I know this turned out to be a rough few days, but thanks for sticking it out and teaching a lot of us some new problems to avoid. You're still RUclips's number one refiner! :)
@@QuaaludeCharlie yea it pains me to see people destroying history, but in this case it was too late. I have seen people destroy commodore 64 that sell for thousands to get a few dollars worth of scrap.
The people buying those parts are over paying haha. They buy em, they sit on them, then they sell them or give away after their gone.. i wait, and i get those free, cuz storage is more expensive then chemicals..
Not often am I mesmerised for a straight 45 mins. Bonus periodic table content at 00:29:22 I've seen this thing so many times in my life and it bored me to death. Your 20 second breakdown taught me more than 6 years of education ever did. Wonderful video :)
@@mranon42023The irony of you not being able to string a sentence together using capital letters and full stops whilst critiquing my education is not lost on me. Amazing.
@@waynes517 nice cope right there. people don't capitalize on the internet bc they are lazy, not bc they don't know better... and you are still an ignorant 🤣🤣 besides this dude doesn't even say anything intelligent since there are a lot more precious metals like patinum, iridium, etc that are objectively more stable than silver
this video, imo , is much more than a refining/chemistry video. What we have here is/are incredible lessons in ingenuity, perseverance, and integrity !! Top drawer!
I used nitric acid to loosen the gold and release it from the copper. Ended up putting most of the copper in solution. This was a giant pain. But it made a good video.
@@sreetips Yes, all of your videos are good. You could get a bikini model assistant. Call her Beaker. But I was thinking that gold melts at a lower temperature. Melt it off of the pins. But, me contractor! Thanks for the show.
I got to tell you. I never went to school for this stuff and only watching your videos and because of that you have taught me everything I know thank you you're an amazing teacher and you're awesome at what you do
This is no doubt my favorite kind of videos! Since I am preparing for the same kind of recovery and refine myself. I am willing to bet there is a whole lot more people just like me watching this!
@@sreetips Yes it is. I think things like this will propel your subscribers greatly! Not that you are hurting for subscribers. I think there is over a million future subscribers that are into Escrap just like me and this kind of video will speed up your growth, which I'm enjoying seeing your amazingly speedy growth!!!
Very easy to lose money. Good idea to work on small batches until you are confident in your skills. Moreover, you absolutely need a safe, well ventilated work area including a fume hood and other safety equipment. Fumes are insanely toxic wouldn’t take much to seriously injure or kill. Also, there is a hidden cost, safe disposal of waste material. Not often discussed. You WILL generate nontrivial amounts of toxic waste.
@@bentationfunkiloglio I'm doing this because of my passion for it, so if I loose money I'm totally fine with that. I've been studying this since 2017 and I understand very well most all the dangers & I'm taking all the precautions I can. The RUclipsr Ewaste Ben said you should study this for 4 or 5 years before you start just to be educated as much as possible on the safety side of things! Thank you for response & concern!!
Streetips, I was mesmerized by the entire process. My late husband watched your vids and was always doing this sort of thing. Somehow watching this helped me not miss him so much because it was as if he was here watching and or participating in the experiment. I Thank You for following through to the end result, as he or any true scientist would. Very fascinating ....
You are very kind. Some comments are gratifying to read (I try to read and respond to each comment). But this one touches me in a way that I can’t describe. I’m glad that it brought you a little comfort. Thank you very much.
@@sreetips, Thank you for reaching out and responding to me with human kindness. You touched this gal's Heart. I noticed this morning how well our dog rested through the night, being calmed by your voice, which is of a similar resonance to my late husband's. It is the small things in life that many times mean the most .... ( :
I'm glad you're doing this, you are by far better educated in the processes of this. 10 pounds of pins yields near an ounce, for $1000.00. You got the facilities for this experiment, perseverance pays off.
I ended up using about five 2.5 liter bottles of nitric. At that time they cost about $50 per 2.5 liter bottle. So 5 times $50 equals $250 for the nitric, not a grand.
@@sreetips would it still be a profitable use of your time if you did not have a youtube channel is what I am getting at? I don’t know anything about this I just looked up nitric acid and it seemed to be over 200 dollars a bottle. Excuse my ignorance on the topic.
This was not chemistry, a chemist would never spend all that acid when you could simply dissolve the gold off those pins in 3 minutes using spa chemicals or bleach. 30% peroxide would have boiled the gold off the copper in 15 seconds. smelting in a microwave would have taken 15 minutes. Chemists are cheap bastards anyways for the most part. As for the science my friend this has been done for hundreds of years and they figured out this is not the method over 125 years ago. Just ordering the Nitric alone for this project is a quick way to get yourself on a list, there are much better ways and if you're going to use Nitric, be realistic and buy a setup to make your own, it's easy and cheap and keeps you off ATF's radar. Everyone says it's no big deal until they show up at your doorsteps, then try telling your heart to beat quietly as their Gold Plated Badges tweak your mind and make you ask yourself if you put all your clothes in the hamper and toys in the toybox, better to just avoid them altogether and learn how to make your own chemicals. Everything anyone ever needs is easily made at home and you learn most of what you should learn in learning how to get them and refine them.
I took one chemistry class 45 years ago - got a “D” - you don’t have to be a chemist to refine precious metals. And your 15 minute “easy method” has been tried by many a novice with negative results. I only wish that it was that easy! Thanks for watching the video.
Truth is I am an engineer of 35years experience. Seen many many things. Try to open your mind a bit. There is always another way to a solution and usually all those innovations are borne out of necessity and have their place. That is what learning is all about, but maybe learning has stopped for some.
My way is not “the way” but rather “a way” to get the gold. In accordance with the reactivity series of metals, the gold would dissolve, then cement right back out on the copper until all the copper was dissolved into solution. Then the gold would stay in solution. Two other ways to get the gold from these pins; acid/peroxide or sulfuric acid stripping cell. Acid/peroxide could take weeks. And I can never get a good yield with the stripping cell. I chose these pins because I had plenty of nitric, and I knew that I could dissolve the copper to get the gold. I try to pick the battles that I know I can win.
Professor,great video! Really enjoyed your content. I dropped out of chemistry many many many moons ago. Who would have thought the cool stuff you can do with that knowledge. Thanks for the lesson 🙂.
That trick with grabbing the pins and swirling to rinse the foils is brilliant. In the past I spent so much time trying to rinse the foils out of the beaker. I will be using that trick soon....thanks for the tip!
Some of the metals in the brass for insoluble oxynitrates from the reaction's heat. The brass also forms tin nitrate, that creates white crystals after a while.
For pins, I use an electrolysis cell with a titanium anode. The dilute sulphuric acid electrolyte is relatively fume free. It leaves foils like the other processes, and is non sensitive to the presence of tin in the base alloy. I've processed 40 pounds in 8 gallons of solution, using 1 quart of sulphuric acid, before the underlying nickel plating fouls the electrolyte to the point where it slows down. Recovery of the remaining dissolved copper, that's not collected on the cathode, is treated with iron to form copperas, which I use later to drop gold.
Hello David: would you mind sharing some details of the electrolysis process you use? Details on your titanium anode (perhaps where we can find one)? Cathode set-up? Electrolysis conditions (voltage, amps)?
@@tech-e-cycle2608 I use basically the cheapest titanium foil I can find on eBay for the Anode. I think it's something like 0.005" thick and 4"wide, but anything that will carry the current and not corrode would work. Cathode is simply a stripped end of 10-12 guage wire. It will get bigger in surface area as it collects copper. Solution is one quart of sulphuric acid in 7-8 gallons of water, but that can be scaled back to what ever size you want. I run my cell with a 5vdc 60A power supply, but I've never seen it draw more than about 10 amps. My meter didn't survive my latest move, so I can't tell what it's pulling exactly now. I use a 5micron filter bag I got from Duda Diesel for the Anode bag that keeps the pins in electrical contact with the Anode and each other. It's basically the same as any other parting cell, except I found out that it's not necessary to melt the pins into an Anode plate first. I am discovering that the pins have to be porous enough for the saturated electrolyte to be able to be replaced with fresher electrolyte or it will slow down and stagnate. This is not the same as the Faraday cage effects you see in the concentrated sulphuric acid stripping cell.
Watched a guy on RUclips do it using distilled vinegar and salt in a bucket. Took a long time but it did separate the gold from the base metal pins. Very safe way to do it.
