Now Oct 31 08 so this stuff is newly added

I have been almost a whole week taking a crash course reading on what's going on in the precious metals markets and the US dollar being higher than ever and still do not know for sure what to really believe so here is what I think.

Lots of speculations on how the COMEX has manipulated gold to keep it down. Remember this is the stock market and they are the main sellers on gold and silver most being contracts for gold delivery at some later date. Last I read they only have about 1/4 of the gold actually in storage but we would expect something like this after all they are selling gold that is yet to be mined or etc and that's not unusual for them. I at this time could not find out what it's typically supposed to be so I do not know what to make of the only 1/4 in stock now fact. I still cant be sure if the rumors on manipulation are true but what I have read does appear that they could well have been selling lots of paper gold and silver and to the point where they have sold far more paper gold and silver than can be delivered if the price on gold goes up and everyone wants actual delivery which it now appears that they may. If this happens they may default. It means they may only refund you the money and you get no metals. This is serious if the metal goes way up and all you get is the return of a loan you didn't even know you were giving then the whole market loses credibility and you lose too.

Whether or not there really is  manipulation I am not sure yet but I am sure about one thing I cannot figure out why the US government would not. Remember gold prices tip off people their money is in trouble and if that happens more money will race out of banks into gold leaving less in banks where it can be lent out to buy houses etc.

Reason the US dollar is up, about the most credible I have read on why this is, is something due to people being forced to pay for losses in US dollars and that forces you to buy US dollars to pay for the losses. Not really sure myself how this works it ends up with having to pay for those losses in US dollars. If I knew about that I could have bought US dollars with my Canadian dollars and then bought silver with that at a nice gain in just 1 month. A clue was the election and a friend insisted US dollars would gain and I didn't listen. Election time be real its just so obvious that if any hidden shenanigans in the background would happen or could happen it would be the sort to make US paper look good even an idiot would have guessed right. And I missed it.

I love the idea of ETF electronically traded funds, so I can trade gold like money similar to a credit card but just transferring bits of gold ownership. I could own gold, watch it go up in value, avoid exchange fees and an extra bonus its cheaper than wiring money etc. I plan to set up this site so people can buy my junk for gold. One of the better ones appears to be c-gold.com so look them up saves me explaining why. First found out about this sort of thing when trying to get a pre paid credit card and found out about e-gold that was no longer working at this time. Similar but its not c-gold that's still working. My e-gold account got a value limit on it meaning I can spend from it but not receive into it. I found out about that after winning some e-gold on ebay about 7.00 for about 4.00 and then found I could not transfer the winnings into it

SOME INTERESTING CONSPIRACY POINTS ON ETFs
Turns out that because they were located in the US they were closed down due to money laundering etc. Even the owners of e-gold tried to mislead the lawyers into thinking there gold reserves were outside the US but that didn't last and they figured it out. Its obvious now they realized they made a mistake setting up business in the US. Another US company I think it was Gold____ that the owner was arrested for murdering his wife and anyone that did business with them had their money frozen or lost.

I have read other references as well that claim that the US is harsh on these types of services. Even one of the first adds I saw about c-gold bragged that it was not located in the US.

These is some serious things to consider here. My opinion is that these services are so good in principle that they could threaten the usefulness of the US dollar or even Canadian dollars. Its just so useful especially if a way could be found for it to be used on ebay. Cost me a fortune in exchange fees going from Canadian $ to US dollars and then back again on what I sell. Tried to set up a separate account is the US to receive US dollars to avoid these fees but it was to difficult to set up and I gave up. I get the feeling someone wants my money for these pointless exchanges.

In the end I hope the US people ( not necessarily the government) realizes that they might need the 2 types of money. Let Joe six pack continue to buy his beer in US dollars he never keeps his money long enough to worry about inflation but for saving and spending internationally its just not that practical or reliable.

The problem with gold is I have read that for all the US dollars to be backed by gold if all dollars had to be back just with gold then all the gold the US has would need to be priced at 20,000 per ounce. There is not enough gold unless you want everyone poor. Personally I don't know why the restriction on gold and silver for money mind you there is only 2.00 worth of silver for every 100.00 in gold last I read. So much silver was thrown away from used industrial uses is part of the reason. So why not include Tantalum, Rhenium, Selenium or anything elce that can be held in a vault and traded electronically till one gets enough fro delivery if we want it delivered just like c-gold. I am not sure why not. Of course platinum and other metals are more volatile in price they can gain in price just as fast so I don't see why I would mind being paid in $5.00 in platinum. For example by using more than 2 metals one would probably not need gold to be 20,000 per ounce for enough money to go around. That's only if every dollar had to be backed and that's probably not really necessary. People would just have an extra choice.

