Finally......LOL. This is why I keep you around. This thought process has been rolling around in my head for some time now. Awesome brother. Keep up the good work
Haha thanks for the comment Pete, I have been wanting to do this for ages! The first little test anode I ran worked great, looking forward to running the slimes for this one sometime this week hopefully!
@@successfulengineer Waiting patiently. What I love is, I've seen the big refineries do this, but you have the understanding and abilities to bring things down to a level someone like myself can use and understand. Not to give you the big head but the biggest thing I enjoy about you and your videos as you don't turn into this conceited wannabe Again can't wait for the final video
sincerely happy you posted this that's a great setup I would over think the crap out of it and still not come up with that its brilliant in my book I have been wanting a new "mission" to use the power supply I used for my silver crystal experiment thanks
@@successfulengineer Hello , I have both gold & copper in solution, so my gold will not stick to the stainless and fall back down as a black slime ,while the copper sticks to the stainless cathode ?
If you use a titanium anode basket inside a filter bag the copper plates across to the cathode and the slimes stay in the bag. You can keep topping up the basket with copper mixture and swap out the filter bag to recover the gold etc
i do a lot of electroplating copper, and it's a very similar setup. in my experience, the most cost effective source for copper sulphate crystals is by the 50 lb. bag from the agricultural supplier- it's used to prevent algae in ponds and to disinfect cattle feet. the cheapest sulphuric liters seem to me to come from make-your-own-at-home biodiesel chemical suppliers.
Thanks mate, yep, slimes are accumulating well, had to shake the anodes clean this morning. Will hopefully get the next part done in the next week or so!
a titanium mesh basket (you'll have to stitch or spot weld your own from wire) helps hold all the last little bits, once your annodes are almost gone. get a fine enough mesh going, and you can just drop plated pins directly into that.
Cool! I've read that the industrial refiners used Titanium hooks, I have some old Thinkpads under the house, I believe they have a Titanium skeleton inside, wonder if I can cut them up to make hoods or a basket ?!?! Will investigate.
@@joshspiers8888 I guess Titanium oxide is probably VERY inert. I know they use Titanium mesh and hooks commonly industrially, so it must work. I have actually ordered some Titanium mesh, so will definitely give it a try at some point soonish.
The density of copper is 8.96 g/cm3 or 0.324 lb/in3. You can work out the weight required from there. I don't have any pins at the moment but this looks interesting. Great work as always.
For sure, shows you how misleading a "gut feel" can be! I have reprinted a modified anode pattern for future melts anyway, definitely want to maximize the surface area to minimize time!
1. I tend to pull the Steel and peel the copper off after a day by slightly bending the center of the steel. Allowing the copper to accumulate to long makes the copper very thick and difficult to get off. 2. You can always add more copper to the pins to reduced the percentage of other metals. 3. I like watching the molten metal get poured, and just being all melty and pretty...
Cool, I will have a look tonight to see if I can 'peel' the Copper. Definitely want to try and avoid any of it ending up in the slimes. It does seem to be a very smooth coating. These pins seem to process OK as they are, but I think pins with a high Tin or Zinc content will have to have Copper added to work.
Thanks for the comment! Yes, I'm certainly liking this a lot so far. The casting is really the hard part, every other aspect of this is better than the alternatives! I've got some slime accumulating in the bottom now, hope to have the next part done in the next week or so.
You can skip the pin melting step if you use a titanium pan for the chip pile. You will end up with more foils and less slimes to deal with. I also used the "waste" solution from a Poor Man's Nitric process as the electrolyte. 5v power supply and about a 1/2 square foot SS cathode.
Hi David, sounds like a fantastic system, would you have problems with fully plated pins ? Is it much slower than working with melted and mixed anodes ?
