any luck refining the extraction process?

[CyberNerd]

@CyberNerd Did you have any luck refining the extraction process?

Partial. I'm a bit annoyed actually. I redissolved it all in dil HCl and filtered it. I've got a piece of dark stained filter paper in the office, nothing significant- The majority of the undissolved product (around 500mg) I wrapped up, took home and put on the coffee table, and it was promptly was binned by my girlfriend in one of her tidying up crazes, by the time i'd discovered the binmen had already been. So yes I did get around 500mg of a brownish material, I doubt it was particularly pure and I didn't get the chance to melt it down. The Head of Chemistry is quite keen on repeating this during the summer, on a larger scale though.

[synaesthesia]

Very interesting thread, and even despite the results I still think I'd rather send any actual gold to CyberNerd than Cash4Gold!

And I found it a bit funny (not to the detriment of the experiment) that as soon as Dos_Box said about purest green, lo and behold, we got green!
(Easily my favourite series of Blackadder - well, probably equal to 4)

Very interested to see how it goes. I used to work for a company that had the countries largest warehouse for automatically stripping down parts for the gold and copper contents. Never got to see that part of it work, but we usually kept the copper heatsinks for ourselves, flogged it to the scrappies (via electricians we knew) and used to get around £50 a month which kept us in decent tools and biscuits.

[nephilim]

Did you know the mayans smelted copper with gold and even by Todays machinery it registers as pure gold!! Lol. The method got documented on how they did it. Look it up, might make it stretch further.