Not sure how the government would tax an item only traded and no cash was involved.

What I read does suggest that gold and silver have a real good chance of big increases in price and I am hopping it will continue down for a bit longer so I can buy more. But when it changes it might be on its way to becoming too late.

ALL THIS NEW INFO ON Oct 31 08 IS IN BLUE.

How much silver  Here is some info on what has silver and the amounts. Washing machine timers switches etc

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Added this new material on Mar 10 08

Its been a long time since I last wrote this. Since then its become extremely hard to get cheap ammonium nitrate fertilizer and now platinum is used in hard drives so I need to test a bunch of them to find out more about them. And we need to keep in mind that nowadays the chips are sometimes collectable and worth much more than their precious metals content.

I need to add more stuff on platinum and catalytic converters. Will have to add this later.

I found out that just hydrochloric acid with just a few percent of nitric will dissolve gold but because of that you can use salts such as potassium nitrate in hydrochloric acid to dissolve gold but its slower.

Note that some edge connectors contain some palladium in the gold and you need to look for that too.

BUYING ON EBAY
Also added on Mar 9 08

Buying precious metals and precious metals containing materials on ebay.
No kidding I got stung for more than I have ever gained from this but you can still get good values Hopefully what I have learnt will help you not to repeat so many of my mistakes.

May latest purchase was some indium that was claimed to be 1/16 inch thick but was only 1/5 of that but Its too soon to comment on this as I am now corresponding with the seller.

Watch for that seller selling infused platinum infused silicon, it contains nothing. I wasted over 1000.00 on this and am occasionally trying to sell the impure silicon for anyone that wants some to experiment with but selling it cheap. He is still Added on Oct 31 08 NO LONGER SELLING IT ON EBAY trying to sell this on ebay after I repeatedly warned him it contains nothing but what surprises me is that he has such good feedback and had a money back guarantee. But of course I have been trying to get a refund but have not been able to. He got me by promising to pay me a bit at a time as he could until it was also to late for me to complain to ebay. When he started trying to sell the same material I knew then I was cheated and would never see any refunds. Obviously if he was honest he would not be trying to see the same materials again. Its also been checked by a lab so I cant be wrong besides he should have figured out I was telling the truth as I stopped buying any more. Would have been the best buy ever if it was real.

Lately I just bought some platinum flakes produced from catalytic converters to see what they contain so keep an eye on this site till I get some and analyze it.

Added on Oct 31 08 Last attempt I got no platinum but there was to much water in the mix so will try again. Platinum wont dissolve very well if the acid has to much water in it and after washing the dust I didn't dry it well.

Added on Mar 08 Now that nitric acid is so hard to get I plan to retry using sulfuric acid again. It will dissolve silver when its hot and concentrated but the resulting silver sulfate is not very water soluble. The reaction produces sulfur dioxide too if I remember correctly. I got a bunch of electrical contacts that need refining.

Will do some research on how to find or make cheap nitrates so we can have nitric acid again, at low costs without nitrate fertilizer.

This info below was written long ago with only a little updating.
ON HOW TO RECYCLE GOLD AND SILVER
 

Its easiest to remove the card edge connectors by just getting an old block of iron or better still something like the planner blades used in wood mills to plain lumber when they throw old ones away , that I use . Just place them so that the gold plated section is just over the blade and tap along it with sufficient force as to cut it off but try not to use so much force that the steel of the hammer dulls the blade , and they should last quite a while . When you put these in the nitric acid make sure you dilute it to about half if you use the concentrated acid as this will keep it from attacking the PC board to severely and that can prevent more of a mess . Of course the diluted acid is slower , should take about a day and most the gold will have flaked off . I usually find that using some rubber gloves and lots of water its sometimes faster to take the pieces of circuit board and dip and shake them in purer and purer containers of water as the flakes tend to cling to everything like tiny pieces of tissue paper and this seems to be the fastest way to get them off everything , Holding them under a tap should work as well but you could land up with a lot of extra water to screen of gold . I have found the best way for me to screen this gold from the water is to use the very fine polymer screens used in some washing machines . nylon stalking might work but haven't tried them . The white sludge or powder you see in many of these processing's is the tin from the solder , the lead dissolves as a nitrate , if your into environmentalism you can reduce all these metals out of solution by using another metal like iron or zinc to make them become metal powders with enough setting time usually when the acid is used up the metals will also be deposited out as well . The white powder can contain some gold so I save it but its not usually much , these are easily separated from the larger gold particles by using a small jet of water from a squeezable plastic laboratory wash bottle over the fine screen with the gold flakes on it . and then use the jet to collect them into a container . I use a laboratory squeeze bottle that is angled just right for this but lots of things will work . Try to get your gold with as little water as you can I usually don't need to dry it just by drawing off the water with a eye dropper letting it settle and or etc. Buchner funnels may be good but need a vacuum source and I could describe how to use an old refrigerator pump for vacuum except that you should be able to easily figure this one out yourself . The differences on doing the larger connectors are not much different but expect to use much more acid . and get a lot more of the white tin sludge as is to be expected of solder . On these larger pieces I have found it sometimes better to take the larger connectors after they had been in the nitric acid to dip them a few at a time in a small container of aqua regia to make soluble the hard to reach peace's of gold this way one doesn't end up with a lot of acid with only a little gold in it , afterwards soaking them in different small containers of water that collects the rest of the smaller amounts of gold solution and then using the solutions in washing filters or diluting gold solutions or just to recover the rest of the gold from

