Phil, lets say I had a gold nugget from panning and I wanted to refine it.

Since it is about
16 to 18.5k gold I would most likely inquart it, (melt
melt it with silver to lower karat),
karat (at
18% I might be able to just use nitric without inquarting, but to insure I got all the base
metals, I would “quarter” the gold with silver).
(NOTE: To inquart gold: 75% silver 25% gold. Melt together in a melting dish, and drop into metal bowl
with cold water to form “flakes”. See Steve’s video. Then follow the procedures
procedures stated below.)

1) Process inquarted gold thru Nitric solution.

solution (50%
50% water / 50% acid.
acid Heat if necessary)
Now nitric can get down under the gold and attack the base metals.
metals Depending on how
much silver I added, gold would be either brown powder or a much pitted nugget of gold.

2) After reaction stops, allow to settle; decant nitric from gold.

gold
To the nitric acid, after decanted from gold,
gold add Hydrochloric acid to “get back”, (drop
drop)
the silver out of it as silver chloride. (Set aside for time being).

3) Dissolve gold in AR solution.

solution (80% HCI / 20% Nitric. Apply heat)
(Hoke states, 4 fl oz HCI (muratic acid) + 1fl oz HNO3 (nitric acid) will dissolve 1 troy oz of gold. This is
equivalent to 31ml of HCI + 8ml of HNO3 per gm of gold.)
The gold would then be dissolved in Aqua Regia, best to only use the amount of nitric
needed to get gold completely dissolved with heat. No need to use urea, I do not use urea;
instead I boil the Aqua Regia down to almost syrup (not
not to crystals).
crystals

4) Boil off nitric acid before dropping gold with SMB.

SMB
Carefully watch first boil! What happens is, the nitric in solution gets concentrated and
will try and foam over at the most concentrated point, if you watch it, after boiling for a
while you will see foam bubbles forming around top of liquid; at this point lower heat,
wait until this point of concentration is passed, then you can raise heat.

Once you have syrup, add some HCl to wet solution and boil it again to syrup. Do this for
a total of three times,
times in order to eliminate nitric acid from the aqua regia solution (no
need to use urea).
Now we can add 3 times the water. This will dilute the acid to where the silver chloride
that it held, (this
this is some Ag that was still in the gold),
gold will come down as white cottage
cheese; let solution sit overnight and decant solution from silver chloride powder. Now
we can precipitate the gold from this yellow solution.
Butcher

5) Precipitate gold with SMB

NOTE: Filter the solution BEFORE precipitating gold with SMB!

SMB!

leavemealone, post re: what is my wrong? Typically you want to use an equal amount of
SMB, as the amount of gold you estimate in your solution IE: if you figure there’s
roughly 3 grams of gold,
gold use 3 grams of SMB,
SMB then test your solution after decanting. (If
using copperas you need to double that figure.)
Johnny
The SMB can be used dry or wet it works either way.
The key is to use enough SMB to reduce all the gold to a metallic state. This usually
requires 1 gram of SMB per gram of gold to be reduced as a general rule of thumb. If you
don't get all the chlorine (HCl-Cl reaction) or nitrate (AR reaction) out of the solution the
amount of SMB needed could increase, typically not more than double the amount of
gold expected.

If you want to use water with your SMB, the solubility of SMB in water at 20C is 47 g
per 100 mL, so a pint of 20 C water (473 mL) can hold enough SMB when saturated to
reduce ( 47 x 4.73) 222.3 grams of gold at optimal conditions.
Steve

As for adding SMB,, I always add my SMB dry with lots of swirling of the beaker or
stirring with a glass rod.
rod Stannous tests afterward proves the gold is all precipitated.

Just two days ago the temperature outside was below 40F (~4C) at dusk. I precipitated a
batch of gold from solution, outside in the cold, with solid SMB in less than 2 minutes. I
added the SMB and swirled the flask, within one minute the solution turned dark brown.
Within 1 hour all the gold had settled nicely. The solution was filtered outside and was
completely cooled. Expect a slight delay of less than 2 minutes before the solution
changes to clear then brown.

I find that the removal of oxidizers from the gold solution to be the most important factor
when using SMB. All the free chlorine or NOx should be removed before adding dry
SMB. If you add a small amount of SMB and brown powder forms then re-dissolves, you
have free oxidizers in the solution.

Add small amounts of dry SMB with stirring, let it all dissolve, then add more if
necessary. Test with stannous once the brown cloud or sponge of gold settles.
Steve

Re: Best way to use SMB I use mine dry. Gold precipitates as a brown powder if the
solution is clean, and a more black colored if the solution is dirty. I never check pH when
using SMB.
Steve

Thank you Steve for your reply. I have seen the SMB precipitate out of solution as a
white powder by a metallurgist in Las Vegas on my chlorine solution. In your opinion
can it precipitate as a gold chloride?
Joyce if the solution contains copper II chloride and you add SMB, you will get an off
white to grey collared precipitate of copper I chloride along with your gold.
This contamination dissolves easily with warm HCl.
Steve
WASHING THE GOLD POWDER AFTER USING SMB – post by lazersteve

1) After precipitating the gold with SMB, test for gold in solution with stannous chloride,
if present (purple swab) add more SMB until test is negative.