Call me crazy, but I wouldn't mind having a Sreetips poured and stamped bar made from the precipitated copper waste. I can't afford the high purity gold or silver crystals, but I think I could definitely afford a nice "refined" copper bar.
Yup. He needs a logo and then he can pour high purity coins. If he makes oxygen free 5 9s copper he can charge as much per gram as the gold for scientific use.
Damn right, I was thinking about that too, with the amount of "waste" copper, that he is producing, could probly make a lil bit of profit. Cuz anytime you can sell something you see as "waste" that is pretty much pure profit, usually
Material purchase was $1,000 (plus shipping?). The result was 22.6g 24K(?) .999 pure gold with a current value of ~$1,274. Take out the cost of the chemicals, filters, and equipment... I know you weren't in this one for the money, and I appreciate the great video!
You missed the number of hits on the video that RUclips pays. It's worth it all right & I'm not knocking anybody's video. I've learned good stuff by these videos.
This video motivated me to take the few baubles purchased at Rumage, test them, and see my FIRST few flakes of gold! I’m so excited! Thanks to you and my HS chemistry teacher Mr Kowert!
Very interesting, you spent $1000 and recovered about $1300. taking into account time spent and acid, it's still a loss. As you say it's a calculated mistake and a valuable lesson learned. Thank you for continuing with the experiment.
astounding! Great video production. I got 7 miles of silver plated wire. I planned on doing the stair step gravity melt method simply because I'm no chemist and handling 7 gallons of acid simply does not appeal to me.
Thanks for posting Sreetips, these have to be some of my favorite videos of yours. And they help so much to those of us who are going to start refining or are still new to it. Edit: you ever considered doing copper bars to sell? Looks like you got a ton of waste in that bucket! But hey, one mans trash is another man treasure lol. Don't ever be afraid to admit mistakes also! That's how we learn best, past failures.
@@sreetips how about you turn it in to metal that can be melted and you send it to big stack casting and he casts into ingiots and he sends you some subscribers well hes at it
@@sreetips in this case too? I got a lot of gold pins/strips coming from computer boards, well I got it practically for free, so it is worth it for me anyhow. How much in % was left in the end? Because 22g is like 1100-1200 euro's (srry, living in the rat-hole of the Nether-lands)
I wonder if the gold that was left on those pins you had leftover could be directly smelted? I've been thinking about building a forge for a different reason but if I get the opportunity I'll see if I can't figure that out and let you know what I discover in the process because I've seen quite a few small forges that I could make for easily under $100. I do everything on a tight budget out of necessity (especially lately) and I'm kind of the king of Improv never having what I need to do something the best way but usually always having what I need to do things on the cheap not to mention I love repurposing things that would have gone in the trash otherwise. I'll let you know if I find out something useful or economically significant
@@damdangus8588 electrowinning (electrolysis) I did some more research and recently got some insight (from chat gpt-4) on how to precipitate Copper from the mixed metal solution while leaving gold in solution that is highly temperature dependent and requires the ability to maintain a very specific narrow range of temperatures that I haven't tried yet GPT
I was surprised that you didn't use electroplating to pull the copper out of the acid. Thats how they do it in the mines. I've seen those work. By the way excellent video
yeah, I remember reading native copper has either gold or silver or both in it, they make more money pulling out the valuables, and it's one of the reasons why copper has a strong market.
By my calculations 22.5 grams of gold equals about ~$1300-1400 in spot value, which ends up being a small win with the 1000 plus taxes paid on ebay, and a break even after considering the materials/chemicals used. Either way, you have something now more valuable in its form than what you started with and it was sure fun to watch! Thanks for making this video.
It seems like that in the same time taken here that one could just physically scrape the gold from the pins with an x-acto knife or maybe make a setup on a lathe to zip the gold off quickly, then use much less acid. Though I do understand that this video is more of a curiosity experiment than an exercise in efficient refining. Good stuff.
I know how much patience you require while making such video and you're hard work and Patience was the real Gold. Look at your views my dear. This is real Gold not that one in the beaker. ♥️ i appreciate your hardwork.
I don’t pretend to understand any of the chemistry process here but I find it fascinating watching a solid get turned into a liquid then mud then gold somehow comes out of it all.
I have taken to putting any gold covered base metals in my waste solutions from my stock pot to save on acids used. It does take longer to strip the gold from them but it does a nice job at zero cost.
I'm making a bubbler column to catch waste NO2 gas from both the initial reaction with the metal, and that which results from heating iron nitrate to a bit over 80C, and reconvert it to nitric acid using an aquarium bubbler at the bottom of a tall glass column filled with 3% hydrogen peroxide, which greatly increases the recovery of nitrate. The peroxide will convert nitrous acid into nitric immediately. I did something very simple at first, just bubbling the NO2 gas into water, and even that simple method recreated weak nitric/nitrous acid solution. It's a pretty efficient process and costs almost nothing for the little bit of tubing and bubbler.
A win in my book! Nothing better than a handful of pure gold! About $1300 or thereabouts, if pure. Some might think profit margin was a bit too thin given material costs, including acids and pins, and time/labor. However, given crazy inflation these days, you'll definitely come out way ahead in the long run. Also, got a great video! Thanks for sharing!
He spent $400-500 on reagents. It was a loss, not even counting lost labor time that could have been spent on a money-making activity. But it's interesting to watch.
@@sreetips you were lucky to get that price because it was no more than $1400 in gold value on a good day. Not quite sure why someone would pay over that amount. I mine for gold in California and usually can get 30g+ of quarts gold over a weekend after processing, I usually make around $2000 on approximately 28+ grams of pure gold.
great experiment proving that it's best to use lower-cost methods for anything "heavy". Instead of making copper nitrate, much cheaper to make copper chloride. Normally I think you would have taken a small sample and refine to finish instead of your YOLO approach but some days it's all about the content, right? Mechanical abuse of the pins (e.g. pour pins into a 5 gal pail and pound them /w the end of a sledge hammer) would get to the copper quicker. You can also use those pins to exhaust waste nitric by melting into ingots and recover the gold from your waste treatment workflow - but that would make a terrible youtube video. Still always really satisfying to see you get the gold!
Was it worth it? If he paid 1000$ and used up 5 days of his time only to get 22.6oz then I’m not sure if it’s worth it. Plus the 5 bottles of acid which I don’t know how much that is but I’m sure it anit cheap. If we just give him 8 hours per day at 10$ an hour that’s another 400$ on top of the 1k he spent on the scarp. That’s 1400$ for 22.6oz of gold. That comes to 61$ per gram. That’s really not good at all, you can pretty much buy gold at that price
@@marcuslarwa9098 depends if he buys nitric acid in bulk or gets it somewhere for low price. if he got it for cheap somewhere, he probably made breakeven on just acid + pins cost
@@marcuslarwa9098no he says in multiple other comments here thst this one wasn't fruitful, and they rarely are. He does it for the video educating. The bottles are 2.5 liters, cost him about $60 ea. He used 5 bottles. So $300 there, plus he probably values his time at 2-3x the $10/hr you estimated haha. But doing something fun like this you wouldn't "charge" yourself for the time. So figure $1300, and he didn't get 22oz of gold 😂 If anything though, he didn't "lose" much technically, and considering the video you could say he actually netted a great bit
I do PCB design and there is electroplated gold and soft ENIG. The gold substrate in ENIG is less than 5 microns and is usually over Nikel and not worthed.
That’s fantastic. $1390 in supplies and you got $1950 worth of gold! Seems like a decent return on investment. Also, chemistry is cool! Wish I had projects like this to motivate me to learn it haha.
You should add an a proximate $$ of what the cost could be that’s involved in the process along with what you gain as the end result .. great video lesson. I just happen to scroll and kept watching after the first video I seen.
This just got added to the refining my chemicals folder, thanks for sharing and the valuable safety information, and expected results. All the best from CO.
@@sreetips if you would have bid on it instead of using the buy it now I'm curious how much different your investment. I like the option of one poster saying make a piece of jewelry out of it but again that will just have more cost
Is it really necessary to use distilled water when dissolving the base metals? I would think using distilled water would be important only when dissolving the gold in aqua regia.
