2:39 White smoke and bluish-white color of the flame edge indicates the presence of zinc 11:30 copper in the karat alloys is good as color indicator for gold refining by nitric acid boils
I read Hokes book for the first time this week twice on my audio reader. What I appreciate the most in this video is the perfect angle of the torch tips set up in this video. I felt like I was in this group transcendence. And appreciate being told not to be afraid to ask for help, it's not like people are alligators ready to bite. Cleaning windows after a paint job and in dull practice I got to experience practicing floor sweeps cleaning the paint shavings as if they were precious metals.
I've read that dentures often contain platinum group metals in addition to gold? Is that truly the case and do you need to take special care when refining gold from them? Thank you and keep doing the good work :)
Nice work. Have you tried a tall thin water vessel to pour molten alloy into. The idea is the metal will solidify before it hits the bottom to produce nice small round pieces.
I noticed that you mention that the nitric acid will dissolve the gold-silver amalgamate to a honeycomb structure. After the 5th bath, there is still noticeably big chunks left in the vat. Is is futile to think that some of the silver could be still incorporated inside the bigger pieces or are the completely penetrated by the acid baths? Also: wouldn't the process be faster / more efficient if the granular size of the amalgamate in the beginning would be smaller? Just spitballing to find out!
The alloy is 25% pure gold, 75% silver, copper, zinc. Silver copper and zinc are all soluble in nitric. Gold is not soluble in nitric. By reducing the gold content in the alloy (by adding sterling silver) the nitric penetrates to the core of each piece and removes nearly 100% of the silver and base metals. But there’s still a small amount of silver in there. I could possibly continue with nitric boils and get more of it out. The process would be much quicker if the pieces were all very small. The bigger chunks will contain the most silver.
@@sreetips proof is in the pudding. When you do your AR workup, if there was notable Ag left, you’d see it as AgCl. I’m confident that you get all the Ag out.
Hello there sreetips. I stumbled across your channel and I have fallen in love with it. This is VERY interesting to me how you are extracting all of these different precious metals from scrap. One question if you don't mind answering. Regarding your other awesome videos, particularly where you make silver crystals, what is the scrap "ball" looking stuff you add under the anode and where might one find this material? Thank you in advance for any answers. You definitely got a new sub here for sure!!! Excellent content my friend.
I bet you want to figure out a way to make it explode like that the entire inquart molten pour to have maximum surface area and thus speeding up the time it takes to dissolve the base metals. Iv learned so much from you sreetips, thank you.
That was incredible steam action! A girl I knew microwaved an egg, and it exploded. It cost her an eye. Pretty cool how it powdered some of the alloy, too!
It's things like that happening that end up with kids in home economics classes having to wear safety glasses/googles. Never know when hot water is gonna splash, hot fat/grease is gonna pop (had that happen to me when frying some bacon at home, grease popped and sent a blog of grease right into my eye ..... the eye is ok, ironically, it landed in the inside corner of my eye ..... was able to immediately got in to see my ophthalmologist ..... the eye washes I did at home saved the tissues from injury)
under the influence of light or temperature, nitric acid partially decomposes with the release of nitric oxide (IV) - brown gas: 4HNO 3= 4NO 2+ O 2+ 2H 2 O.therefore, nitric acid turns yellow.
Hello Sreetips, thank you for the video. Question- can you please explain why you add the Sterling in place of your cement silver in your process. Thank you.
Yes, cement silver could be used but it’s not recommended because: karat gold contains platinum group metals. Using cement silver over and over will tend to allow the PGMs to build up and concentrate in the cement silver because those metals will follow the silver. This, in turn, could cause problems with palladium contamination in the silver cell. I can tell if palladium gets in my silver cell because the electrolyte will turn green. Second, I have much sterling silver on hand. The first step in refining it (even through it can be held just like it is without refining it) is to dissolve it in hot dilute nitric. So, by using sterling silver to inquart, I’m refining both metals (silver and gold) at the same time.
Hey Streetips, love your videos. Some of them I watch repeatedly. When you show your calculations, I am always stumped by the math. First, I have no problem with the expected yield: 46.7 g of 10k should yield 19.46 g Au, 53.3 g of 14k should yield 31.09 g Au, and 10.8 g of 18k should yield 8.1 g Au; total Au yield 58.65 g (your paper says 58.1 g). Ok, now if you expect to have 58.65 g of Au, and you want that Au to be 6k, then your total "mixture" should be 58.65 g x 4 = 234.6 g. Since your total weight so far is 110.8 g (46.7 + 53.3 + 10.8), that means you need 123.8 g of other stuff (234.6 - 110.8 = 123.8). Your calculations say 117.5 g. Even if we use your 58.1 Au yield (rather than 58.65), we get 232.4 g total g at 6k, meaning we need 121.6 g of other stuff (232.4 - 110.8 = 121.6). It gets worse if we want our 6k purity to be specifically 3:1 Ag : Au. If we start with 110.8 g of karat Au, containing 58.65 g Au, and assume that the remainder (110.8 - 58.65 = 52.15 g) is all Ag, then we have 58.65 g Au and 52.15 g Ag. For our 3:1 ratio, since we have 58.65 g Au, we need 58.65 x 3 = 175.95 g Ag. Since we already have 52.15 g Ag, we need an additional 123.8 g Ag (same number from the previous paragraph, obtained a different way). However, in order to get 123.8 g Ag we need 133.84 g Sterling Silver (123.8 / 0.925), since Sterling only caintains 92.5% Ag. This would make the 117.5 g Ag on your paper off by over a half ounce (16.34 g). I feel like somewhere you may be multiplying by 0.925 rather than dividing by 0.925. You add 118.1 g of Sterling, which only contains 109.24 g Ag (118.1 x 0.925), meaning your final mixture will have 58.65 g Au and 109.24 g Ag, totalling 167.89, giving you a purity of about 8.4k (58.65 / 167.89 = 0.349 = 8.384k). If we look at your purity comparing gold to everything else present, you are at about 6.17k (110.8 + 117.5 = 228.3, 58.65 / 228.3 = 0.2569 = 6.166k. Man, your results speak for themselves, you end up with great results time and time again. But I don't think the numbers are right, and I don't know if it just a little round off error, or if the math is somehow wrong. And I don't understand chemistry enough to know if we need ratio of 3 : 1 other stuff : Au or if we need 3 : 1 Ag : Au
There’s a “Goldie Locks” range of between 27% to 33% pure gold in the alloy. Below tgat and the gold crumbles to a powder. Above tgat and the nitric can’t penetrate completely.