Make your aqua regia by mixing , I use a 4 parts hydrochloric to one of nitric by volume mix , interesting note here is that even a tiny amount of hydrochloric acid in nitric will start to dissolve gold but at slower rates but the recommended mix will very rapidly dissolve gold into a yellow solution that looks like whiskey but other metals will give it a different color and silver will slow down the rate of dissolving because of its in soluble silver chloride sludge gets in the way of the acid and when dissolving jewelry seams to hold on to some of the gold in its silver chloride so I may later dissolve the silver chloride in ammonium hydroxide or other chemical to recover its gold content .In gold from electronics with just the gold plated connectors I haven't yet seen any silver content . After its done dissolving the gold mix with about 1/2 water to double its volume . I do this because it sometimes lets some silver chloride separate and other impurities that the acid sometimes likes to very slightly dissolve but it may not be necessary but I usually need to water it down any ways to lessen the tendency to re dissolve the gold that I am trying to precipitate out , it is possible to just evaporate off the acid or neutralize it down if you are careful not to go to far as many contaminants can start to reduce the gold so do this after its been filtered , but I usually don’t bother with that . You can also just let the solids settle out , the filter I use usually lets some silver chloride or other particles through at first but will refilter it clear , because if you use the very fine filter paper they are way to slow. My preferred type of filter paper is medium retention , creped , equal in quality to Whatman #4 and S&S #595 and you can always re refine for extra purity . You can then follow with water to get the last amounts of gold solution from the filter or just save them up and burn them and process the gold from the ashes , also important to note here do all your liquid processing in a plastic pan and use tissue paper so that you can later burn to recover any gold from spills and etc. Me I have really come to appreciate Teflon rimed beakers they really help stop the last drop from running down its edge.

To recover the gold just add ferrous sulfate I make mine from old car battery acid and scrap iron . You might want to charge the old battery to increase the concentration of acid but if you plan to do this a lot order your sulfuric acid its very cheap , and yes its acid to water in this case . Try about a 30% solution or less and give it lots of time but speed things up by using something like transformer plates with lots of surface area . The solution is a clear greenish and slightly yellow color , you probably will need to filter it and it needs to be slightly acid or it will accumulate a rust precipitate

When I add the ferrous sulfate I always use lots at lest enough to double the already 50% solution any less and you risk either not getting all the gold or it can re dissolve , its cheap gold isn't so use lots and save the solution to add more ferrous sulfate to . that way if you miss any it will turn up next time . It usually takes a wile to settle and overnight usually is quite sure , it will then look like coffee powder , not like gold at all until washed with water and allowed to settle a few times and then washed with hydrochloric acid then water again and then you can just dry it filter it or melt it with a good propane torch , but remember a propane torch can only just barely melt it , and it seems to melt much faster once it starts to melt , I suspect its because the powder emits heat radiation very well causing it to cool but the melted gold with its smooth surface re emits far less of the heat applied to it

You may find out how badly gold salts can stain even quantities far to small to see on hands and fingers . it actually reacts with proteins to go metallic but it looks purple , not even mentioning its toxicity Also you might want to look into fire assays that are used in assaying of gold , this involves mixing the sample with lead and heating the sample to high temperatures in a porous crucible that absorbs the lead and other molten oxides as they form leaving a fairly pure gold but expect metals like platinum to remain and I don't know how good it is at removing silver and yes it is sometimes good to just melt your gold with a flux like sodium carbonate to remove impurities rather than reprocessing your gold ,in the jewelry trade boric acid or after heating it turns into boron oxide is used as a flux for melting silver and gold