Reminds me of seeing a lot of DIY videos where they Pour hundreds of litres of Epoxy to make tables and products that for the most part would be worth a pittance of the cost of the Epoxy itself. None-the-less with refined...ahhh refining techniques, it might well be something that could make some money back with. It shows the process itself is possible if nothing else. Eventually will probably make more in YT $$$ on the video than the pins!
I have couple of small points: As far as valuable metals go, I think you overlooked one, right next to gold in the periodic table (Pt). With the amount of nitric acid you are using, you might wish to capture the nitrogen dioxide fumes (not healthy for the environment) and force it through (distilled) water, recreating nitric acid.
how much faster would this have gone if the pins were shredded or run through a ball mill ? does agitation during the nitric acid phases speed up the completion ? Isn't there a way to electrode collect the copper from solution as well ?
I’d rather let the chemicals do the work. Agitation would help. Yes, there’s a way to get the copper. I cement it on iron in my waste treatment bucket.
*Have you ever considered trying to a refining for thing with low gold content the way matt from MBMMLLC mount baker mining and minerals* , where you take all the junk out by melting it into the slag then you are left with a lead/gold/silver metal that could be chemically separated using H2SO4? It would be a hybrid method using heat and chemicals, heat to quickly do the nitric acid part removing 95% of the junk leaving you very little to refine?
@@sreetips The method recommended by the other guy is applied to mined raw material, no wonder refiners uses more sophisticated methods with already mined metals.
would melting be quicker and more productive? I know that they have similar melting points, but if not stirred, if cannot be precise with temperature, would the gold sink?
@@sreetips Wouldn't that amount to inquarting with copper? It seems that with the copper so exposed that it would have gone into solution more quickly. Can you inquart with copper?
@@sreetips Yeah, I've been reading since I posted. There's has to be a pretty close ratio of the base metal and the gold for maximum efficiency. For silver it is 2 1/2 or 3 to 1 gold. I couldn't find the ratio for copper, but it is probably something similar.
Hey man love you videos You're the most knowledgeable guy I have ever seen on here as far as recovering gold or any other precious metal for that matter, you are very good at what you do kudos to you my friend!!!
That gold is difficult to handle, it so friggan fine. It sticks to everything! We didn't have the proper containers so each transfer we would lose so much of it. For your first time you did it very clean, good job man.
Three things to tell you here. Don't use water, just nitric acid, the dilution is costing you time and acid. Don't use so much heat, just 70-90°C is plenty after it has sat in solution for two days. I do this often and it takes a week and only one drain and replace acid after a few days. Pushing the time with more heat and more acid is just cutting into the cost factor on your bottom line. Also the plating is probably 14k from it's color, so the foil remnants you see are only half gold. In your frequent draining and pouring off you are also losing some fine fold at the bottom. Only do your pour offs through a double filter paper, what I can't see in the copper solution is greater than you suspect. Testing with the litmus paper only indicates what is in the opt of the beaker and will not indicate on the floating particles or submerged heavy bits in the bottom or the solution. But I do like your acid drip, that is great and something that I will have to incorporate in my setup.
Rob, I add water to provide a medium for the copper to dissolve into. Think of using just liquid dish soap to wash your hands. It would get them clean, but a little water makes the soap work much more efficiently.
Doesn't get any profit from 1000$ + materials (not including labor), if not for content for RUclips. But I highly respect these kinds of contents. Kudos to you sir!
Great video as always! Chemistry for fun and profit - ok in this case not a lot of profit but really appreciate you taking the massive time and effort to document the whole thing.
i have a few questions about this, why do the water get blue colour, why does the nitric acid not remove the gold also. what is all that brown smoke. and why not use only acid and just skip distilled water for a more reactive acid process? and how much does all that acid cost to purchase?
Copper in solution is blue. Nitric doesn’t dissolve gold very well. Nitrogen dioxide = brown smoke. Liquid dish soap, by itself, will get your hands clean. Add a little water and it works much better. Same with the nitric. A bottle of nitric 2.5 liters is about fifty bucks last time I bought.
thats and interesting process..paying $2k and getting $1500 of gold out of it plus time and chemicals (using gold price unless my math is wrong} is a pretty expensive hobby...I go down and pan for gold and do much better with little investment, always interesting to see though the scrap recovery and chemical piece
You can use a spaghetti strainer to separate the foils from the pins once they are freed. Could have saved yourself several gallons of HNO3. I know that stuffs pricey.
I was gonna say the same, why he doesn't pour off the waste copper solution through a fine mesh strainer to catch any foils kind of blows my mind! Especially since he is so GD tuhro and precise on everything that he does. But hey, nobody's perfect and to each his own right?
With a distillation setup to clean the acid he could save himself acid as well. Just reuse the same acid over and over only having to replace what is lost through the fuming and the little bit lost in other parts of the process.
@@mewmewdesigns895 the acid is oxidized to nitrate upon reacting with the metal, giving off hydrogen gas. In order to reclaim the nitric acid, the nitrate salts need to be isolated and then reprotonated with sulfuric acid and distilled.
So true even a year later !!! I got a Brand new PS5 bundle for my daughter's boyfriend for Christmas about a month ago on auction for 300$ !!! There was only 1-2 people besides myself bidding!!
I paid full price, seller gets full price. I get the stuff I need to make the video. My viewers get to see how much gold is in this type of scrap - everybody wins!
I made the mistake of starting refining with this same type of material, it was a very steep learning curve, though after fumbling my way through it im much more comfortable dealing with unexpected things popping up during refining, i do a lot of circuit board and electronic scrap which can be interesting at times for sure. Love the videos man.
As always, a nice video. The moment you started to get pissed at your own project was very clear and the (understanable) result was a "I don´t care anymore, I just want to be with" attidude. It only ended after you realized that is was actually more gold than you believed and the mood shifted back. That was a very human reaction and I think that made the video even better.
Thank you thank you thank you. For your transparency and educational content. This is a journey for all of us, and mistakes are valuable learning opportunities. Outstanding video!
well... you cant get rich with this stuff, but the joy and the satisfaction you would get after doing all this work, getting scrap electronics, doing the chemistry and at the end u get that small shiny precious... i gota do this once in my life.
Refining gold is all about concentrating values and separating the values from the junk metals. In this case, the gold is already concentrated as a solid coating over the copper pins. So it’s just a matter of dissolving the base metals and leaving the highly concentrated gold foils that can easily be recovered and then refined. Melting everything together would alloy 22 grams of pure gold with ten pounds of copper. This dispersion would be a step in the wrong direction, causing the gold to be diluted even further than it already is. Having an ally that was 22g of gold in ten pounds of copper would be a very difficult refine. I wouldn’t want to try it.
Sreetips, I hope this finds you well and having a good holiday weekend. I am a 45 year old artisan and biomedical devise repair technician. I spent the last 17years repairing medical ultrasound probes. All along the way I have saved a bunch of these gold plated pins. I have never sold gold reclamation materials before. I love your videos!!!! I have images of the pins. I used a kitchen scale to get my weight and tally 5.4kg of the pins. They are not new. They have varying degree of sheen. I sanded on a pin and can see it has a copper core. I have images with a 10x magnifier of this. I can see these pins have less copper than the pins you used in the video! Better yield for you I hope! I also did a test with some Birchwood Casey brass blackener on the sanded area and can see the blackened copper and unaffected gold layer. I have 10x images of that. I see that Gold prices are about the same as when you shot the video 9 months ago! I also have a small pile of worthy computer processor chips that should have some amount of platinum, gold, and silver. Would you be interested in buying my one time lot of this stuff?????
This is my favorite video of yours for so many reasons, would like to see some other evaluations of other material in comparison! Youve been around quite awhile and have all the right set up. Just finally had to let you know, awesome evaluation!!!
I am a distiller by trade. My rum won a silver medal at the 2011 San Fransisco World Spirits Competition. I am no longer in the industry but I do enjoy distilling as a hobby. You have me looking through my shelf of hardback catalogs, for lab gear. I am lucky to have hardback and paperback catalogs. These companies have all switched to online digital and I hate it.
I’ve refined with sulfuric acid. But it’s slow and much more dangerous. Sulfuric boils up around 300 degrees F. If any gets on you then it will go down to the bone.