Hey sreetips! i have a question, if the gold content after inquartation is less then 25% (like 10% or 15%) will that effect the nitric boil process? Thank you!
Buenos noches from a wonderfully and naturally air-conditioned 53°N latitude. Seeing the resulting powdered alloy really illustrated the force the camera could not convey. Nice quick turnaround! Thank you Sir!👍👍🤟
Mosquitoes are the WORST. They are the only living thing I can “de-life” without hesitation or (too much) remorse. Hello to the southern hemisphere, watch out for the lions Leo!
Where do you get your tall form beakers? I would like to get new beakers but I want some tall form ones as well. One other thing, I noticed the name on your Nitric bottle. I get mine from Rocky Mountain Reagents.
Ide like to see you send some of the gold off to assay to have its purity tested after the silver is pulled out using nitric. Be interesting to have lab results of the actual gold amounts.
It will contain other metals, but well over 990 parts per thousand pure gold. Inquarting with silver then parting with nitric does a fantastic job of cleaning the gold.
It’d also be expensive to do that. Why bother? If he had any Ag or,say, Pb in the Au being worked up in the aqua regia, he’d have a notable precipitate. He typically doesn’t. The residue from the aqua regia workup will be your Pt, Rh or maybe Ir, all caught on the filter paper. His product is excellent.
@@williamfoote2888 never said his product wasnt excellent. I know hes VERY precise with his craft. But ide still like to see lab results to see where the product sits in purity. I think it would be interesting to see.
@@brianbonenberger8054 If you aren’t seeing residue up through the filter step, by deduction, it approaches zero. That’s the beauty of using these acid procedures. It works by excluding contaminant chemistry. Now, if he was dealing with raw gold from a mine, (who knows what’s in it?) and he wasn’t using the acid methodology, tracking what contaminants are at every step would be useful. In mined gold, they use cyanide to leach the CN metal complexes out of the ore. You get gold and silver, but also zinc copper tin nickel and iron. They cement out the gold with zinc powder, but it comes loaded with other tramp metals.
@@williamfoote2888 i understand all youre saying but i still believe it would be interesting to see the purity progression from inquarted metal, to gold after treated with nitric, to gold being refined once with aqua regia and possibly after a 3rd aqua regia refining. The hard numbers is what i wanna see. None of what you describe give me hard numbers or data…..Just ‘deduction’.
مبدع دائما يامعلم انا من متابعيك واستفدت كثيرا من دروسك ولكن لدي سؤال لمادا لا تستخدم النحاس فهو اقل تكلفه من الفضه ومتوافر اكثر ولا يحتاج الي اعاده تكرير
Because I refine silver also. The first step in refining silver is to dissolve it in hot dilute nitric. So I may as well use silver. Like killing two birds with one stone, refining both metals at the same time.
I saw on a gold mining program once, a guy pouring gold into water similar to how you do with the gold/silver mix. But he had his water spinning quite fast, and it formed what he called cornflake gold. Have you ever tried this method when pouring your gold/silver mix?
I’m toying with using a pressure washer and pouring the molten gold into the high pressure stream of water to form small granules of Inquarted gold. Might even try it for pouring silver shot for the silver cell.
I don't leave many comments with any words mostly just faces but I believe your deserve my full time to tell you how much your videos have taught me and thank you so much for your excellent work and dedication I hope I can shake your hand some day if you come to alaska
When boiling in nitric acid and hydrochloric acid. You're not supposed to have any solid gold pieces left it should all be Liquid , after that , you separate the gold from the liquid , it'll settle to the bottom , and then you can wash it , and then when you melt it after you dry the powder , melt it and that will be guergold may contain a little bit of silver but not likely
Any silver chloride will follow the HCl. The HCl gets poured off into gold refining waste container. Then it gets filtered out when I process the gold from the waste containers. Ends up in my paper storage after it gets filtered out.
A bit of an off topic question, but can you cement silver out of hydrochloric acid with a piece of copper the same way you can do it after a nitric acid boil?
@@sreetips I think you should add the information that silver chloride is insoluble, which is why it won't work. Other, soluble silver salts like silver acetate will cement out.
Good morning or good afternoon, even good evening, professor, I really like your work and your videos, I would really like to see a table, a quick video with gold from 9k to 22k, and learn what proportion of other metals you would have to mix to purify the gold. Thanks in advance. I live in Brazil and I don't speak English very well.
Hello again sreetips. I have yet to tackle my first reclaim from gf material to watch your videos at least 3 times a week to ensure I understand the process and also why all steps are important including safety... I have a few questions and thank you in advance I'm sure u will reply. Number 1 say I have 100grams give or take of gf material. Using dilute nitric acid boils per your procedure what time set back am I to expect? I live n FL if thats relevant so sea level. As a married father of 4 my time can be taken up very easily lol just trying to gauge so adjust expectations
Do you do this to make money or mostly for education? I’d love tips on where to get materials for similar experiments. Especially if if I could make money doing it.