It may also be interesting that I have been told that some scrap yards recycle gold from used equipment by mixing the whole thing with copper and melting it all together and selling the copper alloy ,. You can try refining gold from copper alloys by making anodes of the copper and placing them in a copper containing solution and just refine the copper as this will leave the gold and over less active metals like silver and platinum etc. as a sludge near the copper anodes , the copper of course plates out as purified copper in the cathode. and yes I have done this using an old battery charger. However I’m not so sure they would get as good a value on the gold when all this bulk was avoided companies I used to sell to paid a lot less on the same amount of gold as impurities went up , but not all company's are the same or have the same rules , so this may still be worth investigating , however you also lose the opportunity of selling used parts that can sometimes can be profitable , myself I wouldn't be comfortable not investigating that . See address in the back on Nuts and Volts magazine as a possible way to sell your excess used electronics components

If you want to pan for gold remember that the best places to look is often where water flows from a very fast source of water into a place where it is still and tends to also accumulate in cavities in the rock . Such a place might be at the end of a water fall . Mercury is really good at collecting gold and copper gold pans are often coated with mercury , but do look into vacuum distilling your mercury to recycle it but you can also dissolve the mercury in nitric acid and save the solution for recycling but you must be careful with it and by adding copper metal much of the mercury will go back to metal and the remainder can be reduced easily by heating in vacuum or with reducing agents but I need to do more experiments with this to give better advice . While metallic mercury is not all that poisonous its vapors and its water soluble compounds are

As a mater of interest I decided to save all of the tin containing sludge that comes from solder and any tin containing bronzes from gold processing . This is the stuff that tends to go through your fine screen with some tiny gold particles still in it . I never tried mercury panning to remove the gold particles and if you do plan to try it you will need to make sure all the nitric acid is neutralized or removed as it will dissolve mercury along with all its toxic problems . My sample is from processing 5 grams of gold from newer equipment so because the gold plating is thinner it tends to break into smaller particles more easily so I would not be surprised to find that more of a percentage of your gold could get through the screens as a result. Some small trace of gold will have been dissolved into any solder as well

Of course I prefer to use water and let settle a few times pouring off the clear copper containing water then I let the whole thing set in concentrated hydrochloric acid as it will very slowly dissolve the tin containing compound . This hydrochloric acid that I saved from more than one settling , also tends to dissolve some of the gold because of the traces of nitric acid

From this hydrochloric acid portion I got 190 mg of gold

From the remaining tin oxide sediment I thought it might be interesting to separate it into 2 parts because of how I noticed the most gold particles concentrating at the bottom of the sediment

Top part with only the thin layer of its bottom removed , I did this after it was dried so it could be scraped off , it gave 110mg

From the tiny amount scraped from its bottom of sample was 20mg
So the total of the above 2 samples is 135mg .From the entire sample all together including the hydrochloric acid portion it was about 320mg from the original sample that gave 5 grams of gold so you can decide for yourself if this can be worth processing . It cold however prove most practical to just save and dry all the sediment and then experiment with either melting it all or reducing the tin oxide to metal and then processing the tin metal to recover the gold . Dissolving it in pure concentrated hydrochloric acid could then work leaving gold particles .

TO RECOVER SILVER

Silver is to be found on relay contacts yes even washing machine timers use it , about a dollars worth in the general electric ones when silver was about 5.00 an ounce . You can easily pick the contacts off but many contracts are alloyed with cadmium but are still mostly silver . Often they are soldered onto copper bars in large relays such as in fork lifts . Switches sometimes have silver also but most times its rather small . I have however seen karat gold switch contacts in telephone equipment and about the best of these had about 10.00 worth in a very small box with motor that I have been told were thrown away in very large amounts . A lot of silver is used in photography and not much is in the photographs but the developer ADDED ON Oct 31 08 I was reminded it was not the developer that has the silver all I knew was the guy at the photo shop saved me their solutions and they contained the silver.

is a different mater but I believe its mostly recycled now but I’m not sure , one I know of recovered the silver but didn't yet know where to sell it , their recovery method just uses electrolysis and its usually a sodium thiosulfate containing mix

Found out Zinc will reduce the silver from thiosulfate mixes but it didn't work for me before. Turns out the zinc I used was so impure I got lots of other gunk more than silver so don't use that roofing zinc. I got good results with the zinc used in aluminum door frames for some reason.