You don't have to completely dissolve the cooper pins, just the top layer to release the gold. Once most of the gold is released, dump out the CuNOH and rinse it with water and shake it to knock most the gold off. You get to point where it's cheaper just to stop than to try and collect all the gold. If you got most of it then it becomes a question of how much are you willing to spend to get small amount of gold out. I live in Silicon Valley and this one time my friends went dumpster diving over at the tech companies around here and salvaged a couple hundred pounds of this byproduct of circuit manufacturing. They we're these boards that were punched out to make the circuit boards anyways it had gold plated circuits and we filled a 55 gallon plastic drum 3/4 full man that was fun! It was like the Comstock load even though it was gold and not silver.
$1230 bucks worth of gold in today's market, he did stop early in dissolving all the copper he only used 5 2.5l jugs and @ 74 A Jug he spent about $330.... and then spent 501 (hopefully that was the starting bid with 7 days left on the auction) on the pins themselves....... so $830 in pins and Nitric.... he had all the Sulfuric and sodium metabisulfite on hand and only used a few scoops/drops each so the cost was minimal. +~$400 bucks for his time and energy + whatever kind of revenue 850k views on youtube brings in. But if he had to pay that buy it now price...... complete waste of time/money. I wonder if there is any economical way to recover the $40 bucks in copper that is in the bucket now.
I spent a thousand bucks for the pins. I did this because I know escrap is popular (even though recovery is expensive and the yield is low). But a million views is worth several thousand dollars. Plus, I re-refined the gold and sold it as a pure gold bar necklace. When the dust settled, I ended up getting about $2600 for the gold. This doesn’t count the ad revenue from a million views.
Copper, to precious metals refiner, is considered waste and not worth the time nor effort to recover it. The copper gets tossed after I cement it out on iron.
Curious as to why you didn't filter everytime you poured off? Don't think you may have lost some gold foils? Ever figure out why it was creating the white precipitate?
Since they are gold plated couldn't you pick the pins out after the gold foil has released from the pins? To reduce the amount of Nitric Acid needed and speed the process?
Would it be more economical to use a stronger concentration of nitric acid instead of 68-70% get an 80-100%? I think it could be too expensive to get more concentrated acid for it to be economical or would it be too strong of an acid that would end up causing problems with the gold at the final product?
Mr. Kevin I have a question. Would it have been better to have removed the gold plating from these pins using the pan of sulfuric acid and the copper mesh basket with electricity connected?
Hey sir, I've recently caught "the gold fever" lol and just want to say ty for your videos. I know I'm not the only one you are teaching and it's much appreciated
Just came across your videos and they are almost hypnotic (must be the calm voice). Love your stuff even though I am not particularly interested in the subject, Hi from Australia.
You turned the gold into liquid piss, then you turned it into poop, and melted it into a chunk of gold, magic.
True Alchemist
Liquid piss compared to what? Gaseous piss? Solid piss?
@@marley551
yah
@@marley551 What, you don't piss solid piss? That's a little weird dude
I know this turned out to be a rough few days, but thanks for sticking it out and teaching a lot of us some new problems to avoid. You're still RUclips's number one refiner! :)
You'll get 30 Times the Money Selling the Vintage Computer Parts , and Saving the Parts in the Process :(
@@QuaaludeCharlie yea it pains me to see people destroying history, but in this case it was too late. I have seen people destroy commodore 64 that sell for thousands to get a few dollars worth of scrap.
@@excitedbox5705 RIP precious SID chips :'(
No, he's not lol.
The people buying those parts are over paying haha. They buy em, they sit on them, then they sell them or give away after their gone.. i wait, and i get those free, cuz storage is more expensive then chemicals..
Not often am I mesmerised for a straight 45 mins. Bonus periodic table content at 00:29:22 I've seen this thing so many times in my life and it bored me to death. Your 20 second breakdown taught me more than 6 years of education ever did. Wonderful video :)
no, it didn't, you were just not paying atteintion in class
@@mranon42023The irony of you not being able to string a sentence together using capital letters and full stops whilst critiquing my education is not lost on me. Amazing.
@@waynes517 nice cope right there. people don't capitalize on the internet bc they are lazy, not bc they don't know better... and you are still an ignorant 🤣🤣
besides this dude doesn't even say anything intelligent since there are a lot more precious metals like patinum, iridium, etc that are objectively more stable than silver
Not being able to and not doing so are 2 different things, his point still stands and yours is a deflection ☠️
this video, imo , is much more than a refining/chemistry video. What we have here is/are incredible lessons in ingenuity, perseverance, and integrity !! Top drawer!
Thanks for doing this, I'm a former metallurgist and you did great, explained it was the first attempt and you got your gold.
So why can't you get the gold off of the copper?
I used nitric acid to loosen the gold and release it from the copper. Ended up putting most of the copper in solution. This was a giant pain. But it made a good video.
@@sreetips Yes, all of your videos are good. You could get a bikini model assistant. Call her Beaker. But I was thinking that gold melts at a lower temperature. Melt it off of the pins. But, me contractor! Thanks for the show.
The gold would just get welded to the copper, making recovery even more difficult.
@@sreetips Interesting....So using a pyramid smelter would not be a valid method for this?
I got to tell you. I never went to school for this stuff and only watching your videos and because of that you have taught me everything I know thank you you're an amazing teacher and you're awesome at what you do
Thank you
He is the best!
This is no doubt my favorite kind of videos! Since I am preparing for the same kind of recovery and refine myself. I am willing to bet there is a whole lot more people just like me watching this!
I normally don’t do much escrap. But it’s very popular right now.
@@sreetips Yes it is. I think things like this will propel your subscribers greatly! Not that you are hurting for subscribers. I think there is over a million future subscribers that are into Escrap just like me and this kind of video will speed up your growth, which I'm enjoying seeing your amazingly speedy growth!!!
Very easy to lose money. Good idea to work on small batches until you are confident in your skills.
Moreover, you absolutely need a safe, well ventilated work area including a fume hood and other safety equipment. Fumes are insanely toxic wouldn’t take much to seriously injure or kill.
Also, there is a hidden cost, safe disposal of waste material. Not often discussed. You WILL generate nontrivial amounts of toxic waste.
@@bentationfunkiloglio I'm doing this because of my passion for it, so if I loose money I'm totally fine with that. I've been studying this since 2017 and I understand very well most all the dangers & I'm taking all the precautions I can. The RUclipsr Ewaste Ben said you should study this for 4 or 5 years before you start just to be educated as much as possible on the safety side of things!
Thank you for response & concern!!
@@shaneyork300 Good luck. Wish you the best.
Streetips, I was mesmerized by the entire process. My late husband watched your vids and was always doing this sort of thing. Somehow watching this helped me not miss him so much because it was as if he was here watching and or participating in the experiment. I Thank You for following through to the end result, as he or any true scientist would. Very fascinating ....
You are very kind. Some comments are gratifying to read (I try to read and respond to each comment). But this one touches me in a way that I can’t describe. I’m glad that it brought you a little comfort. Thank you very much.
@@sreetips, Thank you for reaching out and responding to me with human kindness. You touched this gal's Heart. I noticed this morning how well our dog rested through the night, being calmed by your voice, which is of a similar resonance to my late husband's. It is the small things in life that many times mean the most .... ( :
So sorry for your loss…
"I was going to try & save face"
You did! By continuing on & showing us what's up.
Love your work btw.
Every 2 seconds:
“I think I’m gonna add a little bit of Nitric Acid” 😂
I used to like watching computer scrap refining. I still do sometimes, but the silver cell is cool as hell, and it won out. Yours is the best.
I'm glad you're doing this, you are by far better educated in the processes of this. 10 pounds of pins yields near an ounce, for $1000.00. You got the facilities for this experiment, perseverance pays off.
He used over a grands worth of nitric acid so it could not have been a profitable experiment.
He also has 1.2m views on this video… add that up and he’s way cleared his investment at this point.
A million views is about ten grand.
I ended up using about five 2.5 liter bottles of nitric. At that time they cost about $50 per 2.5 liter bottle. So 5 times $50 equals $250 for the nitric, not a grand.
@@sreetips would it still be a profitable use of your time if you did not have a youtube channel is what I am getting at? I don’t know anything about this I just looked up nitric acid and it seemed to be over 200 dollars a bottle. Excuse my ignorance on the topic.
This is fascinating! I’m not a chemist but stand in awe of the science. Thanks for sharing.