I seen a Turkish jewellery channel use powdered glass added to the melted gold. Their reason being after working the scraps over and over it became to brittle to work. They said it cleaned up the gold. Would it work in some part of your refining process?
It’s similar to the tail end of what’s called a gold ‘fire assay analysis’ You don’t need glass. You could use sand and sodium carbonate or sodium hydroxide. Any metal impurities, like zinc, lead or tin oxide preferentially dissolved in the glass melt. Things that you’d find mixed with your raw gold if you were working up gold fresh from the mine. Sreetips’ product doesn’t have any or those materials in it.
Would inquartation not be needed if one melted the gold alloy jewelry and then (somehow) grind the ingot into small particles? If so, how small would the particles need to be?
It is still needed to “purify” the gold. From 10kt 14kt ect to 24kt gold. If you filed a ring down to filings, they are still 14kt or 10kt shavings. It may dissolve better in the acid? But what a hassle.
Would be useful to learn about steps and cost of safely disposing waste generated by refining gold. People don’t often consider this when deciding to try refining at home.
If you watch S’s waste treatment video, you can see that his waste stream is salty rust and a Cu metal waste. It’s very clean and straightforward. (Chuckle). Actually, you could use your cement copper to cement out and collect your cement silver, instead of using Cu pipes or wire. It’s not closed circuit recycling, but it’s be close.
I wonder if you got some liquid nitrogen and froze the inquarted gold and then put it in an industrial blender. You might be able to create a more consistent powdery mix.
Hey sorry for the late post, so once done with nitric acid washes and you’re heating up the gold how much potassium nitrate do you add and do you keep adding if noticing impurities? After that you add the borax ?
I add a half a pinch. The impurities will tend to float to the surface of the molten gold. The extra O2 causes them to burn away. But a little gold gets burnt away as well.
That's incredible that the metals would become powdered that way. I thought they would demonstrate more surface tension than that. A slo-mo of that event would be interesting (not that you should try.)
I was just thinking the same thing. You could always try asking the Slo-mo guys, or Destin from Smarter every day if they would want to do a collab! You might have to pour a lot of molten alloy but you never know, you might find a technique to always get the powdered result.
Ohh I have so many questions.... I'll try to keep it to just a few. 1, the finer material that resulted from the steam explosion seemed to refine much quicker. It this the case? 2, if it is can you more reliably create the reaction to produce the fine particulates to refine the product quicker with less consumables?
?3. Do the fine particles lend itself to being more easily dissolved by the nitric acid boils as witnessed by the yellow tint at the beginning of the third boil?
I don't think you want that type of steam explosion. It's just as likely to blow small particles out of the water bowl, plus it's startling, so you might drop something or bump into something and spill it. If the whole process is sped up an hour or even two by creating the powder, that shouldn't be that big a deal. Yeah, you might use a bit less nitric acid, but again, once you're using it, you're using it. Not gallons less, not even liters less. It gets reused in the silver jar. The way Sreetips is stingy with his nitric, I can't see that making much of a difference.
@@alanpecherer5705 As I said.... so many questions, yeah the lost from the explosion is one, my main inquiry was to the speed of refining and could it be quicker with some higher temps etc. so many questions
@jay walker Answer to your questions: 1 Yes. The smaller the particles the more surface area is exposed and the faster the acid can penetrate. 2 yes in theory but in practice it would require more refining in some manner to obtain finer particles. Even if he dumped into ice water (which would be dangerous) most of the molten metal will still clump into BB’s and not powder. Those that don’t the steam explosions would be MUCH more violent and risk bodily injury or even your life.
Well Mr. Sreetips , i do believe i messed up , i think some of my gold went into solution , i think i added to much 3% peroxide to my HCL , i am not sure what i can do about it , but they say u learn threw your mistakes , i did receive me retort yesterday and will be making some nitric acid tomorrow , and go from there , do u think if i add SMB to my AP solution i would get back my gold ,? i do enjoy the hobby , but it does get a little frustrating at times , but thank you for all of your help , have a great day and BEE safe
Absolutely, pour it through a filter, add SMB to the filtered solution. Any gold in there will precipitate out. But first - check with stannous to be sure you have gold in solution BEFORE trying to precipitate. You may find that there’s no gold in that solution.
i did all the steps , after applying 4-5 time of nitric acid i have an issue , pure gold show up as a brown powder which is pure but other grains not dissolved and have yellowish color and mix with pure powder , what is it ? how to dissolve it , ( i have pictures )
Went to a yard sale and found some material labeled "nickle silver" is this a variation alloy or is it just plated, i didnt buy it because i wasnt sure of its purity.
Mr. sreetips, I was wondering what would happen if one puts enquartered gold shot in an electrolytic silver cell? Would the silver plate out leaving the gold in slime form?
@sreetips Thanks for your reply, as always. It would be nice if you ran a gold/silver only alloy through the cell as an experiment. It would certainly make an interesting video. 😀
Your videos never cease to fascinate. What are your margins between how much you buy the jewelry for, the chemicals used. and what you get from the final product?
I had a question ... In past videos you used a BUCKET and a wooden board as a means to pour the gold and silver mixture on and have a more uniform chunkyness to the pieces after you pour them... Is there a reason you stopped doing that? It seemed that the pieces you got from that process were much smaller and had more surface area than by just pouring it into a bucket...
