When I worked in the gold room in a mine in Australia we would electrowin the gold from the eluate solution onto a stainless steel mesh anode. Once a week we would pull out the cathodes out and we would Gerni off the gold. It pretty well looked the same as your precipitated gold. We would vacuum the excess water of and then mix in fluxes and then smelt it. I like watching your stuff your cell is like a mini version of what we did eccept the gold we electrowinned was from out of the eluate solution.
Why not using a high purity gold cathode. Less Titanium contamination. Or even using a gold bowl, needs maybe 1kg of Gold, depending the size. Doesn't have to look pretty, just thight and stable. Casting or asking your goldsmith friends👍🏻
I spent 15 years plastic fabricating clean room, fume hoods and plating equipment. Another 10 years maintaining plating equipment, baths and wastewater. Great information that can take me to a whole new level, thank you for sharing.
Absolutely BRILLIANT work, S! Great nodularisation, makes for easier peeling from the titanium I'd bet. I think you should move to this method. Even with inquarted gold, I'd bet you could get higher purity yields with Ag/Cu byproducts to be collected at the bottom of the beaker. Suggestions/Ideas: 1. A titanium sleeve to hug the inside circumference of the beaker [slight spring tension] with the anode bar suspended in the centre. 2. A silicone lid to fit the beaker to reflux the HCl [prevent loss through evaporation. 3. Perhaps an Arduino to control heating to maintain the 140F temperature. Thanks for the great electroforming content! Greetings to you n family from Hopkinsville, Ky! [Yes, I thought "shark tooth" as well, lol.]
All good suggestions. Especially titanium sleeve with anode in the center. I believe that the excessive distance between anode and cathode in my experiment slowed the process considerably.
I've loved watching you since 2018. Thanks for all the information and i hope to one day replicate the experiments that you have. Congratulations on all your success Patrick McGovern i remember when you were doing copper. Happy memorial day weekend and thank you for your service.
As the gold atoms leave the anode bar they "etch" out the crystalline structure that actually makes up the bar. This allows the light to difuse all over the place and show you the structure you cannot see otherwise. Yes, that structure is always there but your eyes fool you because the surface is usually smooth and the light has no bevels to reflect off of. I do love physics. I bet that tooth looks amazing under good magnification. Another winner, Sr. I'm thinking Mrs. Sreetips probably took possession ASAP.
I don't think u want the stirring on while running this cell. You can entrain the contaminate particles in the gold sponge. Since the contaminated particles are staying suspended.
Yes, and the physical motion might slightly inhibit the rate of plating as well. I'd love to see an empirical comparison of the yield rate with stirring vs no stirring.
It would be intersting to wheit the final product. See if the wheit outside the electrolyte is s'il the same. Thank you. I love the electro deposit of gold. And i stil would love to see 14 and 18k gold refining with this setup
The anode must be fairly high purity to begin with. But I may inquart some karat gold, part with nitric, then melt the recovered inquarted gold into an anode (should be about 990 parts per thousand). Then use that as the anode in the gold cell.
The book is a little dated. It says you can use a fan by the window to handle the fumes but thus just won’t due. Also says to flush the drain with plenty of water to protect the pipes.
@@JoelHirtleI got two hits right away by a simple online search. One at big _A_ (not going to name it) for just over $50, and there is an American company that supplies mining products, which has the softback for $25. Legend.
