Phil, lets say I had a gold nugget from panning and I wanted to refine it. Since it is about 16 to 18.

5k gold I would most likely inquart it, (melt it with silver to lower karat), (at melt karat 18% I might be able to just use nitric without inquarting, but to insure I got all the base metals, I would quarter the gold with silver).
(NOTE: To inquart gold: 75% silver 25% gold. Melt together in a melting dish, and drop into metal bowl with cold water to form flakes. See Steves video. Then follow the procedures stated below.) procedures

1) Process inquarted gold thru Nitric solution. (50% water / 50% acid. Heat if necessary) solution 50% acid Now nitric can get down under the gold and attack the base metals. Depending on how metals much silver I added, gold would be either brown powder or a much pitted nugget of gold. 2) After reaction stops, allow to settle; decant nitric from gold. gold To the nitric acid, after decanted from gold, add Hydrochloric acid to get back, (drop drop) gold the silver out of it as silver chloride. (Set aside for time being). 3) Dissolve gold in AR solution. (80% HCI / 20% Nitric. Apply heat) solution
(Hoke states, 4 fl oz HCI (muratic acid) + 1fl oz HNO3 (nitric acid) will dissolve 1 troy oz of gold. This is equivalent to 31ml of HCI + 8ml of HNO3 per gm of gold.)

The gold would then be dissolved in Aqua Regia, best to only use the amount of nitric needed to get gold completely dissolved with heat. No need to use urea, I do not use urea; instead I boil the Aqua Regia down to almost syrup (not to crystals). not crystals 4) Boil off nitric acid before dropping gold with SMB. SMB Carefully watch first boil! What happens is, the nitric in solution gets concentrated and will try and foam over at the most concentrated point, if you watch it, after boiling for a while you will see foam bubbles forming around top of liquid; at this point lower heat, wait until this point of concentration is passed, then you can raise heat. Once you have syrup, add some HCl to wet solution and boil it again to syrup. Do this for a total of three times, in order to eliminate nitric acid from the aqua regia solution (no times need to use urea). Now we can add 3 times the water. This will dilute the acid to where the silver chloride that it held, (this is some Ag that was still in the gold), will come down as white cottage this gold cheese; let solution sit overnight and decant solution from silver chloride powder. Now we can precipitate the gold from this yellow solution. Butcher 5) Precipitate gold with SMB NOTE: Filter the solution BEFORE precipitating gold with SMB! SMB! leavemealone, post re: what is my wrong? Typically you want to use an equal amount of SMB, as the amount of gold you estimate in your solution IE: if you figure theres roughly 3 grams of gold, use 3 grams of SMB, then test your solution after decanting. (If gold SMB using copperas you need to double that figure.) Johnny

The SMB can be used dry or wet it works either way. The key is to use enough SMB to reduce all the gold to a metallic state. This usually requires 1 gram of SMB per gram of gold to be reduced as a general rule of thumb. If you don't get all the chlorine (HCl-Cl reaction) or nitrate (AR reaction) out of the solution the amount of SMB needed could increase, typically not more than double the amount of gold expected. If you want to use water with your SMB, the solubility of SMB in water at 20C is 47 g per 100 mL, so a pint of 20 C water (473 mL) can hold enough SMB when saturated to reduce ( 47 x 4.73) 222.3 grams of gold at optimal conditions. Steve As for adding SMB, I always add my SMB dry with lots of swirling of the beaker or , stirring with a glass rod. Stannous tests afterward proves the gold is all precipitated. rod Just two days ago the temperature outside was below 40F (~4C) at dusk. I precipitated a batch of gold from solution, outside in the cold, with solid SMB in less than 2 minutes. I added the SMB and swirled the flask, within one minute the solution turned dark brown. Within 1 hour all the gold had settled nicely. The solution was filtered outside and was completely cooled. Expect a slight delay of less than 2 minutes before the solution changes to clear then brown. I find that the removal of oxidizers from the gold solution to be the most important factor when using SMB. All the free chlorine or NOx should be removed before adding dry SMB. If you add a small amount of SMB and brown powder forms then re-dissolves, you have free oxidizers in the solution. Add small amounts of dry SMB with stirring, let it all dissolve, then add more if necessary. Test with stannous once the brown cloud or sponge of gold settles. Steve Re: Best way to use SMB I use mine dry. Gold precipitates as a brown powder if the solution is clean, and a more black colored if the solution is dirty. I never check pH when using SMB. Steve Thank you Steve for your reply. I have seen the SMB precipitate out of solution as a white powder by a metallurgist in Las Vegas on my chlorine solution. In your opinion can it precipitate as a gold chloride? Joyce if the solution contains copper II chloride and you add SMB, you will get an off white to grey collared precipitate of copper I chloride along with your gold. This contamination dissolves easily with warm HCl. Steve