@@sreetips That is a satisfactory answer! I figure if you consider it too much of a hassle to set up every time you do this then it is probably not worth the extra effort...
I have been thinking about this for the last few episodes, and I am hoping that I am asking this right, I know you buying silver to help extract the gold from the jewelry, and after that, extract the silver from the gold, and then sell that silver, but I was just wondering, why you do you sell the silver instead of just using it over again in your next melt? That way, you are saving some money up instead of using more silver, and you can divide the silver you already have up to proportions you can manage a little better than silver jewelry lol
I don’t sell the silver that I refine (maybe a few ounces on my eBay site). Using cement silver over and over to inquart is not recommended because platinum group metals will follow the silver and build up in the cement silver. When I do run it through the silver cell it could contaminate the pure silver crystal, particularly palladium since it’s soluble in nitric (the only one of the six sister metals in the platinum group that is). Lastly, I have much sterling silver that I’ve accumulated from estate sales. It must be dissolved in nitric to refine it so I may as well use it to inquart the gold. Like refining both metals at once. Killing two birds with one stone.
I guess I forgot a step, what about the silver after your electrolysis step and extracted the platinum group metals? You still keep that silver around since dollar values keep fluctuating, right?
Nice refining. Probably should have done just 1 aqua regia cycle just to add a dose of sulfuric to flush out any led that may have carried over. Just saying.
If that puck was 22k the gold value would be about $3500. I agree it is more pure than that. If it's 24k the value goes up to about $3800. Almost time to buy more.
I know I have asked you this before what is the refinery name you said that you need LLC to deal with them too I think, I was trying to tell a buddy and can’t remember the name of the place
2:39 White smoke and bluish-white color of the flame edge indicates the presence of zinc
11:30 copper in the karat alloys is good as color indicator for gold refining by nitric acid boils
Haven't seen any of your videos for a while, glad you are back!
He was rip snortin’ to get this done. Well done sir, well done.
I read Hokes book for the first time this week twice on my audio reader. What I appreciate the most in this video is the perfect angle of the torch tips set up in this video.
I felt like I was in this group transcendence. And appreciate being told not to be afraid to ask for help, it's not like people are alligators ready to bite. Cleaning windows after a paint job and in dull practice I got to experience practicing floor sweeps cleaning the paint shavings as if they were precious metals.
I never get tired of your videos!! Keep up the good work !
Good evening sreetips, just in time for my daughters bed time. She loves your videos!!
Awesome! Haven't seen you make a button versus a bar in quite awhile. Nice job as always
The big boom made me jump! Great work as always, sir! I always look forward you your vids
Always love your videos!
nice editing buetiful i love how the torch isnt blaring its the lil things and you are apreciated
I've read that dentures often contain platinum group metals in addition to gold? Is that truly the case and do you need to take special care when refining gold from them?
Thank you and keep doing the good work :)
I have seen all of your vids and just wanted to say thank you.
Love to see you in action. Please make more silver videos, melting cement silver looks scary, but you make it look easy.
It is scary! I don’t like working around that propane furnace. It’s hot, it’s loud, and it’s scary!
@@sreetipsbut you don’t mind working around acids that will melt your face off faster
Love watching your vids keep them coming.
Gooood evening from central Florida! Hope everyone has a great night!
Good evening 👋
Goooood evening!
Hello from Southwest Florida
Goooood evening David. Hope you doing fine my friend. Take care, and God bless you😊. Arne
@@arnedalbakk6315 Good afternoon Arne! Have a wonderful day my friend!
So happy when I get a notification that you have a new video out! 😊 I enjoy them ALL. 👍🏼
Nice work. Have you tried a tall thin water vessel to pour molten alloy into. The idea is the metal will solidify before it hits the bottom to produce nice small round pieces.
I’ll use a pressure washer and pour the metal into a tall metal bucket
Been a professional goldsmith for 35 years and still I learn! Ty for your expertise!
I noticed that you mention that the nitric acid will dissolve the gold-silver amalgamate to a honeycomb structure. After the 5th bath, there is still noticeably big chunks left in the vat. Is is futile to think that some of the silver could be still incorporated inside the bigger pieces or are the completely penetrated by the acid baths? Also: wouldn't the process be faster / more efficient if the granular size of the amalgamate in the beginning would be smaller? Just spitballing to find out!
The alloy is 25% pure gold, 75% silver, copper, zinc. Silver copper and zinc are all soluble in nitric. Gold is not soluble in nitric. By reducing the gold content in the alloy (by adding sterling silver) the nitric penetrates to the core of each piece and removes nearly 100% of the silver and base metals. But there’s still a small amount of silver in there. I could possibly continue with nitric boils and get more of it out. The process would be much quicker if the pieces were all very small. The bigger chunks will contain the most silver.
@@sreetips proof is in the pudding. When you do your AR workup, if there was notable Ag left, you’d see it as AgCl.
I’m confident that you get all the Ag out.
Hello Mrs and Mr sreetips. Great clip. Have a nice day both of you, and to the "members" of this canal. Arne
Hello there sreetips. I stumbled across your channel and I have fallen in love with it. This is VERY interesting to me how you are extracting all of these different precious metals from scrap. One question if you don't mind answering. Regarding your other awesome videos, particularly where you make silver crystals, what is the scrap "ball" looking stuff you add under the anode and where might one find this material? Thank you in advance for any answers. You definitely got a new sub here for sure!!! Excellent content my friend.
The impure silver comes from sterling silver used to refine gold. I recover the silver and run it through the silver cell.
@@sreetips Thank you.
I didn't think I was really nterested in this kind of stuff. But that was a really cool video. New sub! :)
Welcome!