Question about free hydrochloric acid and the evaporation issue. (I'm guessing distilled water was used in that solution.) How critical is that 10% free hydrochloric acid? Does it get "used up" in the reaction? Would that have been water evaporating and not the acid? Also, something else random: the stock pot has been having certain issues. Maybe consider starting a new one next time instead of adding your leftovers from the last one. Dry out your left overs and keep it stashed somewhere to mess with on a later date. Thanks for sharing your play time with us ;)
Sir sreetips that sharks tooth would get the bar cut off and a mount made for a nice chain....I know u didn't do that on purpose but that thing is insane looking...your name from now on is 'The Goldfather'
If you want to grow nice fairly big crystals, I recommend to reduce the surface area of the cathode to a pretty small size, maybe half a square inch. As optimum I suggest a high purity gold cathode in irregular shape to give the cathode some prefered accumulating points. I think nice and fairly big gold crystals would sell pretty well on your ebay
This is fascinating! It’s amazing to watch metal react with various frequencies of electricity. It’s almost symbiotic to watch. One element reacting with another, it’s awesome!
ugh...my life has never been the same after i started watching these, and thus now doing it as an effect. had i been introduced to this in HS my life would have been dramatically different. (not to say im not doing ok, just i would have taken a completely different path).
Some observstions and comments if allowed: 1) The cell has a charge parity. For every Au-ion that leaves the Anode into the electrolyte an Au-ion attaches to the cathode by aquiring electrons out of the electrolyt in absolute the same moment. The question of the distance between the electrodes is inferior as long the conductivity (aka concentration of electrolyte = 1/ resistance) and the Amps and Volts are high. 2) I would not use the stir-bar. Any impurities get agitated in the electrolyte and like an old rug, the gold sponge at the cathode catches those and the growing gold crystals enclose them in the sponge. By not agitating zhe fluid the impurities just sedimenting down under the anode an stay there. One more reason to evaluate the gold cell similar to the silver cell. I even think its not necessary to heat the cell as long as you got time on your side as with the silver.
Thank you Sreetips. Gold is so captivating. I almost cannot wait to see some of that in bar form. Ok now your going to think I’m weirdo. lol I don’t think gold happened by accident. Well possibly a long, long ,long time ago it did. But I think gold has value all across the universe. Not necessarily monetary value either.
Gold became money by default. Nobody voted or got together and said let’s make gold and silver money. It just happened thousands of years ago. And it’s still money today, that hasn’t changed. Just think of it this way: long after Amazon, Apple, bitcoin, and the dollar are gone and forgotten, gold and silver will still be here. And they will still be valuable
I would love to watch a video recorded micro-shot of that anode bar during the charged/transfer process. Very curious if one could visibly observe and discern the molecular lattice structure breakdown and dissolution.
Most of the gold comes from the 10 ounce anode bar as it dissolves from the current flow. But some of the gold from the 90.2g in the electrolyte will get deposited on the cathode. The gold in the electrolyte becomes slowly depleted as the cell operates.
@@sreetips I'm curious about that. Theoretically (in my mind) it should be a one-for-one molecular exchange and no depletion of the solution should occur. Your yield recovery mass of the chloroauric should be exactly what you dissolved into it initially - hopefully we will see in Part 3.
The gold in the electrolyte, and the gold coming off the anode are identical. The cathode can’t discriminate which is which. So invariably, some of the gold from the solution will get deposited as the cell operates. Sort of like collateral damage. I’d guess that about 20 grams of gold on that cathode came from the electrolyte.
@@sreetips But in theory at least every electron coming off the anode knocks loose one atom of gold into solution, while one atom of gold is plated onto the cathode from solution. I don't doubt that there are losses but I would expect them to be negligible, in the sub-gram range. Very interested to see what you recover when you precipitate out the solution, and how the final mass balances between the anode, cathode, and solution.
Try like a silver cell, you can use gold (shark tooth) left over from the experiment, add rings, gold bracelets to your basket. I think gold goes to the titanium plate, silver and other metals will remain in the basket, Try it, you have nothing to lose, it's an experiment, I'm curious how much metals are lost through smoke, it's worth a smoke recovery experiment and turn it into liquid, from liquid to extract precious metals
Two problems: the anode material must be fairly high purity to begin with or else the cell would quickly become fouled with base metals. And a stainless bowl cathode would react with the gold chloride electrolyte. This method, anode and cathode facing each other, is the most efficient way to do this.