This was not chemistry, a chemist would never spend all that acid when you could simply dissolve the gold off those pins in 3 minutes using spa chemicals or bleach. 30% peroxide would have boiled the gold off the copper in 15 seconds. smelting in a microwave would have taken 15 minutes. Chemists are cheap bastards anyways for the most part. As for the science my friend this has been done for hundreds of years and they figured out this is not the method over 125 years ago. Just ordering the Nitric alone for this project is a quick way to get yourself on a list, there are much better ways and if you're going to use Nitric, be realistic and buy a setup to make your own, it's easy and cheap and keeps you off ATF's radar. Everyone says it's no big deal until they show up at your doorsteps, then try telling your heart to beat quietly as their Gold Plated Badges tweak your mind and make you ask yourself if you put all your clothes in the hamper and toys in the toybox, better to just avoid them altogether and learn how to make your own chemicals. Everything anyone ever needs is easily made at home and you learn most of what you should learn in learning how to get them and refine them.
@@sizzlean9459 sir simple method tell pls i am trying but not available for chemical so full easy steps for words reply pls sir.
I took one chemistry class 45 years ago - got a “D” - you don’t have to be a chemist to refine precious metals. And your 15 minute “easy method” has been tried by many a novice with negative results. I only wish that it was that easy! Thanks for watching the video.
Truth is I am an engineer of 35years experience. Seen many many things. Try to open your mind a bit. There is always another way to a solution and usually all those innovations are borne out of necessity and have their place. That is what learning is all about, but maybe learning has stopped for some.
My way is not “the way” but rather “a way” to get the gold. In accordance with the reactivity series of metals, the gold would dissolve, then cement right back out on the copper until all the copper was dissolved into solution. Then the gold would stay in solution. Two other ways to get the gold from these pins; acid/peroxide or sulfuric acid stripping cell. Acid/peroxide could take weeks. And I can never get a good yield with the stripping cell. I chose these pins because I had plenty of nitric, and I knew that I could dissolve the copper to get the gold. I try to pick the battles that I know I can win.
It’s always cool watching you do this and making very pretty shiny Gold be safe everyone 👍🇺🇸
Incredibly blatant work !! So much work that I kneel down. I am a chemist myself. Mega respect.
Since you're a chemist, How would you do it??? cost effectiveness wise.
Professor,great video! Really enjoyed your content. I dropped out of chemistry many many many moons ago. Who would have thought the cool stuff you can do with that knowledge. Thanks for the lesson 🙂.
That trick with grabbing the pins and swirling to rinse the foils is brilliant. In the past I spent so much time trying to rinse the foils out of the beaker.
I will be using that trick soon....thanks for the tip!
Some of the metals in the brass for insoluble oxynitrates from the reaction's heat.
The brass also forms tin nitrate, that creates white crystals after a while.
The meticulousness of the process is mesmerizing.
The real gold is the friends we made along the way.
For pins, I use an electrolysis cell with a titanium anode. The dilute sulphuric acid electrolyte is relatively fume free. It leaves foils like the other processes, and is non sensitive to the presence of tin in the base alloy.
I've processed 40 pounds in 8 gallons of solution, using 1 quart of sulphuric acid, before the underlying nickel plating fouls the electrolyte to the point where it slows down. Recovery of the remaining dissolved copper, that's not collected on the cathode, is treated with iron to form copperas, which I use later to drop gold.
Hello David: would you mind sharing some details of the electrolysis process you use? Details on your titanium anode (perhaps where we can find one)? Cathode set-up? Electrolysis conditions (voltage, amps)?
@@tech-e-cycle2608
I use basically the cheapest titanium foil I can find on eBay for the Anode. I think it's something like 0.005" thick and 4"wide, but anything that will carry the current and not corrode would work. Cathode is simply a stripped end of 10-12 guage wire. It will get bigger in surface area as it collects copper. Solution is one quart of sulphuric acid in 7-8 gallons of water, but that can be scaled back to what ever size you want. I run my cell with a 5vdc 60A power supply, but I've never seen it draw more than about 10 amps. My meter didn't survive my latest move, so I can't tell what it's pulling exactly now. I use a 5micron filter bag I got from Duda Diesel for the Anode bag that keeps the pins in electrical contact with the Anode and each other. It's basically the same as any other parting cell, except I found out that it's not necessary to melt the pins into an Anode plate first.
I am discovering that the pins have to be porous enough for the saturated electrolyte to be able to be replaced with fresher electrolyte or it will slow down and stagnate. This is not the same as the Faraday cage effects you see in the concentrated sulphuric acid stripping cell.
Watched a guy on RUclips do it using distilled vinegar and salt in a bucket. Took a long time but it did separate the gold from the base metal pins. Very safe way to do it.
@@ATAATX
Not really that safe. Vinegar and salt can create peracetic acid, which has a dangerously low flash point.
@@Vibe77Guy Well, don't flash it!
Call me crazy, but I wouldn't mind having a Sreetips poured and stamped bar made from the precipitated copper waste. I can't afford the high purity gold or silver crystals, but I think I could definitely afford a nice "refined" copper bar.
Yup. He needs a logo and then he can pour high purity coins. If he makes oxygen free 5 9s copper he can charge as much per gram as the gold for scientific use.
Damn right, I was thinking about that too, with the amount of "waste" copper, that he is producing, could probly make a lil bit of profit.
Cuz anytime you can sell something you see as "waste" that is pretty much pure profit, usually
I would like to buy some, as well
Hell yeah I'd buy some. Sreetips copper bars would be awesome!
Since he doesn't sell merch, I'd like to support him somehow. At least flip him a few bucks for his next jug of Nitric or something.
Material purchase was $1,000 (plus shipping?). The result was 22.6g 24K(?) .999 pure gold with a current value of ~$1,274.
Take out the cost of the chemicals, filters, and equipment... I know you weren't in this one for the money, and I appreciate the great video!
exactly what i was thinking.
Plus at least $800 for the video!
You missed the number of hits on the video that RUclips pays. It's worth it all right & I'm not knocking anybody's video. I've learned good stuff by these videos.
This video motivated me to take the few baubles purchased at Rumage, test them, and see my FIRST few flakes of gold! I’m so excited! Thanks to you and my HS chemistry teacher Mr Kowert!
Very interesting, you spent $1000 and recovered about $1300. taking into account time spent and acid, it's still a loss.
As you say it's a calculated mistake and a valuable lesson learned. Thank you for continuing with the experiment.
I'd still like to see if the reagent costs couldn't be reduced by decomposing the Copper Nitrate back into dilute HNO3
Add the energy and time .totally loss .not worth it but freakin interesting, ty bro
Add onto that the potential revenue from RUclips by making interesting content and it might become worth it
And you can make $ 3000 jewelry piece from it
That’s a good idea
astounding! Great video production. I got 7 miles of silver plated wire. I planned on doing the stair step gravity melt method simply because I'm no chemist and handling 7 gallons of acid simply does not appeal to me.
Thanks for posting Sreetips, these have to be some of my favorite videos of yours. And they help so much to those of us who are going to start refining or are still new to it.
Edit: you ever considered doing copper bars to sell? Looks like you got a ton of waste in that bucket! But hey, one mans trash is another man treasure lol. Don't ever be afraid to admit mistakes also! That's how we learn best, past failures.
I’ve had many requests. But I don’t have the time
@@sreetips how about you turn it in to metal that can be melted and you send it to big stack casting and he casts into ingiots and he sends you some subscribers well hes at it
It costs more to process it than it’s worth.
I wonder what your costs are with your waste material in general?
@@sreetips in this case too?
I got a lot of gold pins/strips coming from computer boards, well I got it practically for free, so it is worth it for me anyhow.
How much in % was left in the end? Because 22g is like 1100-1200 euro's (srry, living in the rat-hole of the Nether-lands)
I wonder if the gold that was left on those pins you had leftover could be directly smelted?
I've been thinking about building a forge for a different reason but if I get the opportunity I'll see if I can't figure that out and let you know what I discover in the process because I've seen quite a few small forges that I could make for easily under $100. I do everything on a tight budget out of necessity (especially lately) and I'm kind of the king of Improv never having what I need to do something the best way but usually always having what I need to do things on the cheap not to mention I love repurposing things that would have gone in the trash otherwise. I'll let you know if I find out something useful or economically significant
The melting points of copper and gold are too close.