I bet you want to figure out a way to make it explode like that the entire inquart molten pour to have maximum surface area and thus speeding up the time it takes to dissolve the base metals. Iv learned so much from you sreetips, thank you.
That was incredible steam action! A girl I knew microwaved an egg, and it exploded. It cost her an eye. Pretty cool how it powdered some of the alloy, too!
It's things like that happening that end up with kids in home economics classes having to wear safety glasses/googles. Never know when hot water is gonna splash, hot fat/grease is gonna pop (had that happen to me when frying some bacon at home, grease popped and sent a blog of grease right into my eye ..... the eye is ok, ironically, it landed in the inside corner of my eye ..... was able to immediately got in to see my ophthalmologist ..... the eye washes I did at home saved the tissues from injury)
under the influence of light or temperature, nitric acid partially decomposes with the release of nitric oxide (IV) - brown gas: 4HNO 3= 4NO 2+ O 2+ 2H 2 O.therefore, nitric acid turns yellow.
I agree, I’ve seen it turn yellow. But I’ve also seen nitric put traces of gold in solution - verified with stannous.
Omgosh one of my new favorite channels. I love science.... this is amazing work. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you and welcome!
wat a madlad speed runnin gold refining😂 but dude ur soo awesome and love ur video ma dude~!
I would be curious to have that gold analysed to see the impurities in it vs the aqua regia version.
You aren't the only one, would appreciate an update with the info.
Hello Sreetips, thank you for the video. Question- can you please explain why you add the Sterling in place of your cement silver in your process. Thank you.
Yes, cement silver could be used but it’s not recommended because: karat gold contains platinum group metals. Using cement silver over and over will tend to allow the PGMs to build up and concentrate in the cement silver because those metals will follow the silver. This, in turn, could cause problems with palladium contamination in the silver cell. I can tell if palladium gets in my silver cell because the electrolyte will turn green. Second, I have much sterling silver on hand. The first step in refining it (even through it can be held just like it is without refining it) is to dissolve it in hot dilute nitric. So, by using sterling silver to inquart, I’m refining both metals (silver and gold) at the same time.
Looks good wish I could buy and afford your product lol
A nice button of gold and very interesting to see the quick refine. 👍
Hey Streetips, love your videos. Some of them I watch repeatedly. When you show your calculations, I am always stumped by the math.
First, I have no problem with the expected yield: 46.7 g of 10k should yield 19.46 g Au, 53.3 g of 14k should yield 31.09 g Au, and 10.8 g of 18k should yield 8.1 g Au; total Au yield 58.65 g (your paper says 58.1 g). Ok, now if you expect to have 58.65 g of Au, and you want that Au to be 6k, then your total "mixture" should be 58.65 g x 4 = 234.6 g. Since your total weight so far is 110.8 g (46.7 + 53.3 + 10.8), that means you need 123.8 g of other stuff (234.6 - 110.8 = 123.8). Your calculations say 117.5 g. Even if we use your 58.1 Au yield (rather than 58.65), we get 232.4 g total g at 6k, meaning we need 121.6 g of other stuff (232.4 - 110.8 = 121.6).
It gets worse if we want our 6k purity to be specifically 3:1 Ag : Au. If we start with 110.8 g of karat Au, containing 58.65 g Au, and assume that the remainder (110.8 - 58.65 = 52.15 g) is all Ag, then we have 58.65 g Au and 52.15 g Ag. For our 3:1 ratio, since we have 58.65 g Au, we need 58.65 x 3 = 175.95 g Ag. Since we already have 52.15 g Ag, we need an additional 123.8 g Ag (same number from the previous paragraph, obtained a different way). However, in order to get 123.8 g Ag we need 133.84 g Sterling Silver (123.8 / 0.925), since Sterling only caintains 92.5% Ag. This would make the 117.5 g Ag on your paper off by over a half ounce (16.34 g).
I feel like somewhere you may be multiplying by 0.925 rather than dividing by 0.925. You add 118.1 g of Sterling, which only contains 109.24 g Ag (118.1 x 0.925), meaning your final mixture will have 58.65 g Au and 109.24 g Ag, totalling 167.89, giving you a purity of about 8.4k (58.65 / 167.89 = 0.349 = 8.384k). If we look at your purity comparing gold to everything else present, you are at about 6.17k (110.8 + 117.5 = 228.3, 58.65 / 228.3 = 0.2569 = 6.166k.
Man, your results speak for themselves, you end up with great results time and time again. But I don't think the numbers are right, and I don't know if it just a little round off error, or if the math is somehow wrong. And I don't understand chemistry enough to know if we need ratio of 3 : 1 other stuff : Au or if we need 3 : 1 Ag : Au
There’s a “Goldie Locks” range of between 27% to 33% pure gold in the alloy. Below tgat and the gold crumbles to a powder. Above tgat and the nitric can’t penetrate completely.
Ok, that makes more sense then if you are going for closer to 27%.
It's be really neat to see that steam explosion action with a high-speed camera!
You’re right, I should have slowed it down.
Hey sreetips! i have a question, if the gold content after inquartation is less then 25% (like 10% or 15%) will that effect the nitric boil process? Thank you!
Yes, the gold would crumble to a powder making separation of the silver from the gold a nightmare
very cool steam exposion i always wondered why you poured in lil bursts like that it makes sence now
Wow very cool! Thanks!
Hi! Just out of interest where do you source a regular supply of scrap?
Local sales.
When you added the potassium nitrate, were there any visible signs of impurities burning off?
Only smoke.