@@successfulengineer It was one of those "had to try it" experiments, since I didn't have a way to cast the copper anodes. It's not much faster than AP, but like you pointed out, it generates much less waste liquid to deal with. "Full plated pins" are rarely plated heavy enough to keep acids completely out, but haven't tried any yet.
the pins are often brass so the acid h2so4 gets full of zinc solution. A chloride solution with cu2+ will work better. A divider of cloth will stop the contamination of anolite & catholite solutions. agitation is good to get the sludge to drop off the anode. Anodes can be cast in the frog of bricks which have been pre heated.
Hi Julian, great suggestions thanks, I tried once electrowinning from a Cu2Cl solution, but didn't really have that much luck. But yeah, If you could get around the Zinc and Tin issues that would be great!
Yes , that's what I'm doing now . You need to make an anode basket out of plastic, drop in a few coffee filters and find an acceptable anode rod . Works perfectly even without the sulfuric acid.
If you put a plastic divider with holes in it you could segregate the two precipitate slimes. That way yoy would have gold waste on one side and copper waste in the other, then you could retrieve them one at a time im thinking something like a plastic wall that has holes in the top so the electrolysis will still transfer a current , then solid wall at the bottom, then glued in or even melt sealed to the container, then you would have two separate piles of slimes.
Hey Roy, yeah, that would certainly be an improvement. In line with some other suggestions of using anode bags. I think your solution would work just as well and be fairly easy to diy. Thanks!
Метод рабочий, но есть несколько нюансов. Во-первых, при плавке меди с золотым покрытием много золота переходит в шлам. Во-вторых, при электролизе нужно учитывать, что лигатура содержит никель в подложке, который так же выпадет в шлам. По затратам на газ и электричество проще все растворить в азотке или снять позолоту смывом в царской водке. Но как с точки зрения эксперимента - поучительно. The method is working, but there are several nuances. First, when melting copper with a gold coating, a lot of gold turns into sludge. Secondly, during electrolysis it is necessary to take into account that the ligature contains Nickel in the substrate, which also falls into the sludge. For the cost of gas and electricity is easier to dissolve in nitric acid or to remove the gold by flushing in Aqua Regia. But as from the point of view of experiment - it is instructive.
Привет, спасибо за ваш комментарий. Я только плавил Медь и Золото, не плавил, поэтому золото не теряется для флага в этот момент. Да, в слизи есть немного никеля, но это не проблема, чтобы удалить позже. Затраты на электроэнергию для этого почти ничто, менее 0,20 долл. США в день, HNO3 очень дорог, и вам придется использовать более 2 литров кислоты, чтобы растворить столько меди. Я думаю, что это один из лучших способов восстановить покрытие из штифтов хорошего качества. Надеюсь я правильно понял ваш перевод!
@@successfulengineer Thank you, all right. The only "thin" place in this process is the furnace with a temperature above 1200 degrees. We do not use nitric acid in its pure form, poison or melange or a mixture of battery electrolyte with ammonium nitrate.
For those who cannot melt copper pins into bars for the anode, instead could the pins be put into a porous bag with a connection to the power supply and dunked into the electrolyte? Similar to using silver shot or cornflakes in a silver cell.
I wouldn't think so, the idea is that the Copper atoms can migrate through the solution to the cathode, if you put the pins in whole, the Copper is surrounded by Gold. Sulfuric deplating cell is probably the best bet if you can't melt and cast anodes.
Good job, and this is the best way to deal with pins so that they benefit from copper and provide acids but I ask maho 's question and the correct voltage for copper
Thanks for sharing your knowledge, you mentioned 75 grams of CuSO4 per liter, do you mean 75 of copper as CuSO4 which mean you will dissolve about 300 grams of CuSO4 or you mean 75 CuSO4? Cause I read in different sources that copper content should be 50 grams per liter that mean we need 200 grams of CuSO4 per liter. Another question, 10% of sulphuric acid mean add 100 ml sulphuric acid to 1 liter of water, or water plus Sulphuric acid should be 1 liter? Thanks for your help
Hi there, this is going back many years, so I am a bit fuzzy on the details. Im pretty sure I used 75g CuSO4 and it would have been 1 to 10 H2SO4, even though that is not 10% total. For a DIY test I doubt it makes that much difference. Use those numbers as a starting point and do some controlled experiments. Good luck mate 👍
For sure, if you have enough pins to make the melting worthwhile, I think this approach has a lot of merit! Will see how the final recovery from the slimes goes at the end of the week, then we will all know!
