Gold Recovery from plated cutlery
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 มิ.ย. 2024
- In this video I use a concentrated Sulfuric acid deplating cell to recover the Gold from some plated cutlery. A reasonably successful experiment and a bit of fun for the weekend.
- วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
That's a reasonably cheap way of gold recovery! GREAT VIDEO!!
Have a GREAT Day My Friend!!!
I been hangin for more of your videos, love em 👍🏻
Thanks for the comment bryzabone, appreciate it!
Thank you for doing that!! Great video too btw, I love your step by step instructions.
You are most diffidently a Successful Engineer! You help let the 23,091 viewers see that this is not a good profitable way to extract the little amount of goldplated ware. I bet most that watched were pondering about buying a crapload of plated Gold/Silverware in thrift shops only to find out what you just show. You saved them a lot of time/money! Thank you for sharing.
Thanks for the comment Clarence, yes, this is definitely not a good way to make money!
Good to see it processing again by the way buddy 😁
That is incredibly quick deplating
Yeah, it was about that point that I realized I was likely going to lose money on this experiment :)
Great video 👍🏼
Thanks for the comment Willy!
Great video. I make similar videos but not on gold yet! Keep up the good work!
Very interesting.learn something new everyday
Thanks for the comment Frank
what type of protection are you using to protect your hands and face from the acid?
Rubber gloves and a full face shield is pretty much a minimum for Sulfuric acid. Sulfuric is dangerous, but luckily pretty easy to work with, no real fuming and pretty high viscosity. Latex gloves definitely dont work, the conc Sulfuric will char them pretty fast.
thanks for sharing your knowledge man.. This is so interesting. I wonder why this works. Why the gold falls off, and then the amperage drops when you should be getting into material the the H2SO4 wants to eat right up, like the copper or nickel that the electroplaters apply to the steel before sticking on the gold. That's curious. Would weaker acid such as battery acid work also I wonder? Secondly, is there a silver deplating equivalent that you know of that you could share by chance? Cheers W
Hey mate, I remember reading a patent about this a few years ago, from memory, when applying power, an acid forms at the boundary of the H2SO4 and Gold that is able to dissolve Gold, but as soon as the dissolved Gold moves into the H2SO4 it precipitates out as the fine black powder. The H2SO4 has to be 98%, as soon as you dilute it it will start attacking the base-metal, so battery acid will not work unfortunately. Yes, I'm reasonably sure (not tested) that this also works for Silver. But I have also read that you can use a solution of Sodium Sulfite in water to do a similar thing with Silver, have a look on the gold refining forum, pretty sure that is where I read about the Sodium Sulfite.
@@successfulengineer Thanks for getting back to me.. I had a bit of a think about the current flow dropping when the gold is gone and have put it down to the conductivity of gold vs iron, or whatever base metal is under the gold. I mentioned nickel and copper but was reminded those are only used when plating Chrome. Unsure what's under gold. As for 98% H2SO4, it's easy enough to concentrate some battery acid but a shame I can't get it from the hardware store like I could when I lived in Oz. But yeah, 98% should smash through anything you put to it that isn't gold, tin, lead or silver. Try dropping some paper into some. Up in smoke!!
I wonder, have you measure the density of the sulphuric to see if it has lost anything through the process? 100ml should weigh 184.3g
@@waynoswaynos The Sulfuric acid is hygroscopic, so if you leave it exposed for too long, you will see the volume increase which also means the acid is getting diluted. Other than that, the acid does not appear to change in any way. On the current drop, no idea what causes it, but sometimes I'm OK with just knowing something works and not fully understanding it, just like magnets :) th-cam.com/video/MO0r930Sn_8/w-d-xo.html
That plating is thin all right! Have you ever tried to recover gold from gold plated ceramic and glass jugs/bowls etc which appear to be thicker than metal plating, but I guess appearances can be deceiving? Thanks for sharing your findings.
Hey, have never tried recovering the Gold from ceramics, have considered it a few times, but the problem is unless you work with a reasonbly common item the finders will not be useful to the greater community. Should be pretty easy recovery from ceramics anyway! Thanks for the comment!
Ceramic gold plating i do in bleach and hydrochloric but you need a ton of it
Dose anyone know if the sulfuric cell stripping process works with plated nickel? Because I have A LOT of black sludge about two 500ml beakers thick-full and wet ! Some of my scrap panels have a 30-70Um Nickel strike on each side under 90-120Um of gold.