Buenos noches from a wonderfully and naturally air-conditioned 53°N latitude. Seeing the resulting powdered alloy really illustrated the force the camera could not convey. Nice quick turnaround! Thank you Sir!👍👍🤟
Buenas noches! Soon it will get hot and humid one day, and stay like that for six months. I hate mosquitos, but they love me.
Hello from 38 degrees South,, having a wonderful Autumn (that's Fall in USofA speak) sunny day with a top of 25C (77F ).
Mosquitoes are the WORST. They are the only living thing I can “de-life” without hesitation or (too much) remorse. Hello to the southern hemisphere, watch out for the lions Leo!
@Antonowskyfly No lions here mate, but I've got some really nasty drop bears nearby
Where do you get your tall form beakers? I would like to get new beakers but I want some tall form ones as well. One other thing, I noticed the name on your Nitric bottle. I get mine from Rocky Mountain Reagents.
I bought all my glassware on eBay.
@@sreetips Thanks, I'll look around. To date I have never found any sets that go higher than 1000 ml
Good to see you! Watching your video right now.
Curious, would a hotplate shaker let you use less nitric acid baths due to the agitation of the solution?
Possibly
Hi Sreetips. Thanks for the videos.
Did you get a better deal on this nitric acid?
Did you make a permanent switch from GFS Chems?
They are about the same price, but gfs is more chemically pure. However, technical grade nitric is just fine for gold and silver refining.
Have you ever made a video of getting the silver out of the acid solution?
Yes
Ide like to see you send some of the gold off to assay to have its purity tested after the silver is pulled out using nitric. Be interesting to have lab results of the actual gold amounts.
It will contain other metals, but well over 990 parts per thousand pure gold. Inquarting with silver then parting with nitric does a fantastic job of cleaning the gold.
It’d also be expensive to do that.
Why bother? If he had any Ag or,say, Pb in the Au being worked up in the aqua regia, he’d have a notable precipitate.
He typically doesn’t.
The residue from the aqua regia workup will be your Pt, Rh or maybe Ir, all caught on the filter paper.
His product is excellent.
@@williamfoote2888 never said his product wasnt excellent. I know hes VERY precise with his craft. But ide still like to see lab results to see where the product sits in purity. I think it would be interesting to see.
@@brianbonenberger8054 If you aren’t seeing residue up through the filter step, by deduction, it approaches zero.
That’s the beauty of using these acid procedures. It works by excluding contaminant chemistry.
Now, if he was dealing with raw gold from a mine, (who knows what’s in it?) and he wasn’t using the acid methodology, tracking what contaminants are at every step would be useful.
In mined gold, they use cyanide to leach the CN metal complexes out of the ore. You get gold and silver, but also zinc copper tin nickel and iron.
They cement out the gold with zinc powder, but it comes loaded with other tramp metals.
@@williamfoote2888 i understand all youre saying but i still believe it would be interesting to see the purity progression from inquarted metal, to gold after treated with nitric, to gold being refined once with aqua regia and possibly after a 3rd aqua regia refining. The hard numbers is what i wanna see. None of what you describe give me hard numbers or data…..Just ‘deduction’.
It's always a pleasure to watch another sreetips video 😊 thank you Sreetips 👍👍
مبدع دائما يامعلم انا من متابعيك واستفدت كثيرا من دروسك
ولكن لدي سؤال لمادا لا تستخدم النحاس فهو اقل تكلفه من الفضه ومتوافر اكثر ولا يحتاج الي اعاده تكرير
Because I refine silver also. The first step in refining silver is to dissolve it in hot dilute nitric. So I may as well use silver. Like killing two birds with one stone, refining both metals at the same time.
Another entertaining video, thanks again 👍
Another great video sir.
I saw on a gold mining program once, a guy pouring gold into water similar to how you do with the gold/silver mix. But he had his water spinning quite fast, and it formed what he called cornflake gold. Have you ever tried this method when pouring your gold/silver mix?
I’m toying with using a pressure washer and pouring the molten gold into the high pressure stream of water to form small granules of Inquarted gold. Might even try it for pouring silver shot for the silver cell.
I don't leave many comments with any words mostly just faces but I believe your deserve my full time to tell you how much your videos have taught me and thank you so much for your excellent work and dedication I hope I can shake your hand some day if you come to alaska
I’d like to get to Juno one day.
When boiling in nitric acid and hydrochloric acid. You're not supposed to have any solid gold pieces left it should all be Liquid , after that , you separate the gold from the liquid , it'll settle to the bottom , and then you can wash it , and then when you melt it after you dry the powder , melt it and that will be guergold may contain a little bit of silver but not likely
I boil in hydrochloric. That helps remove any silver chloride that lingers.
@@sreetips And then which you can process and appear silver later that's the blue liquid correct
Any silver chloride will follow the HCl. The HCl gets poured off into gold refining waste container. Then it gets filtered out when I process the gold from the waste containers. Ends up in my paper storage after it gets filtered out.
A bit of an off topic question, but can you cement silver out of hydrochloric acid with a piece of copper the same way you can do it after a nitric acid boil?
No, silver will immediately react with hydrochloric acid and form silver chloride.
@@sreetips I think you should add the information that silver chloride is insoluble, which is why it won't work. Other, soluble silver salts like silver acetate will cement out.
Good morning or good afternoon, even good evening, professor, I really like your work and your videos, I would really like to see a table, a quick video with gold from 9k to 22k, and learn what proportion of other metals you would have to mix to purify the gold. Thanks in advance. I live in Brazil and I don't speak English very well.
You speak yust fine😊
I made a video recently that covered this. How to calculate the amount of silver needed to properly alloy the karat gold for the nitric acid boils.