@@damdangus8588 electrowinning (electrolysis)
I did some more research and recently got some insight (from chat gpt-4) on how to precipitate Copper from the mixed metal solution while leaving gold in solution that is highly temperature dependent and requires the ability to maintain a very specific narrow range of temperatures that I haven't tried yet GPT
I was surprised that you didn't use electroplating to pull the copper out of the acid. Thats how they do it in the mines. I've seen those work. By the way excellent video
yeah, I remember reading native copper has either gold or silver or both in it, they make more money pulling out the valuables, and it's one of the reasons why copper has a strong market.
By my calculations 22.5 grams of gold equals about ~$1300-1400 in spot value, which ends up being a small win with the 1000 plus taxes paid on ebay, and a break even after considering the materials/chemicals used. Either way, you have something now more valuable in its form than what you started with and it was sure fun to watch! Thanks for making this video.
Buck, you understand! Most people are clueless about gold.
@@sreetips I was thinking the same as above. How much do you figure the materials cost?
A few hundred, I don’t track expenses for each batch that I do. It’s my hobby. I’m not a pro. I don’t do this for a living - thank God!
@@sreetips I'm sure you made some money on the video too!
Don't forget the cost of the 4 gallons of acid that's another 200. So technically he lost money.
It seems like that in the same time taken here that one could just physically scrape the gold from the pins with an x-acto knife or maybe make a setup on a lathe to zip the gold off quickly, then use much less acid. Though I do understand that this video is more of a curiosity experiment than an exercise in efficient refining. Good stuff.
Fill yer boots. Look forward to the vid.
I know how much patience you require while making such video and you're hard work and Patience was the real Gold. Look at your views my dear. This is real Gold not that one in the beaker. ♥️ i appreciate your hardwork.
I don’t pretend to understand any of the chemistry process here but I find it fascinating watching a solid get turned into a liquid then mud then gold somehow comes out of it all.
There was a chemist who used this strategy to hide gold from the Nazis.
@@finality4795 Yeah didn't some nobel prize winners do this with their medals?
@@lebby1688 34:45
I have taken to putting any gold covered base metals in my waste solutions from my stock pot to save on acids used. It does take longer to strip the gold from them but it does a nice job at zero cost.
I'm making a bubbler column to catch waste NO2 gas from both the initial reaction with the metal, and that which results from heating iron nitrate to a bit over 80C, and reconvert it to nitric acid using an aquarium bubbler at the bottom of a tall glass column filled with 3% hydrogen peroxide, which greatly increases the recovery of nitrate. The peroxide will convert nitrous acid into nitric immediately.
I did something very simple at first, just bubbling the NO2 gas into water, and even that simple method recreated weak nitric/nitrous acid solution. It's a pretty efficient process and costs almost nothing for the little bit of tubing and bubbler.
@@Alondro77 You can run the gas from reactions through 3% hydrogen peroxide to make nitric acid for free from your reactions
@@Alondro77 Peroxide also minimizes or eliminates most of the noxious fumes which is great.
I loved the periodic table rant over which elements are good for storing value. That was brilliant! ❤
Thank you!
Where does Platinum fall into values
Platinum is a precious metal and has value. When I first at became interested in refining platinum was more valuable than gold.
But it’s not suitable for currency because the melt temperature is too high
@@sreetips so you're saying because Platinum is more difficult to refine / recover its not a good metal to store as a currency
A win in my book! Nothing better than a handful of pure gold! About $1300 or thereabouts, if pure. Some might think profit margin was a bit too thin given material costs, including acids and pins, and time/labor. However, given crazy inflation these days, you'll definitely come out way ahead in the long run. Also, got a great video!
Thanks for sharing!
He spent $400-500 on reagents. It was a loss, not even counting lost labor time that could have been spent on a money-making activity. But it's interesting to watch.
I sold the gold for $2600 USD
@@sreetips you were lucky to get that price because it was no more than $1400 in gold value on a good day. Not quite sure why someone would pay over that amount. I mine for gold in California and usually can get 30g+ of quarts gold over a weekend after processing, I usually make around $2000 on approximately 28+ grams of pure gold.
I made a necklace out of it
@@sreetips You made the necklace or had someone else make the necklace? Then sold the necklace for $2600?
great experiment proving that it's best to use lower-cost methods for anything "heavy". Instead of making copper nitrate, much cheaper to make copper chloride. Normally I think you would have taken a small sample and refine to finish instead of your YOLO approach but some days it's all about the content, right? Mechanical abuse of the pins (e.g. pour pins into a 5 gal pail and pound them /w the end of a sledge hammer) would get to the copper quicker. You can also use those pins to exhaust waste nitric by melting into ingots and recover the gold from your waste treatment workflow - but that would make a terrible youtube video. Still always really satisfying to see you get the gold!
Jnmnm
I will just go dig for gold.Not a chemical girl.This is for the BIG boys here....🤢🤒🤔
Wow the mind of men, bless them........💯✔
Bertha, I’m just and advanced beginner, a hobbyist. Not a professional refiner. I do it for fun!
@@berthageorge2627 scary
I know how thin plated gold can be and how far they can make an ounce of gold stretch when pounded into sheets. This was more than I expected to see.
Was it worth it? If he paid 1000$ and used up 5 days of his time only to get 22.6oz then I’m not sure if it’s worth it. Plus the 5 bottles of acid which I don’t know how much that is but I’m sure it anit cheap. If we just give him 8 hours per day at 10$ an hour that’s another 400$ on top of the 1k he spent on the scarp. That’s 1400$ for 22.6oz of gold. That comes to 61$ per gram. That’s really not good at all, you can pretty much buy gold at that price
@@marcuslarwa9098 depends if he buys nitric acid in bulk or gets it somewhere for low price. if he got it for cheap somewhere, he probably made breakeven on just acid + pins cost
actually nvm, he shows the bottle in vid. it costs 100usd per bottle. yea theres no way he profited in anyway from this vid
@@marcuslarwa9098no he says in multiple other comments here thst this one wasn't fruitful, and they rarely are. He does it for the video educating.
The bottles are 2.5 liters, cost him about $60 ea. He used 5 bottles. So $300 there, plus he probably values his time at 2-3x the $10/hr you estimated haha. But doing something fun like this you wouldn't "charge" yourself for the time. So figure $1300, and he didn't get 22oz of gold 😂
If anything though, he didn't "lose" much technically, and considering the video you could say he actually netted a great bit
I do PCB design and there is electroplated gold and soft ENIG. The gold substrate in ENIG is less than 5 microns and is usually over Nikel and not worthed.
Price of time and supplies=$$$$
Knowledge shared = Priceless
Ty for making this. I was clueless where to start and what to do.
That’s fantastic. $1390 in supplies and you got $1950 worth of gold! Seems like a decent return on investment.
Also, chemistry is cool! Wish I had projects like this to motivate me to learn it haha.
As he said, he makes it up as he goes - this was the least effort, but probably least efficient method as well
His yield is 1275.00 at todays price 1763.00/oz
@@joelwilman8712the video revenue is the REAL bonus lol. Plus he said he had a necklace made out of it, sold it (probably to a fan) for $2600
You should add an a proximate $$ of what the cost could be that’s involved in the process along with what you gain as the end result .. great video lesson. I just happen to scroll and kept watching after the first video I seen.
.999 pure at closing price as of 10/8/21 would be estimated $1271.55.
So he made a couple hundred bucks before adding in the cost of all the acid.
R 45ty⁶
Jordan, a cost analysis is in the video description.
This just got added to the refining my chemicals folder, thanks for sharing and the valuable safety information, and expected results. All the best from CO.
Hey glad to see a fellow refiner in Colorado
Unfortunate that you weren’t able to get your investment back on those pins and the acid, but definitely an insightful video for science 😁
Thought he paid 1000 for the pins; by my calculations 22.5 grams equates to $1,226 so, ya ... it's a push to say he made money.
I converted paper to gold, made a new video and gained experience. Money doesn’t compare to these gains.
@@sreetips if you would have bid on it instead of using the buy it now I'm curious how much different your investment. I like the option of one poster saying make a piece of jewelry out of it but again that will just have more cost
Is it really necessary to use distilled water when dissolving the base metals? I would think using distilled water would be important only when dissolving the gold in aqua regia.
Tap water in silver nitrate solution chlorine form silver chloride.