WASHING THE GOLD POWDER AFTER USING SMB post by lazersteve 1) After precipitating the gold with SMB, test for gold in solution with stannous chloride, if present (purple swab) add more SMB until test is negative. Here's how stannous looks to Gold, Platinum, and Palladium

Note the color of the results will be lighter if the concentration is low. The colors will also vary if you have several of the metals in the same solution. 1. Let the gold powder settle to the bottom of the beaker over night. 2. Siphon or gently pour off the used SMB solution into an old milk jug labelled Used SMB. Save in your stock pot or properly dispose of. 3. The gold powder stays in the same beaker you precipitated it in. 4. Add just enough water to cover the gold powder and boil for 5 minutes. 5. Let settle and pour or siphon off the water into the stock pot. 6. Repeat three times. 7. Add just enough muriatic acid to cover the gold powder. 8. Boil for 5 minutes and pour or siphon off into the stock pot after testing with stannous. If gold is present keep in separate beaker to precipitate later. 9. Repeat until the acid is no longer discolored by the process. 10. Repeat the water rinse as above.

11. If you suspect silver is present as a contamination, repeat the process with hot 3% household ammonium hydroxide (unscented- clear). Put these rinses in a separate container and add muriatic acid until no more white silver chloride precipitates. You have added enough HCl when there are no more white fumes coming out of the liquid. Any karat, dental, cpu lid, or gold filled scrap will have silver as a contaminate. 12. Finish up the rinses with three more hot water rinses. Put these rinses in with the ammonium hydroxide rinses. 13. Gently heat the beaker containing the gold powder while swirling the beaker. As the gold dries it will begin to clump and move around the beaker freely. Don't allow the gold to stick to the beaker. 14. When the gold is 100% dry it should be a nice light tan color, if not re-dissolve it and precipitate again with SMB. Repeating the above cleaning process after precipitation. Good clean gold settles very quickly when precipitated and clumps into nice balls when dried. No gold should be stuck to the beaker when you are done. 15. When completed transfer the gold to a properly prepared melting dish and melt into a button. 16. Steve Re: AR process for placer gold When we dissolve a metal in an acid the metal gives up electrons on the atomic level, the metal is still in this solution, when we give back these electrons the metal it will precipitate back out of solution as a metal. Lets look at gold with its place on the reactivity series (if you dont have an idea about reactivity series, do a search for it on web; get a chart for your refining notes), gold is at the bottom of the series, a very un-reactive metal, it will not dissolve in nitric acid, it will not dissolve in hydrochloric acid, but in a combination of the two of these acids it will dissolve, the nitric oxidizes the gold and then it will become a metal salt with the chloride from the hydrochloric acid, giving up its electrons, this is now yellow dissolved salt of gold chloride, the nitric in solution will keep it dissolved, until it is eliminated (or used up). Now, to get our gold back, how can we do this? Well, one way. We could just replace the gold from solution. Take a look at the reactivity series, and the position of copper in the series compared to gold. Copper is above gold, meaning, it is more reactive, so by adding copper to this acidic salt of gold in solution, the copper will start dissolving, giving up its electrons to the acid and if we had excess acid it would not start precipitating the gold until all of the unreacted acid was used up, then the copper would continue giving up its electrons, but now to the dissolved gold in solution. Since the gold got back its electrons, it will form back into a metal (brown powder) and precipitate out brown powder of solution. Once all of the gold has precipitated and the solution is loaded the copper bar will not dissolve any further (nothing left to take its electrons). Now with dissolved nothing electrons copper salts in solution, all these copper atoms are missing their electrons; a metal higher in series can replace the copper from solution, and so on.

Another method to get the gold from aqua regia would be to eliminate the nitric acid ( 3 boil, Hcl additions method ) and the use a chemical to precipitate the gold, here is an equation using sodium bisulphite (notice the ITE in the name NOT ATE), this is a chemical reaction with the gold chloride, not a replacement reaction like the example above. 2HAuCl4 + 2NaHSO3 --> 2Au + 4HCl + NaSO4 + SO2. The sulphur dioxide gas, after the arrow, gave back the gold its missing electrons, precipitating the gold. In the examples above the acids dissolve the gold metal, gold loosing its electrons, becoming a yellow liquid. Copper was a replacement reaction, giving gold back the electrons, making gold precipitate, but loosing its own. The second one was a chemical reaction, used to precipitate the gold. By: R. Butcher NOTE: Check SMB solution for other metals that could be present before storing or NOTE properly disposing of it! I, philddreamer, took the liberty to compile some of the great information from a number of different posts from the GRF.com, so to have a guide when processing my first batch of inquarted gold. The result, a beautiful 13.4gm golden slug! Thank you, thank you, thank you, all you brothers & sisters @ GRF.com. I could not have done it without you. Phil (philddreamer) Figueroa Lynnwood, WA.