Thank you! I'm gonna search it.
@@sreetipswhich video sir?
Thank you sir for another awesome video with beautiful gold six stars
Love the videos! What do you avoid when buying gold pieces online? Do you have advice for when to take a risk?
I don’t usually buy online. I want to see it in my hand before I trade.
Hello again sreetips. I have yet to tackle my first reclaim from gf material to watch your videos at least 3 times a week to ensure I understand the process and also why all steps are important including safety... I have a few questions and thank you in advance I'm sure u will reply. Number 1 say I have 100grams give or take of gf material. Using dilute nitric acid boils per your procedure what time set back am I to expect? I live n FL if thats relevant so sea level. As a married father of 4 my time can be taken up very easily lol just trying to gauge so adjust expectations
A day
@@sreetips ok I'll plan for that
Do you do this to make money or mostly for education? I’d love tips on where to get materials for similar experiments. Especially if if I could make money doing it.
Silver is money. I’m refining the silver because I have lots of it from my gold refining. My savings are in silver, not paper dollars.
Im trying to refine some silver filled epoxy scrap i have. Any advice is welcome.
I’ve never worked with silver filled epoxy scrap. I don’t have any experience with it to share.
that was awesome , thanks for sharing :)
Awesome video sreetips😊
I seen a Turkish jewellery channel use powdered glass added to the melted gold. Their reason being after working the scraps over and over it became to brittle to work. They said it cleaned up the gold. Would it work in some part of your refining process?
And they then poured out the gold separating it from the used glass.
Powdered glass will act as a flux. But I’ve never used it.
It’s similar to the tail end of what’s called a gold ‘fire assay analysis’
You don’t need glass. You could use sand and sodium carbonate or sodium hydroxide.
Any metal impurities, like zinc, lead or tin oxide preferentially dissolved in the glass melt. Things that you’d find mixed with your raw gold if you were working up gold fresh from the mine.
Sreetips’ product doesn’t have any or those materials in it.
Why do you always cover the jar with a "plate?" Is it merely to stop acids splashing out? Or is it something to do with condensation?
It’s to prevent loss of the precious metals themselves because that solution will spatter out of the jar which contains the metals
It acts as a reflux condenser, and keeps junk from falling into the reaction,
Would inquartation not be needed if one melted the gold alloy jewelry and then (somehow) grind the ingot into small particles? If so, how small would the particles need to be?
Like I do when I process the jewelers scrap. Its a fine gold dust.
It is still needed to “purify” the gold. From 10kt 14kt ect to 24kt gold. If you filed a ring down to filings, they are still 14kt or 10kt shavings.
It may dissolve better in the acid? But what a hassle.
Sand sure dissolves quick! No heat, just gone! Nice button!
Would be useful to learn about steps and cost of safely disposing waste generated by refining gold. People don’t often consider this when deciding to try refining at home.
If you watch S’s waste treatment video, you can see that his waste stream is salty rust and a Cu metal waste.
It’s very clean and straightforward.
(Chuckle). Actually, you could use your cement copper to cement out and collect your cement silver, instead of using Cu pipes or wire.
It’s not closed circuit recycling, but it’s be close.
@@williamfoote2888 using (chuckle) unironically has to be the most cringe i've seen on the internet so far...
@@GOLD_FEVER (chuckle). You’re welcome!
@@williamfoote2888 time to blow my brains out.
Did this method refines the melted gold with different metals like lead iron cadmium osmium and ruthenium
Yes, but the only way to completely remove these metals is to refine the gold with aqua regia.
I wonder if you could put the inquarted gold pieces into a blender and get an appreciable improvement in surface area?
I’ll try a pressure washer
I wonder if you got some liquid nitrogen and froze the inquarted gold and then put it in an industrial blender. You might be able to create a more consistent powdery mix.
!!!!! Not recommended.
i was wondering if we see a video i need a streetips fix lol 😂
Hey sorry for the late post, so once done with nitric acid washes and you’re heating up the gold how much potassium nitrate do you add and do you keep adding if noticing impurities? After that you add the borax ?
I add a half a pinch. The impurities will tend to float to the surface of the molten gold. The extra O2 causes them to burn away. But a little gold gets burnt away as well.
Awesome thank you! Any tips on finding 10k and 14k scrap gold ?
We buy at yard sales and estate sales.
Awesome thank you! Now with this process you look for gold filled items not gold plated correct?
Correct
That's incredible that the metals would become powdered that way. I thought they would demonstrate more surface tension than that. A slo-mo of that event would be interesting (not that you should try.)
I was just thinking the same thing. You could always try asking the Slo-mo guys, or Destin from Smarter every day if they would want to do a collab! You might have to pour a lot of molten alloy but you never know, you might find a technique to always get the powdered result.
Ohh I have so many questions.... I'll try to keep it to just a few. 1, the finer material that resulted from the steam explosion seemed to refine much quicker. It this the case? 2, if it is can you more reliably create the reaction to produce the fine particulates to refine the product quicker with less consumables?
?3. Do the fine particles lend itself to being more easily dissolved by the nitric acid boils as witnessed by the yellow tint at the beginning of the third boil?
@@stevethomas1638 I would think so, it would make sense... no?
I don't think you want that type of steam explosion. It's just as likely to blow small particles out of the water bowl, plus it's startling, so you might drop something or bump into something and spill it. If the whole process is sped up an hour or even two by creating the powder, that shouldn't be that big a deal. Yeah, you might use a bit less nitric acid, but again, once you're using it, you're using it. Not gallons less, not even liters less. It gets reused in the silver jar. The way Sreetips is stingy with his nitric, I can't see that making much of a difference.