Nickel is very commonly used as a barrier to Copper when Gold plating items (like pins), so it shouldn't cause any issue in a Sulfuric cell as far as I know.
Nice one mate, i bay once some spun and forks to make a video but vhen my mother see it they took it from me and put im in the kabinet 😂😂😂
Hahaha, yeah, I can imagine that! Think I will stick with plated electronics for now, always had bad luck with plated household items!
probably more valuable as cutlery anyway!
If you wash the utensils can you eat off of them after the gold deplaning?
I guess in theory if you give the a very good scrub down with a pot scrubber (slightly abrasive) it would technically be safe-ish. At that point you probably have a combination of a Copper alloy with maybe some Nickel on the surface. I wouldn't bother using them, but it probably wont kill you!
@@successfulengineer ok thank you for the information!
A little gold goes a long way!😁
Hahaha yep
@@successfulengineer Here's something to have a look at, please. I'd love for you to join our fun! Dankie! online.flipbuilder.com/ufgm/robk/mobile/index.html#p=1
I have a mysterious transformer in my possession. Its pretty old, 50 years or so. Windings all seem to be gold plated. Couldn't find an example of either brass or gold plated transformer windings online. Help me solve the mystery PLEASE!
I have never seen a transformer with Gold plated windings, much more likely that it is just shiny Copper. A little bit of 35% Nitric acid will tell you pretty quickly!
I have a whole complete set that I got from a demoed house working construction and it was all gold plated wrapped in plastic still it looks really really pretty but I know that the gold plating is real thin my wife seen it and said no you're not going to do that she kept them she still hasn't use them though... I'm surprised the fiberglass Charmin plug worked considering the amount of gold I figure it should I've rent large numbers of gold-plated pins and plug Charmin after Sherman so these days I prefer to let it settle for a week if it has two and then decant the liquid from the top down then I'll dilute it with ice water and then boil it seems to make the gold drop a lot faster and easier to work with
Yeah, this was the first time I tried the charmin plug, usually I just let it settle too. I reckon the plug worked pretty well and it was all done in a few minutes. The acid coming out the bottom was pretty clear, so I didn't think I had missed too much. Something like kaowool would probably work great.
@@successfulengineer I ran about 40 lbs of full plated pins and the Charmin plug was to loaded to continue filtering ...not a bad thing it was just alot of gold pulled 18+grams.
Haha, yeah, that would be such a nice problem to have! Did you have some kind of automated system for hte 40 lbs? I've been considering building one of those rotating deplating systems.
@@successfulengineer no I rarely process my own material these days just ...others in a toll refine service...
Nice, are you finding it OK profitability wise? I tried it once, but just couldn't justify the time for the low income. I also didn't want my hobby to become just a low-wage job. If you have your processes nicely figured out, I'm sure it can be quite a nice job.
recent subscriber.love your video.so informative.learning loads from you.keep up the good work. I can only get my hands 85% sulphuric acid
would that work for this procedure.
Hi David, unfortunately you will need 98% for this process. Even in the mid 90s it starts attacking the base metals. It is technically possible to concentrate yours by boiling off the water, but Ive never tried it myself.
@@successfulengineer thanks for the quick reply.yeah I thought as much.ill do a bit f research.looks like a good system...I have you tryed potassium ionide, iodine and water.its very good for plated material aswell and very quick.keep up the good work
@@davidbarron107 Yep, tried Iodine at one point also Potassium Iodide, good luck with both at deplating material, terrible luck with both at getting my Gold back out of the solution!
How about heavy gold plated 925 silver jewelry. will this also work? how much volts do i need? thanks in advance
Hi, whenever I have done this it has been with material with a Copper based base, unfortunately I have no idea how a Silver based base will react!
Successful Engineer thanks! I hope you will have this as your future content..
Another good video
Thanks for the comment mate.
@@successfulengineer maybe this is the wrong question, can gold be measured in picometers? If so, wouldn't the particles be light enough to float, kind of sounds something like gold in solution form then weighting it down with smb, just asking possibly some gold may be getting through I've noticed the recycle diy electronics videos they make their final decision on visible gold bond wire in the material then it goes in the trash with the cameras they're using maybe they're not able to see a particle of a gold bond wire or washing it away , it adds it adds up.
@@vincenttelfer4206 Bond wires are usually pretty easily visible with a microscope. Gold in solution we can test for, and usually do to confirm that we don't put any dissolved Gold into the waste treatment. Very small particles of Gold would be harder to deal with, but they usually either settle or filter out pretty well. The best approach is really to have a good idea of how much Gold there should be, then ensure that you get most of it.
