PURIFYING GOLD

1. The silver proportion in gold scrap is checked. It should

be less than 8%.
2. The thin parts are put into the titanium boiler. The
thicker parts however should be melted first and put into
water in order to obtain thinner parts. The parts are
made thinner by pressing the in scrap sylinder.
3. 1 lt HNO3 (nitric acid) is calculated for 1000 gr gold
scrap, and HCl (hydrochloric acid) is calculated 3 times
as much as the total amount of nitric acid.
4. First the whole amount of hydrochloric acid and water
(same amount of nitric acid) are put into the boiler. Then
nitric acid is added slowly, 1 lt every time, checking the
reaction. When the reaction speed slows down, the
boiler is put on a heater and the acid is boiled.
5. The acid vapor is observed. The mixture is boiled until
the red vapor becomes white.
6. Acid is cooled thoroughly by adding a lot of water into
the boiler.
7. The remaining nitric acid in the boiler should be
eliminated. Therefore NH2CONH2 (urea) is added slowly
into the boiler until there isn’t any red vapor coming out.
8. The boiler is opened, and the liquid is put on the filter
with vacuum or using a pot. If the silver amount is high,
and if some silver chloride has passed through the filter,
the liquid is filtered through a cartridge filter.
9. The remaining on the filters is washed thoroughly, if
possible with hot water, until the yellow color
disappears.
10. FeSO4 (iron sulphate) or NaSO4 (sodium sulphate) or
Na2S2O5 (sodiummeta bisulphate) or N2H5OH
(hydrazinium hydroxide) is added to the filtered gold
liquid in order to precipitate gold.
11. The liquid with precipitated gold is put onto a second
filter and the gold is washed thoroghly with hot water on
 the filter. The acidity of the washing liquid is checked
with the tip of the tongue (liquid is taken with a clean tip
of finger and is tasted to check if there is still sourness
left) and so the process is finished.
12. In case there is still some gold left in the liquid in very
small particulles, the liquid is once more filtered through
a cartridge filter.
13. The liquid is taken into another barrel. In case there is
still some gold left in the liquid, some zinc powder, or
zinc tablettes, or alluminium tablettes are put into the
liquid. Thus the copper in the liquid precipitates and the
last possible amount of the remaining gold is taken
back.
14. The remaning liquid is put into a barrel containing some
iron material and the whole amount of copper is taken
back. Thus the liquid is disposed in a completely secure
way.
15. Scrap containing silver more than 8% are melted addind
copper or gold to have the desired proportion. If gold
proportion has become less than 35%, gold is first
reacted with only nitric acid and the excess amount of
gold is melted in nitric acid. The remaining high grade
gold is purified with aquaragia.
16. Silver chloride is precipitated as white precipitate by
adding salty water to nitric acid. It is washed thoroughly
with hot water, as it had been done to the silver chloride
which remained on the filter after aquaragia was
applied, and taken to another pot. Some water is added
to dilute it, and it is thoroughly mixed by adding zinc
powder. The excess zinc is removed from silver by
adding hydrochloride acid. The remaining metallic
powder is washed on the filter until there is no more acid
left and then it is melted.