Just in awe of your chemistry skills and knowledge. Also you haven't died through a massive reaction, so that's pretty cool too lol!
So at current gold price and the nitric acid costs you basically broke even? I was worried you would get a very small amount. Great video.
Reminds me of seeing a lot of DIY videos where they Pour hundreds of litres of Epoxy to make tables and products that for the most part would be worth a pittance of the cost of the Epoxy itself. None-the-less with refined...ahhh refining techniques, it might well be something that could make some money back with. It shows the process itself is possible if nothing else. Eventually will probably make more in YT $$$ on the video than the pins!
I turned paper dollars into pure gold, gained experience and a new video. To me, I’m way ahead.
@@sreetips true basically turned a depreciating asset into an appreciating asset.
Quite true. Holding dollars don’t make any sense.
he did make a loss of about $610 USD
I have couple of small points:
As far as valuable metals go, I think you overlooked one, right next to gold in the periodic table (Pt).
With the amount of nitric acid you are using, you might wish to capture the nitrogen dioxide fumes (not healthy for the environment) and force it through (distilled) water, recreating nitric acid.
how much faster would this have gone if the pins were shredded or run through a ball mill ? does agitation during the nitric acid phases speed up the completion ? Isn't there a way to electrode collect the copper from solution as well ?
I’d rather let the chemicals do the work. Agitation would help. Yes, there’s a way to get the copper. I cement it on iron in my waste treatment bucket.
Отличный результат, дружище! Постоянно смотрю твои видео, жаль только то, что плохо язык знаю.
Thankfully RUclips now translates comments, I'm glad that we can now communicate more easily!
Google translates
@@20greeneyes20 that would be quite difficult for a full video
*Have you ever considered trying to a refining for thing with low gold content the way matt from MBMMLLC mount baker mining and minerals* , where you take all the junk out by melting it into the slag then you are left with a lead/gold/silver metal that could be chemically separated using H2SO4? It would be a hybrid method using heat and chemicals, heat to quickly do the nitric acid part removing 95% of the junk leaving you very little to refine?
That was what I was thinking.. It would be cheaper to smelt first, then if needed use chemicals to further refine it..
I have not - none of the refiners that I learned from used this method
@@sreetips The method recommended by the other guy is applied to mined raw material, no wonder refiners uses more sophisticated methods with already mined metals.
Quite correct, I have zero experience with mining
Yeah I have wondered the same thing with gold filled scrap as well.
Would have been cool to do a comparison of recovery methods with this amount. Like stripping cell v boiling acid then pros and cons etc
would melting be quicker and more productive? I know that they have similar melting points, but if not stirred, if cannot be precise with temperature, would the gold sink?
No, I’d end up with 22g of gold alloyed with ten pounds of copper.
@@sreetips Wouldn't that amount to inquarting with copper? It seems that with the copper so exposed that it would have gone into solution more quickly. Can you inquart with copper?
Ten pounds of copper alloyed with 22g of pure gold is not a proper inquart ratio.
There’s no such thing as 100% acid. It doesn’t exist.
@@sreetips Yeah, I've been reading since I posted. There's has to be a pretty close ratio of the base metal and the gold for maximum efficiency. For silver it is 2 1/2 or 3 to 1 gold. I couldn't find the ratio for copper, but it is probably something similar.
Hey man love you videos You're the most knowledgeable guy I have ever seen on here as far as recovering gold or any other precious metal for that matter, you are very good at what you do kudos to you my friend!!!
That gold is difficult to handle, it so friggan fine. It sticks to everything! We didn't have the proper containers so each transfer we would lose so much of it. For your first time you did it very clean, good job man.
Three things to tell you here. Don't use water, just nitric acid, the dilution is costing you time and acid. Don't use so much heat, just 70-90°C is plenty after it has sat in solution for two days. I do this often and it takes a week and only one drain and replace acid after a few days. Pushing the time with more heat and more acid is just cutting into the cost factor on your bottom line. Also the plating is probably 14k from it's color, so the foil remnants you see are only half gold. In your frequent draining and pouring off you are also losing some fine fold at the bottom. Only do your pour offs through a double filter paper, what I can't see in the copper solution is greater than you suspect. Testing with the litmus paper only indicates what is in the opt of the beaker and will not indicate on the floating particles or submerged heavy bits in the bottom or the solution. But I do like your acid drip, that is great and something that I will have to incorporate in my setup.
Rob, I add water to provide a medium for the copper to dissolve into. Think of using just liquid dish soap to wash your hands. It would get them clean, but a little water makes the soap work much more efficiently.
Some soaps require water of a specific temperature to activate. @@sreetips
Doesn't get any profit from 1000$ + materials (not including labor), if not for content for RUclips. But I highly respect these kinds of contents. Kudos to you sir!
Great video as always! Chemistry for fun and profit - ok in this case not a lot of profit but really appreciate you taking the massive time and effort to document the whole thing.
Didn't he make like $1,200 off of this minus the $500 paid that's pretty good profit
I turned paper into gold
@@sreetips All your videos are gold champ!!!
@@sreetips lol oh no. Ignoring your time, did you really not turn profit?
I sold the gold for $2600
once again great video. I know it was a tough one but as always the science must go on. thank you for sticking it out.
Nice i was waiting for an old school sreetips episode like this one.
What a fantastic channel this is :)
Lol like your pic SNAFU 🤣
i have a few questions about this, why do the water get blue colour, why does the nitric acid not remove the gold also. what is all that brown smoke. and why not use only acid and just skip distilled water for a more reactive acid process? and how much does all that acid cost to purchase?
Copper in solution is blue. Nitric doesn’t dissolve gold very well. Nitrogen dioxide = brown smoke. Liquid dish soap, by itself, will get your hands clean. Add a little water and it works much better. Same with the nitric. A bottle of nitric 2.5 liters is about fifty bucks last time I bought.
@@sreetips thabks for the answer🙂
thats and interesting process..paying $2k and getting $1500 of gold out of it plus time and chemicals (using gold price unless my math is wrong} is a pretty expensive hobby...I go down and pan for gold and do much better with little investment, always interesting to see though the scrap recovery and chemical piece
Nitric acid 10gal cost about $600
You're also getting a lot of copper out of it.
@@dave_in_florida I dont remember prices being that high, wow
The value of the nitric hasn’t increased. The dollars used to price the nitric have decreased.
@@joesmith-es1zy $500? a little yes I do always enjoy his videos
Nov 2021, .... 22.5 grams = $1483.60 USD, minus chemical expenses and time, still a great experience.
Thank you
Also don't forget the $1,000 it cost him for the pins.
I was thinking to myself early on in the video…why isn’t he using a dripper to add the acid? Than you do it lol…so awesome!
@Sreetips did you filter out all the gold flakes when discarding the excess copper solution? It wasn't shown in the video
I did, I may have forgotten to turn the camera on
You can use a spaghetti strainer to separate the foils from the pins once they are freed. Could have saved yourself several gallons of HNO3. I know that stuffs pricey.
Big brain solution right here.
I was gonna say the same, why he doesn't pour off the waste copper solution through a fine mesh strainer to catch any foils kind of blows my mind! Especially since he is so GD tuhro and precise on everything that he does. But hey, nobody's perfect and to each his own right?
With a distillation setup to clean the acid he could save himself acid as well. Just reuse the same acid over and over only having to replace what is lost through the fuming and the little bit lost in other parts of the process.
@@bensoncheung2801 try the above idea, let us know your findings.
@@mewmewdesigns895 the acid is oxidized to nitrate upon reacting with the metal, giving off hydrogen gas. In order to reclaim the nitric acid, the nitrate salts need to be isolated and then reprotonated with sulfuric acid and distilled.
14:53 hahaha! Only an idiot would say call off the experiment! God bless discovery thats what i say lol! thankyou for continuing :D
You probably could have gotten that for $500 if you just bid and waited out the auction. A lot of these auctions don't get many people interested
So true even a year later !!! I got a Brand new PS5 bundle for my daughter's boyfriend for Christmas about a month ago on auction for 300$ !!! There was only 1-2 people besides myself bidding!!
I paid full price, seller gets full price. I get the stuff I need to make the video. My viewers get to see how much gold is in this type of scrap - everybody wins!
I made the mistake of starting refining with this same type of material, it was a very steep learning curve, though after fumbling my way through it im much more comfortable dealing with unexpected things popping up during refining, i do a lot of circuit board and electronic scrap which can be interesting at times for sure. Love the videos man.
