Using a glass rod, stir vigorously until there is no more fizzing or green chlorine gas. Now take your small jar with the foils and any gold powder, and cover with HCl.This being so, the solution can be disposed off down the drain. If you have some litmus paper, test to see if the PH is 7 to 8.5. Now slowly add your bi-carb until the solution stops bubbling. Do this carefully as you will have nails in there if you have recovered copper. To do this we add about 3 litres of water to our rinse bucket and gently pour your all your peroxide solutions into the bucket. We now need to neutralize our acid solutions.Filter the solution to recover the copper and then rinse with water until it runs clear. If not, then copper recovery is complete. Add another nail for about half a minute and see if any copper sponge attaches to the nail. If you want to recover the copper in the peroxide solutions, add half a dozen nails to the mix and let sit for 24 hours.If it forms a white cloud, then your gold recovery is complete. To check if there is any gold left in the solution, add a couple of drips of water into the solution.If there is a precipitate of reddish/black powder, then this is gold. To recover this gold we need to add our copper wire to each jar and leave overnight for 24 hours. Using this method, it is possible that some gold could be dissolved into the peroxide mix.Now strain the foils through a filter and put then in a small jar with lid.In case there is any lead in the foils, boil up some distilled water and rinse the foils as above.Continue this process until the acid is clear - no colours. When done, pour the acid into Jar B, or Jar C if B is full. Replace the lid and agitate for 5 minutes. Cover the foils with HCl, just enough to cover them.Gently pour off the water from Jar A, leaving the foils in the bottom.Now fill Jar A with water to clean the foils. Again using your tweezers, transfer these foils back into Jar A. If you have any foils in your rinse bucket, carefully pour out the water leaving the foils in the bottom.Use your spray bottle if need be to push any foils back to the bottom. Using a funnel and filter papers, pour the liquid from Jar A into Jar B making sure you leave all the foils in Jar A. Allow all the foils in Jar A to settle to the bottom.Continue these process's until all fingers are clean. If you get a finger where the foil is still stuck to it, use your toothbrush in a rinsing bucket to scrub the foil loose.Try and do this within this jar and so keep as many foils together. Use your spray bottle of ordinary water to spray off any foils still clinging to the finger. Using a pair of plastic tweezers, remove each finger from the mixture.Close the lid, mix well, and let sit for another 24 hours mixing occasionally.If the mixture is a dark brown colour, then resume adding 30ml of peroxide each 15 minutes until it returns to the light green colour.If the colour is light green and there are still foils attached to the fingers, continue to let it sit. Don't forget to put your finger over the hole in the lid. After this time, give the jar a good mix up.Let your jar stand in a safe place for 24 hours.Don't add any more peroxide that is necessary to reach this colour consistency, and don't add it to quickly. Continue this until the solution turns a transparent green. If this forms a white cloud, then add more peroxide just as you did earlier. With your gloves on, place your finger over the hole in the lid and gently turn the jar upside down and back to mix. Do this every 15 minutes until the solution turns pale green. Then add 30ml of your hydrogen peroxide.Add HCl to the jar - enough to cover the tops of the fingers.A couple of normal 9l buckets for rinsing etc.A couple of plastic buckets with lids that are big enough to stand three of your jars in.A dozen or so Steel Nails - secondhand will do but not galvanized.90% Alcohol (Rubbing Alcohol from Chemist)Īpart from your normal collection of equipment, you will need the following.This method is quite slow compared to using Nitric Acid, but is nowhere near as toxic. Very good with fingers from computer boards (described here). An alternate method to refine gold without Nitric Acid
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