so if you try to precipitate the silver with hydrochloric acid you will also get a lot of sulfur that slowly settles out along with the smell of sulfur dioxide same as burning sulfur as well as your silver containing precipitate. If you electroplate this silver out most all metals you can find to use as anodes will also dissolve but I have had reasonable results with titanium not dissolving , even battery carbons and stainless steel dissolve, point to remember is that by using a metal that dissolves at the anode you can use less electric power to deposit the same silver and scrap metal is cheap but you also have to deal with it as an extra impurity as what ones I have tried form sludge's but it shouldn't be much trouble to just wash and let settle a numerous times to get red of most chlorides and just treat it with nitric acid to dissolve the silver then precipitate as chloride or and also just treat with nitric acid and expect some will remain or reform as silver chloride and dissolve with chemicals as such .It appears that just adding zinc metal to the solution seams effective at reducing the silver so it will settle out in a mixture of compounds and while it is slow needs no electricity to work and the dissolving zing is just scrap metal any ways . Expect the silver to be metallic or as sulfides and are totally insoluble and dissolvable in nitric acid if no chlorides remain to re precipitate it . X ray film used a lot also and I have processed some of the developed film from one and got about 2/3of an ounce from a stack about 1 inch deep and about 8x12inch approximately I did not test the developer that most likely has most of the silver . The silver is just coated on in a gelatin or some other medium and was easily removed from the surface with sodium hydroxide in that one case . I have read that sometimes platinum and gold has been used in some X ray films ? The greatest source of scrap silver can be the silver batteries and they are rich in silver , not often used because of cost you can still find them where a rechargeable battery needs to have extra power per pound but they don't last all that long till needing to be replaced . Look to marine research and other such places . for this sort of battery in things like remote underwater robots . and because the batteries are also rich in other compounds , hydrochloric acid will remove them but leave the silver and its chloride , the chloride portion if it is included reduces with the below process to reduce silver chloride really well and that is what I had done to good results . Expect a good part of the actual battery weight is due to the silver content A five gallon bucket gave about 6 pounds of silver if I remember right , small silver batteries can also be found .

Refining silver I have done two ways both by electrolysis of a impure
silver anode in a bag of impure silver in a silver nitrate solution
using an old battery charger . Less active metals like gold stays
behind as a sludge in the anode bag were the impure silver is and more
active metals stays in the solution turning the clear silver nitrate
solution blue as in the case with copper .

A photo of the tank I set up to refine silver. Note the small plastic tube and small ice cube tray I put under the silver anode so that the impurities wound not fall into the refined silver. Pure silver is shown on the right with the plastic ruler I use to sweep up the silver.

 Also by dissolving the silver in nitric acid and precipitating it out as a chloride , salt will work but make sure you use enough to make sure no more silver chloride can precipitate , the blue solution is again usually due to copper with most other metals also remaining in solution , just wash with water and let it settle out then repeat etc. till you cant see any of the blue copper remaining "your preference on purity here". the silver chloride is very insoluble and usually settles out quickly unless precipitated from a rather dilute solution and if this is the case you will have to be patient for it all to settle . To make it metallic just bake over a .fire with lots of sodium hydroxide . the whole thing will turn very black as soon as the sodium hydroxide is added , but keep in mind that silver chloride will turn black in light any ways and really quickly in direct sunlight , its why its use in photographs by the way , this doesn't hurt it any , I prefer to take the still wet but thick putty like paste of silver chloride after it had been squeezed free of most of its water through a cloth, I usually add about an equal volume of sodium hydroxide . the sodium hydroxide will make the whole thing become very black and much more watery when it is added , but still you may need to add extra sodium hydroxide later on for good measure . it doesn't mater if you add to much as long as its not to little . You can dry the silver chloride first but I usually don't bother .The sodium hydroxide converts the silver chloride to a black silver oxide that the heat will reduce it and give off oxygen . Bake the mix till it first dries and then the sodium hydroxide portion melts and then the whole thing turns from black to gray , often I will still add extra sodium hydroxide to keep all the silver chloride well exposed to sodium hydroxide otherwise you may waste some by not converting it to metal . You could be careful and sometimes pour off the excess molten hydroxide .Hopefully by a little experimenting you might get a better feel for how best to use chemicals economically . Then after it has cooled off its just a mater then of washing the peace's in water and a dilute hydrochloric or sulfuric acid solution , of the salts and remaining hydroxide usually a lot of sodium carbonate will form from the air around it , and water again . The silver is a gray color and is spongy but it is silver.