@@successfulengineer is this what makes you a successful engineer? Haha! To me it looked like drilling and grinding it up showed the best yield 2nd would be reverse electroplating and so on, using a drill bit with the best metal block with a straight down hole beveled enough to feed the material with a hopper where the material falls through a mesh , looking for better than 100 mesh screen, then slueth the material possibly putting smb (or something to weigh the gold down) in the water run off and rinse water then storing it for a short time, with the smb I just thought of that talking about sleuthing it feel free to try it or maybe there's nothing there may be no effect, there is a utube video with using a drill bit then there's the robot drill bits isn't that the cnc machines that grind the top layer off an IC chip, fun
are you sure it is H2SO4?!
how much molarity?
no other additives?!
Hi, yep, to work it has to be very high concentration, I used 98%
Hi there I have a question, can I just melt the gold cutlery and then do it with aqua regia?
No, that would be a terrible idea, the key is to try and recover the Gold without having to dissolve Copper, otherwise you will use a lot of acid, take a lot of time and create a lot of toxic waste for a very small amount of Gold.
@@successfulengineer
Okay
plating gold 22 k?
where can u get them for free ? . i looked on ebay and theyre asking a small fortune
Haha weird, back in the day when I was looking for them, I usually got them for $1 and then had to add $5 for shipping!
Hey no video in a long time... where is your total year gold weight?👍🏼
Hey Willy, yeah, been a few other projects occupying my time, but defintely still adding to the Gold jar regularly. Will definitely do another weigh-up near the end of the year!
Thanks buddy... happy holidays!🎄
Sir how do you silver polish on steel pot ?make video please sir
👍🏻
Oh yeah it thick
Coded of 23k gold plated metal
How would you do that with the23k gold plated Pokémon card from 1999 from Bk anywear from 0.99-150.59
Good to know but in practice if it's not free you have some very expensive gold
Yep, pretty much, I certainly wouldn't bother again.
Could you do that to gold plated Pokémon cards
I don't get - why did you use sulphuric acid?
What else could you use ?
Nitric, muriatic or organic acid. Am I wrong?
Nitric and Hydrocholoric acid would both react with the base metal under the Gold. Concentrated Sulfuric acid deplating has been around for a very long time, I've never heard of anyone trying to do deplating with any other acid. I believe the process relies on some 'other' acid forming at the Gold-Acid boundary, this acid is able to dissolve Gold, but as soon as it is not on that boundary, it ceases to exist and the Gold precipitates out as the fine black powder. I can't seem to find the patent right now that specifies what the 'other' acid was, but I think I have a copy of it in my workshop somewhere.
Great explanation :) Why did you type in comment instead talk about it in video? 🙃
Hey, yeah, seems like that would have been good!
Surfuric Acid in high concentration is quit thick (high viscosity). One technique I recall is to thin it down with water (carefully) then let the gold percipitate out. Drain off acid and heat to evaporate added water leaving concentrated surfuric acid.
Hi, yes, that would certainly work, just need to go very slowly with adding the acid to cold water! I guess you would probably just have to double it's volume for it to be similar viscosity to water.
Should have used an alligator clip not a crocodile would have gotten better results.
LOL, almost certainly.
Where did you get your acid and how much did it cost. I'm always looking for deals on acid.
Are you located in NZ ? The majority of chemicals needed for refining are not controlled here, so I just buy from regular chemical suppliers, Hamilton Chemicals is very good and reasonably priced.
@@successfulengineer no I'm in the u.s. if they have a web site would you send it to me. Thanks
Hi Barry, these are the guys I deal with often -> hamchem.co.nz/ but don't think it would be much use to you in the states! HCl you can obviously buy from just about any pool supply shop, I believe in the states you can order Nitric through biodiesel supply shops.
thank you its save my time.. mow i see, better was change the gold plated cutlery set to an air gun :-)what is sold for 100 dollar:-))
Definitely!
Worth it if you have 100k spoons lol
Yep, and only really if you get them free!
@@successfulengineer dumpster dive lol
I feel like you lost a bit mate...idk lol
Mr.master subtitel indonesian? Plis
Hi there, would love to, but I can't seem to do it on released videos.
Way too much superfluous talking with little yield on pc boards.
Since this video featured some cutlery, I have absolutely no idea what you mean