@@alanpecherer5705 As I said.... so many questions, yeah the lost from the explosion is one, my main inquiry was to the speed of refining and could it be quicker with some higher temps etc. so many questions
@jay walker Answer to your questions: 1 Yes. The smaller the particles the more surface area is exposed and the faster the acid can penetrate.
2 yes in theory but in practice it would require more refining in some manner to obtain finer particles. Even if he dumped into ice water (which would be dangerous) most of the molten metal will still clump into BB’s and not powder. Those that don’t the steam explosions would be MUCH more violent and risk bodily injury or even your life.
Well Mr. Sreetips , i do believe i messed up , i think some of my gold went into solution , i think i added to much 3% peroxide to my HCL , i am not sure what i can do about it , but they say u learn threw your mistakes , i did receive me retort yesterday and will be making some nitric acid tomorrow , and go from there , do u think if i add SMB to my AP solution i would get back my gold ,? i do enjoy the hobby , but it does get a little frustrating at times , but thank you for all of your help , have a great day and BEE safe
Absolutely, pour it through a filter, add SMB to the filtered solution. Any gold in there will precipitate out. But first - check with stannous to be sure you have gold in solution BEFORE trying to precipitate. You may find that there’s no gold in that solution.
i did all the steps , after applying 4-5 time of nitric acid i have an issue , pure gold show up as a brown powder which is pure but other grains not dissolved and have yellowish color and mix with pure powder , what is it ? how to dissolve it , ( i have pictures )
I’ve not had that happen. I’m not sure what it is.
Went to a yard sale and found some material labeled "nickle silver" is this a variation alloy or is it just plated, i didnt buy it because i wasnt sure of its purity.
There is no silver in nickel silver. it is so named because it has a silver appearance.
Wise decision, its an alloy of copper nickel and zinc. Also called “German Silver” if I see it, I walk away.
it would be interesting to refine a commercial bar of gold to see how pure it is.
Excellent.
Ooo that explosion!
Mr. sreetips, I was wondering what would happen if one puts enquartered gold shot in an electrolytic silver cell? Would the silver plate out leaving the gold in slime form?
Yes, but the high copper concentration in the inquarted gold would quickly foul the electrolyte.
@sreetips Thanks for your reply, as always. It would be nice if you ran a gold/silver only alloy through the cell as an experiment. It would certainly make an interesting video. 😀
Your videos never cease to fascinate. What are your margins between how much you buy the jewelry for, the chemicals used. and what you get from the final product?
I’ve never taken the time to figure it. This is my hobby. It all gets tallied at the end end of the year.
Cool video
I had a question ... In past videos you used a BUCKET and a wooden board as a means to pour the gold and silver mixture on and have a more uniform chunkyness to the pieces after you pour them... Is there a reason you stopped doing that? It seemed that the pieces you got from that process were much smaller and had more surface area than by just pouring it into a bucket...
I should use it every time. It takes extra steps to set it up.
@@sreetips That is a satisfactory answer! I figure if you consider it too much of a hassle to set up every time you do this then it is probably not worth the extra effort...
I have been thinking about this for the last few episodes, and I am hoping that I am asking this right, I know you buying silver to help extract the gold from the jewelry, and after that, extract the silver from the gold, and then sell that silver, but I was just wondering, why you do you sell the silver instead of just using it over again in your next melt? That way, you are saving some money up instead of using more silver, and you can divide the silver you already have up to proportions you can manage a little better than silver jewelry lol
I don’t sell the silver that I refine (maybe a few ounces on my eBay site). Using cement silver over and over to inquart is not recommended because platinum group metals will follow the silver and build up in the cement silver. When I do run it through the silver cell it could contaminate the pure silver crystal, particularly palladium since it’s soluble in nitric (the only one of the six sister metals in the platinum group that is). Lastly, I have much sterling silver that I’ve accumulated from estate sales. It must be dissolved in nitric to refine it so I may as well use it to inquart the gold. Like refining both metals at once. Killing two birds with one stone.
I guess I forgot a step, what about the silver after your electrolysis step and extracted the platinum group metals? You still keep that silver around since dollar values keep fluctuating, right?
Regular humans take over 10 hours to do this. The King of Inquartation only needs 5.
Imagine how fast the inquarted gold would dissolve if one could get most of it to steam explode! Hmmm???? Great video!
I may investigate using a pressure washer to break the molten metal up better. Pour the molten metal through a steam of high pressure water.
Made short work of that one and came out with a nice button 👏
Nice refining. Probably should have done just 1 aqua regia cycle just to add a dose of sulfuric to flush out any led that may have carried over. Just saying.
Agree, so I did and made a new video of it.
Why not just pour the initial gold into nitric acid from the beginning? Is it easier/faster to do it with a small percentage of gold?
Why not just do aqua regia from the beginning?
Without the extra silver, the nitric can’t penetrate.
Because aqua regia will put everything in solution and it will be a very dirty solution
If that puck was 22k the gold value would be about $3500. I agree it is more pure than that. If it's 24k the value goes up to about $3800.
Almost time to buy more.
Really interesting video!
So I guess of all the work is worth it...due the gold price now correct
Correct
Nice
I wonder if you could roll the gold alloy flat to speed up the boils
I tried, it didn’t roll well. Decided to just let the chemicals do all that work.
Ace video
I know I have asked you this before what is the refinery name you said that you need LLC to deal with them too I think, I was trying to tell a buddy and can’t remember the name of the place
aragold.com
Awesome gold button thanks for sharing sreetips
Thank you.
I was wondering does Streetips have a three nines fine, solid gold toilet? 😂
Sweet