I have not yet tried using glucose such as from corn surip to reduce silver oxide but if it works might be a lot better than all this heating etc

Note I haven't tried calcium hydroxide that can be bought at hardware stores in place of sodium hydroxide lye or Gilletts lye is sodium hydroxide but is quite cheap if you buy it commercially in drums . Mercury and lead chlorides can interfere but lead is still slightly soluble as a chloride .
Also sometimes you can use ammonium hydroxide to dissolve silver chloride but it only dose so to a low percentage of silver then you can get the silver chloride back by neutralizing till the ammonia smell is gone and is very slightly acid or neutral , but you can use indicators such as litmus paper . by adding acid even vinegar will work , this can help confirm its silver or recover silver chloride from impure mixes

Their is some interesting reducing agents you can try such as hydrazine it will reduce many low activity metals from compounds directly to metal .

How to make nitric acid from ammonium nitrate fertilizer
The lest effective way to do this is by just mixing its solution with sulfuric acid solution but what you get is really weak and just slowly forms nitric acid solution but if you don't mind it being extremely slow it will work and I have also used it to etch printed circuit board

A somewhat better way that's still easy but still gives you just an impure solution is to first react the nitrate fertilizer with calcium hydroxide , this will give you very powerful smelling ammonia that will evaporate off and after some time and ,most of the ammonium nitrate will become calcium nitrate provided you use sufficient calcium hydroxide . Of course you could concentrate this by evaporation but in the end you can use either old car battery acid or the more concentrated stuff you can buy and use just enough to precipitate out the calcium sulfate and leave a nitric acid solution , maybe use just enough silver nitrate to precipitate out any troublesome chloride that might dissolve gold .The best nitric acid is made by heating concentrated sulfuric acid with a nitrate and distilling off the concentrated nitric acid , and you will need this for your aqua regia . Remember if you must use rubber it will eat rubber so don't expect your rubber corks to last long however you may still get some acid made before they become completely unusable . Keep in mind nitric acid is used to make many explosives and I have no idea if in a mix with rubber under some conditions that it could behave explosively if ignited ? I made the acid this way and never thought to try testing this. You can buy sodium nitrate from fertilizer suppliers but it might be special order or only some can supply it , also you can make it from ammonium nitrate by substituting sodium hydroxide for calcium hydroxide and of drying to powder . You can make reasonably concentrated sulfuric by just boiling down ordinary car battery acid till it starts fuming

PLATINUM REFINING

I felt it would be a good idea to include some on processing platinum in case some of you may be interested in experimenting with the nitinol motors I have suggested .

Mar  08 added that this will be on the site when I get time. This was printed from the old site that had these ideas on it but are not added here yet.
You can use this catalyst for generating heat from methyl alcohol and this home made material works quite well .I made mine from old automotive catalytic converters used for pollution control. Here is an outline on how I refine it.

Newly added on Mar 08

MY EXPERIMENTS

Keep in mind that I have read that rhodium is not very soluble in aqua reagia so it might not dissolve out. I have some pure rhodium that I plan to test to find out what it will do. Rhodium is supposed to be dissolved in a fused bisulfate so that's worth looking into .I will be trying more experiments and posting them here.

Some of the best commercial processes actually melt catalytic converter materials but the temps are so high that the average experimenter would find those approaches difficult. I will be experimenting with fluxes to lower the temps. Cryolite (Na₃AlF₆, Sodium hexafluoroaluminate  might work with aluminum oxide but temps might still be about 900. C a hot wood fire can barely get 600 C but propane can get to slightly above the 1000 C. Some of those processes clamed that some sulfides are necessary to be added into the mix and that by mixing copper or iron oxides and reducing them to metal when the materials are fused helped remove the platinum metals. Very little platinum metals losses were achieved.

I have experimented with using copper oxide and melting honeycomb with an acetylene torch. Didn't seam to get much that way.

Tried using a thermite mix with catalytic converter material added but I didn't get much with it either but they were just crude experiments and need to be repeated in some more decent way. For those that don't know thermite is a mix of iron oxide and aluminum metal powder that burns at over 2000 C and melts iron easily. From what I can remember I got some melted iron from it but I could not fine much platinum in the sample but the whole thing was poorly done.

Some of my experiment in processing catalytic converters involved fusing them with sodium hydroxide to make them mostly water soluble, my intention was to try refining everything else away from the platinum metals and it sort of worked for the alumina ones that are the ones in pellets. Sodium hydroxide forms sodium aluminate even with a wood fire heat so its easy. Reaction with CO2 in the air reverts its solutions in water to sodium carbonate and aluminum oxide so you could in theory re use the sodium carbonate in place of sodium hydroxide to re do the process. Sodium carbonate will also convert aluminum oxide into soluble sodium aluminate but the temps are higher. Can use calcium hydroxide to make sodium hydroxide from its carbonate if you want as calcium hydroxide might be easier to get.