As always, a nice video.
The moment you started to get pissed at your own project was very clear and the (understanable) result was a "I don´t care anymore, I just want to be with" attidude. It only ended after you realized that is was actually more gold than you believed and the mood shifted back.
That was a very human reaction and I think that made the video even better.
Does sulfuric acid just precipitate out lead or does it do other metals that might be present in small amounts like zinc, tin, bismuth, etc...?
Not sure
Thank you thank you thank you. For your transparency and educational content. This is a journey for all of us, and mistakes are valuable learning opportunities. Outstanding video!
Would it be more efficient to grind up the pins into shavings or powder before acid desolve?
Possibly
Very cool! Would an abrasive tumbler be enough to remove the plating and cut down on the acid use?
I don’t know
I’m hopelessly addicted to your videos, thank you for your efforts….well done Sir!
Thank you!
well... you cant get rich with this stuff, but the joy and the satisfaction you would get after doing all this work, getting scrap electronics, doing the chemistry and at the end u get that small shiny precious... i gota do this once in my life.
Why not melt the gold flakes prior to the aqua regia step?
Because they very thin and dissolve much quicker
Do you have backup power on your fume hood or would you just evacuate if you lost power?
My emergency plan is; 3M mask, transfer all fuming reaction outdoors. And that’s the best I can do.
Curious question: is it possible that the gold might alloy with carbon from the filter paper? Wondering aloud.
I’ve never see that happen
What is it that makes this process preferred over just melting the whole pile and separating it that way? Or does that method not really work?
Refining gold is all about concentrating values and separating the values from the junk metals. In this case, the gold is already concentrated as a solid coating over the copper pins. So it’s just a matter of dissolving the base metals and leaving the highly concentrated gold foils that can easily be recovered and then refined. Melting everything together would alloy 22 grams of pure gold with ten pounds of copper. This dispersion would be a step in the wrong direction, causing the gold to be diluted even further than it already is. Having an ally that was 22g of gold in ten pounds of copper would be a very difficult refine. I wouldn’t want to try it.
@@sreetips thanks for the explanation, in my head I saw the metals separating by weight when it melted, I didn't consider that they might alloy.
Sreetips,
I hope this finds you well and having a good holiday weekend.
I am a 45 year old artisan and biomedical devise repair technician.
I spent the last 17years repairing medical ultrasound probes.
All along the way I have saved a bunch of these gold plated pins. I have never sold gold reclamation materials before. I love your videos!!!!
I have images of the pins. I used a kitchen scale to get my weight and tally 5.4kg of the pins. They are not new. They have varying degree of sheen.
I sanded on a pin and can see it has a copper core. I have images with a 10x magnifier of this. I can see these pins have less copper than the pins you used in the video! Better yield for you I hope! I also did a test with some Birchwood Casey brass blackener on the sanded area and can see the blackened copper and unaffected gold layer. I have 10x images of that. I see that Gold prices are about the same as when you shot the video 9 months ago!
I also have a small pile of worthy computer processor chips that should have some amount of platinum, gold, and silver.
Would you be interested in buying my one time lot of this stuff?????
Actually I only on stuff my wife and I find at local sales
This is my favorite video of yours for so many reasons, would like to see some other evaluations of other material in comparison!
Youve been around quite awhile and have all the right set up. Just finally had to let you know, awesome evaluation!!!
Thank you
Not sure on this but can we use sulfuric acid instead? Also the gold plated pins can be grinded first before the work starts?
Yes and yes
I am a distiller by trade. My rum won a silver medal at the 2011 San Fransisco World Spirits Competition. I am no longer in the industry but I do enjoy distilling as a hobby. You have me looking through my shelf of hardback catalogs, for lab gear. I am lucky to have hardback and paperback catalogs. These companies have all switched to online digital and I hate it.
I gotta check out the sulfuric acid trick. I want to save my nitric for refining. Do you use Sulfuric acid, Water and Table salt for yours?
I’ve refined with sulfuric acid. But it’s slow and much more dangerous. Sulfuric boils up around 300 degrees F. If any gets on you then it will go down to the bone.
You don't have to completely dissolve the cooper pins, just the top layer to release the gold. Once most of the gold is released, dump out the CuNOH and rinse it with water and shake it to knock most the gold off. You get to point where it's cheaper just to stop than to try and collect all the gold. If you got most of it then it becomes a question of how much are you willing to spend to get small amount of gold out. I live in Silicon Valley and this one time my friends went dumpster diving over at the tech companies around here and salvaged a couple hundred pounds of this byproduct of circuit manufacturing. They we're these boards that were punched out to make the circuit boards anyways it had gold plated circuits and we filled a 55 gallon plastic drum 3/4 full man that was fun! It was like the Comstock load even though it was gold and not silver.
$1230 bucks worth of gold in today's market, he did stop early in dissolving all the copper he only used 5 2.5l jugs and @ 74 A Jug he spent about $330.... and then spent 501 (hopefully that was the starting bid with 7 days left on the auction) on the pins themselves....... so $830 in pins and Nitric.... he had all the Sulfuric and sodium metabisulfite on hand and only used a few scoops/drops each so the cost was minimal. +~$400 bucks for his time and energy + whatever kind of revenue 850k views on youtube brings in. But if he had to pay that buy it now price...... complete waste of time/money. I wonder if there is any economical way to recover the $40 bucks in copper that is in the bucket now.
I spent a thousand bucks for the pins. I did this because I know escrap is popular (even though recovery is expensive and the yield is low). But a million views is worth several thousand dollars. Plus, I re-refined the gold and sold it as a pure gold bar necklace. When the dust settled, I ended up getting about $2600 for the gold. This doesn’t count the ad revenue from a million views.
Copper, to precious metals refiner, is considered waste and not worth the time nor effort to recover it. The copper gets tossed after I cement it out on iron.
@@sreetips Nice an honest reply from the man himself.
@@sreetips 1000 bucks
Late to the party, but what stops the gold flakes from being poured out with the waste solution?
The skill and technique used by the refiner.
What do you do with the cement copper you produce in the waste bucket do you smelt it into bars, that would be cool to see
Toss it. Copper is useful in refining precious metals. But after that, it’s waste.
I feel like the world is about to go old-school, and learn how to process scarce materials. This information is priceless.
Curious as to why you didn't filter everytime you poured off? Don't think you may have lost some gold foils? Ever figure out why it was creating the white precipitate?
Not sure what that was.
Since they are gold plated couldn't you pick the pins out after the gold foil has released from the pins? To reduce the amount of Nitric Acid needed and speed the process?
Possibly, but I’d rather let the acid do all that work.
@@sreetips Thanks for the reply. Good to know.
Quick ?---after initial gold recovery process, WHY do you always add the filter to the refining process and solutions??? Other than convenience?
Either to remove the valuable solids from the liquid. Or, to remove junk from the valuable liquid.
I always find those chemical processes so beautiful and relaxing.
Hi, what is the orange yellow smoke coming out of the baker after adding the citric acid? Thanks in advance
Nitric acid. The red fumes are nitrogen dioxide.
perfect info
as a scrapper i collect the high and low yeld gold stuff,
so 10 lb / 4.5 kilo gives 22.6 gram pure gold
realy good to know ;)
thanks ;)
What temperature do you put your beekers on when you mix the acid and water?
Medium high heat.
Would it be more economical to use a stronger concentration of nitric acid instead of 68-70% get an 80-100%? I think it could be too expensive to get more concentrated acid for it to be economical or would it be too strong of an acid that would end up causing problems with the gold at the final product?
I use 70% nitric with good results. No experience with higher concentrations.
Mr. Kevin I have a question. Would it have been better to have removed the gold plating from these pins using the pan of sulfuric acid and the copper mesh basket with electricity connected?
Possibly, but I can never get a good yield with the sulfuric acid stripping cell
Hey sir, I've recently caught "the gold fever" lol and just want to say ty for your videos. I know I'm not the only one you are teaching and it's much appreciated
Just came across your videos and they are almost hypnotic (must be the calm voice). Love your stuff even though I am not particularly interested in the subject, Hi from Australia.
Thank you and welcome.
The same thing with burning the filters in the melt dish... Doesn't that affect the purity in the end?
No