Here's how stannous looks to Gold, Platinum, and Palladium

Note the color of the results will be lighter if the concentration is low. The colors will
also vary if you have several of the metals in the same solution.

1. Let the gold powder settle to the bottom of the beaker over night.
2. Siphon or gently pour off the used SMB solution into an old milk jug labelled
Used SMB. Save in your stock pot or properly dispose of.
3. The gold powder stays in the same beaker you precipitated it in.
4. Add just enough water to cover the gold powder and boil for 5 minutes.
5. Let settle and pour or siphon off the water into the stock pot.
6. Repeat three times.
7. Add just enough muriatic acid to cover the gold powder.
8. Boil for 5 minutes and pour or siphon off into the stock pot after testing with
stannous. If gold is present keep in separate beaker to precipitate later.
9. Repeat until the acid is no longer discolored by the process.
10. Repeat the water rinse as above.
 11. If you suspect silver is present as a contamination, repeat the process with hot 3%
household ammonium hydroxide (unscented- clear). Put these rinses in a separate
container and add muriatic acid until no more white silver chloride precipitates.
You have added enough HCl when there are no more white fumes coming out of
the liquid. Any karat, dental, cpu lid, or gold filled scrap will have silver as a
contaminate.
12. Finish up the rinses with three more hot water rinses. Put these rinses in with the
ammonium hydroxide rinses.
13. Gently heat the beaker containing the gold powder while swirling the beaker. As
the gold dries it will begin to clump and move around the beaker freely. Don't
allow the gold to stick to the beaker.
14. When the gold is 100% dry it should be a nice light tan color, if not re-dissolve it
and precipitate again with SMB. Repeating the above cleaning process after
precipitation. Good clean gold settles very quickly when precipitated and clumps
into nice balls when dried. No gold should be stuck to the beaker when you are
done.
15. When completed transfer the gold to a properly prepared melting dish and melt
into a button.
16. Steve

Re: AR process for placer gold

When we dissolve a metal in an acid the metal gives up electrons on the atomic level, the
metal is still in this solution, when we give back these electrons the metal it will
precipitate back out of solution as a metal.
Lets look at gold with its place on the reactivity series (if you don’t have an idea about
reactivity series, do a search for it on web; get a chart for your refining notes), gold is at
the bottom of the series, a very un-reactive metal, it will not dissolve in nitric acid, it will
not dissolve in hydrochloric acid, but in a combination of the two of these acids it will
dissolve, the nitric oxidizes the gold and then it will become a metal salt with the chloride
from the hydrochloric acid, giving up its electrons, this is now yellow dissolved salt of
gold chloride, the nitric in solution will keep it dissolved, until it is eliminated (or used
up). Now, to get our gold back, how can we do this? Well, one way. We could just
replace the gold from solution. Take a look at the reactivity series, and the position of
copper in the series compared to gold. Copper is above gold, meaning, it is more reactive,
so by adding copper to this acidic salt of gold in solution, the copper will start dissolving,
giving up its electrons to the acid and if we had excess acid it would not start
precipitating the gold until all of the unreacted acid was used up, then the copper would
continue giving up its electrons, but now to the dissolved gold in solution. Since the gold
got back its electrons, it will form back into a metal (brown
brown powder)
powder and precipitate out
of solution. Once all of the gold has precipitated and the solution is loaded the copper bar
will not dissolve any further (nothing
nothing left to take its electrons).
electrons Now with dissolved
copper salts in solution, all these copper atoms are missing their electrons; a metal higher
in series can replace the copper from solution, and so on.
Another method to get the gold from aqua regia would be to eliminate the nitric acid ( 3
boil, Hcl additions method ) and the use a chemical to precipitate the gold, here is an
equation using sodium bisulphite (notice the ITE in the name NOT ATE), this is a
chemical reaction with the gold chloride, not a replacement reaction like the example
above.
2HAuCl4 + 2NaHSO3 --> 2Au + 4HCl + NaSO4 + SO2.
The sulphur dioxide gas, after the arrow, gave back the gold its missing electrons,
precipitating the gold.
In the examples above the acids dissolve the gold metal, gold loosing its electrons,
becoming a yellow liquid. Copper was a replacement reaction, giving gold back the
electrons, making gold precipitate, but loosing its own.
The second one was a chemical reaction, used to precipitate the gold.
By: R. Butcher

NOTE:
NOTE Check SMB solution for other metals that could be present before storing or
properly disposing of it!

I, philddreamer, took the liberty to compile some of the great information from a number
of different posts from the GRF.com, so to have a guide when processing my first batch
of inquarted gold. The result, a beautiful 13.4gm golden slug! Thank you, thank you,
thank you, all you brothers & sisters @ GRF.com. I could not have done it without you.

Phil (philddreamer) Figueroa – Lynnwood, WA.