On the honeycomb it did make some of the material soluble but the residues on reacting with acid turned into a very thick mess of silica acid so I need to experiment more.

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WHAT DID WORK at least sort of.

Usually I get the platinum from a diluted down aqua regia that was used to dissolve the platinum ,the process dose take longer than dissolving gold so do let it set for a wile in the aqua regia I expect it should be mostly all dissolved in a few hours at room temperature but its not a bad idea to let it set all day . You can use ammonium chloride solution to precipitate it out as a platinum ammonium chloride also called ammonium chloroplatinate and is yellow and about 1% soluble and because it is slightly soluble you probably wont get it all very easily this way from a solution only containing a little platinum .I expect this would work best to slowly evaporate the aqua regia solution before adding the ammonium chloride in part because lead compounds would crystallize out but I usually didn't do this because I always preferred to use water ,iron and a little sulfuric acid to precipitate it down to an easier to refine volume .Usually with most first precipitation's I usually always got impurities . However you can re refine .Usually I will always have platinum containing liquids in any filter paper or what have you as well that I can reduce onto iron get a ,you might just add about maybe 80% water or whatever works best for you so its not unreasonably reactive if it was in concentrated aqua regia however if its already dilute you wont need to do this and then add a little sulfuric acid maybe 5% or more but less as it only means a slower rate of reduction . then just add some scrap iron it will displace the platinum just as copper salts will plate out on iron dissolving it . Impurities in what was in the iron such as carbon and silicon etc. will also be mixed with it but all this easily refines out and then you can partially refine this by for example I do expect a little nitric acid might dissolve some undesired metals from the iron reduced platinum powder such as lead metal powder , platinum of course won’t dissolve in the pure nitric solution then you can re dissolve it in aqua regia as a more concentrated and pure solution of platinum chloride .The silicon and carbon will just remain un dissolved and can be filtered out . Usually when I have refined platinum I always had to deal with lead that always seamed to really be a nuisance and I managed to get the platinum pure but its much more difficult than from most other common metals .but you may not have that problem if you are not refining from old catalytic converters from cars as a lot of lead was in the gasoline .

Platinum containing solutions made this way are always very colored yellow and this color usually tends to disappear as the platinum was removed from the solution with iron producing the much less colored ferrous sulfate , slight greenish yellow , same compound used to refine gold . I'm not even entirely sure now what happens when I tried to reduce with iron if the platinum containing acid was concentrated besides all the extra activity it may also cause the iron to start forming a sludge when I left it unattended . Re dissolving this sludge tends to be rather slow in hydrochloric acid You still won't lose the platinum , but if I remember right I needed to add a significant amount of hydrochloric acid to get a modestly strong concentration to re dissolve this iron mess. To be safe add a little extra iron in it in to re reduce any platinum to be sure you don't lose any platinum as only a trace of nitric in hydrochloric acid can start to dissolve it .

I have found that palladium won’t precipitate from aqua regia by ammonium chloride if you first dilute to about double the volume with water but if the aqua regia is still concentrated palladium will also precipitate and I have used this method to recover palladium after the platinum was removed . If you are processing automotive converters lead chloride, also about

1% water soluble may be including along with other lead compounds as well or with compounds that are sometimes extra slightly acid soluble and all like to precipitate out with the ammonium chloride or with water ,
Reducing platinum with heat is extremely simple as its so hard to
damage it by overheating , If you are reducing the platinum on another substance as a support it maters that it is durable to withstand the heating . In catalytic converters its a either an aluminum oxide or ceramic support . Most platinum compounds reduce at about 400 C but some are near 600 C well within the range of an ordinary torch or hot fire , but you could experiment with reducing agents one such as hydrazine , will reduce the metal from solution instantly . Hydrazine is hazardous however. Take care not to poison your catalyst with anything such as boron such as from
borax and some other poisons as well , but I expect one would only need to wash or chemically wash the catalyst to get it to work again at , worst you could re refine