I just discovered your channel and it’s very fascinating. Is it possible to earn a full time living by refining on a small scale like this? Thank you for your videos, and I’ll keep watching!
It was offered on gesswein.com, a jewelry supply site, for about $65. But after I recommended the book in one of my videos, and were to get it (gesswein.com), they sold out and it’s no longer available there.
@sreetips -- It's fun watching you have fun. Have you ever tried electroforming or it's reverse electroetching ? Wouldn't Mrs. Sreetips look really cute in a pair of tiny plique a jour butterflies ?
@@sreetips I love all your videos and content, please don't think I'm knocking anything...It's just in my nature to know why things work and reasoning so I can understand better
Three nines is industry standard for pure gold. So the fourth nine is totally unnecessary unless needed for some specific purpose such as a test standard. The only reason I did it is for the show. To demonstrate that I can, and produce a new and interesting video for my channel.
This is one of ur better vid series way better then that last gold cell one so far. I can't wait to retire and do as u do as a hobby..if I thought I could make a living doing it now I would.... but I'm not as smart as u dude
The real challenge is finding the material for refining. My wife is a yard-sale fanatic. She finds most of the metals for me to refine. Without her I’d be punching in at Home Depot for work this morning. Instead I’m working on a new and interesting video for my RU-vid channel. All because or her. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me!
Right now, the masses are still clueless about gold. Their faith in paper remains high despite the fact that paper is collapsing in value. Very few understand that hoarding stacks of paper is foolish (insanity). Holding savings in gold (and silver) is for the wise. But this is slowly changing. We used to find hand fulls of scrap gold every weekend just ten years ago. But it’s getting harder to find as folks begin to wake up to the scam of the money printers. You can’t measure anything’s true value in paper dollars because they can, and do, print “without limit”. Therefore, measuring value in dollars is insanity. It all boils down to this: money printing is insanity. The only way to protect your savings is to hold savings in real money, gold and silver.
When you purify the bar by electrolysis you have to collect the impurities that were in that bar somewhere; do they end up in the gold chloride electrolyte or did they fall off the cathode and get picked up by the stirred solution and end up on the rough surface of the gold? When you purify the silver nitrate you have a filter between the electrolyte and the anode.
Three nines is industry standard for pure gold. The extra nine is totally unnecessary unless needed for some specific purpose such as a standard test comparison.
When you test for the presence of gold using stannus chloride. Doesn’t it take some of the gold from the solution your testing. If so do you save the strips to recover the gold later? Could you tell us what you do with the strips?
Sreetips -- I have a question. When there is a loss of gold after processing, what accounts for the loss of gold? Evaporation (mollucules in vapor)? Splashes of gold in solution? Gold left behind in paper filters? Fine gold disolved in waste solution poured off? I think in a recent video you had like 7 grams of gold missing after processing (I might be wrong, I can't remember exactly). Do you know where / how the gold is being lost?
All the above. There are losses along the way. Minimizing them will depend on the skill and technique use by the refiner. Also, l probably made an error when sorting the karat scrap. Threw in a piece that was plated or gold filled by mistake. That can throw the yield off
@@sreetips Ahh I see. If it was an actual processing loss, rather than just a sorting mistake, then you are likely to recover it later on from the gold refining waste liquids and/or your saved paper filters. Thank you for taking the time to reply to my question. I love all your videos!
Hi Sreetips, just a quick question regarding cementation of silver from waste solutions. If there is any gold still in solution will it cement out with the silver and what is the best way to make sure other than the stannus test.
Yes, boiling nitric will put a little gold in solution. But it’s usually just a trace and not worth trying to recover. If there’s gold in solution with silver then I just cement it out on copper with the silver. Melt the cement silver (with the small amount of gold in it) and run it through my silver cell. In the cell, the gold will get trapped in the anode filter because it’s insoluble. Then I recover the gold when I process the anode filters for the precious metals that they contain.