 Page 2 Photos of the connectors and How much gold on those pieces Home

Below was written a long time ago when I had no camera

OLD INFO SAVED HERE

HOW MUCH IS IN OLD ELECTRONICS

I have some random samples that I have processed and kept track of how much gold I got and some general information I have found to be an approximate way to get an idea of how much you can hope for . It turns out that newer equipment is rather poor in gold content and one of the clues is they often have 74LS numbered chips and that tells you its possible much newer than the old diode transistor logic chips. 74 series chips are earlier than the 74LS but I have little to compare at this time with gold usage . Of course no recognizable chips at all or weird looking chips is sometimes a good indication its old , not to be to confused with surface mount chips that are of the commonly used type today of course. This older equipment is really loaded with heavy gold plating and another clue to the usage of extra gold is when all of the connector is plated not just the tips , for example the gold is even plated on the metal surrounded by the plastic casting and usually as well as the back of the pins . However you will find older equipment with just the tips plated but if it is older you can be rather sure its still a heavy amount .I still haven’t found any of the chips that an add in Nuts and Volts magazine add clams but of course I probably just missed getting any of these , the small electric motor switch boxes thrown away by the telephone company's were rather common with about $10.00 worth of gold contacts in Canadian $ each when gold was higher priced .

Other things I have wanted to look into was that I have read about silver containing steels used to make pistons , platinum used in military radar screens , but I have no idea how or where . Of course all those catalytic converters and heaters contain platinum in small amounts and what is this I read about silver bearings in some older airplane motors

OLDER OR EASY TO TELL RICHER CONNECTORS

Protected Headers these were all plated gold even the portion surrounded in the plastic portion and while from the same equipment listed protected headers above is similar to what is on older equipment . Blue plastic male connectors and 450 individual pins some was lost in part to going into the PC board and gave 190 mg gold . Note the males above gave only 70 mg per 1000 pins

On just the PC board about 275 inches total but includes some missing spaces that were not covered with gold gave 2g 195 mg . apparent date of this equipment was not so old but when all these cut pieces were put in one pile it was about 200 or 300 mls in volume . less volume if neatly packaged

Card edge connector really old near 3 inch total but connector area was about 2 ½ inch 30 gave 850 mg gold

D sub connector female really old with metal shell 25 pin ones gave slightly less than 20 mg each

Printer connector Parallel ( Centronics compatible connector) metal shell age unknown 50 contacts female 25 gave 610 mg gold

Chips , yes I was surprised as I don't know why they used gold on the cover of the chip as well as its pins . these are the heavy ceramic ones with the smaller metal cover in the middle that I thought would be just yellow brass but was heavy gold plate instead on I think it could be nickel as it doesn't react like iron but never did any further tests . These are the fairly large ones of 2 inches long and 9/16 wide that I used in this tests . 6 gave 400 mg gold . really nearly one half gram and its from newer equipment so its unusual why.

Really old and I’m not even sure what they are called but these boards have no ICs just small square aluminum boxes about ½ inch diameter that may have functioned somewhat like ICs at the time but are for pins with 1/8 inch centers spacing . Pull of the plastic cover and you can see the small sockets soldered onto both sides of the PC board . These have small tips of heavy gold plate thick enough that you may just be able to see its thickness with the rest with no gold at all . On these I have used a pair of scissors to cut these of in rows at a time. 1104 individual connectors gave 370 mg gold . but each connector had 24 connections and 2 on each board so it only took 23 boards for this sample

Really old PC board with just the gold plated edge about 6 inches typically gave me almost 350 mg . The p.c. edge connectors for these were similarly rich but used considerably more acid

Do remember gold is sold in troy ounces of 31.103481 grams and it takes 1000 mg to make a gram but the more common ounce is 28.349527 grams

Newer connectors

Flat cable connectors from 1000 individual contacts in black plastic connector female got 400 mg gold these had from 10 to 34 connectors each assorted maybe about 400 mls of assorted plastic in volume

Protected Headers , male on the PC board connector for the above connector also in black plastic , you may notice these are one of the most common types of connector and often have ejector latches to help protect keeping these in place and protected .From 1000 individual connector pins . Only gave 70 mg of gold from the same equipment source so I don't know why so much gold difference and its about 750 mils in volume as assorted

Edge connectors black plastic 3 ¾ inch total length 10 gave a puny 50 mg Expect not uncommon for nearly 10 times this in old equipment

Edge connector from about XT or close to that time period 6.5 inches long 5 of these gave a really measly 31 mg but you could look at the broken open connector to see that only the tips on the side that makes connection were plated lightly.

Edge connector also newer type similar to above 4 of about 3 inch long connector area gave 30 mg gold . very similar but still gave more for its size

Din type with 3 rows of plugs of 32 each to equal 96 pins total per connector 5 connectors give 480 individual connections in total and gave near 50 mg gold

Din type male for above tested a total of 3200 individual pins it gave 340 mg gold