Very interesting solution to the issue. Would it be worth havingh some kind of receptacle under each anode to catch the slimes - I suspect it will make cleaning the cell out at the end much easier.
Yeah, when this is done industrially they use an anode bag to catch the slimes, when I did the small experiment I found that the slimes settle pretty well, much better than with a Sulfuric deplating cell for instance. So you can basically siphon off 90% of the electrolyte for re-use and you only have to filter the last little bit. I'm expecting a fair amount of slimes from this, so I guess time will tell how hard the filtration will be!
Hi, second part should be coming out in approximately a week. There is black anode slime accumulating in the bottom now. Will leave it to run until all the Copper is transferred.
How are you sir, these days you are making very few videos, I am very worried about one thing that in Stannous chloride test, which metal is the mark of dark Brown color, I don't understand
To use a steel crucible, use steel not thin sheet stuff and spray a silicone spray as a release agent. I made a 5mm steel to make mine and the copper doesnt stick.
For sure, that was a tough lesson! The baking pan had zero chance, the second anode I cast into some 3mm steel, but that warped badly. Something 5mm+ Would probably work fine, but the sand casting is actually trivially easy and I can easily make shapes that are a bit more complicated.
Yeah, I guess you could decrease the distance between the plates to reduce resistance and increase current for the same voltage, the problem being that with the plates too close together, the growing Copper hairs will short out sooner.
In `MURICA we would use centimeters in this application and either use Celsius or a thermometer that references both Celsius and Fahrenheit. In 'MURICA 100 degrees F is referenceable along with 1 foot or 1 inch. IE if you said it was 85 degrees weather I could easily imagine that or a piece of wood was 2 inches wide or 4 feet long I could also imagine that. IF you said 50 degrees C or 20 centimeters in means nothing to me. Only 1 meter is referenceable since its similar to a yard and I can imagine the length or a yard stick. In this example no imagining is required and they're just number perimeters to be measured off. But I would probably convert over to Fahrenheit just out of curiosity to reference a similar temp. say hot enough to burn you. Hot enough to cook a brownie. Anything hot enough to glow red becomes unreferenceable beyond that threshold. Anything that's colder than waters freezing point in F. becomes unreferenceable. In conclusion we use both metric and standard and usually only use standard for quantifiable relationships. IE a foot is about the length of a foot. A yard = your arm. an inch the length between the first and second knuckle. Everything else seems to be based on quantificational relationships based on experience of use similarly to how someone would be able to relate the weight of 5 stones when I would have no idea of the weight of the original stone they where referencing unless I became familiar to the measurement system.
Hi there, yes, you have it, I basically didnt worry at all about the voltage it was all about getting the right current density for the size of the plates
@@successfulengineer I'm a bit curiosity driven in this question... ;) Is this setup still what you use for gold plated pins or did you find something better?
@@jackmclane1826 if you have anything that is Gold plated over pure Copper, this system works great. If the pins are brass or bronze, I would prefer to do a cyanide leach, that said, Cyanide is pretty strictly controlled, so have never actually tried it. But it is used so widely that it must work well.
@@successfulengineer I don't really want to work with cyanide in my place. What exactly would happen with brass or bronze in this cell? I expect the zinc in brass to consume some of the sulfuric acid and thats it. Zinc sulfate is pretty safe. With bronze? Not sure what tin et al. would do.
@@jackmclane1826 mainly just a problem with fouling the electrolyte and the whole thing doesn't work very well. I'm sure you could manage it if you needed to, still a lot cleaner and safer process than practically anything else for sure.
Iron is not really an issue, it will not melt and end up in the anodes, and you really want to separate iron based pins out early. Obviously using pins with a Copper base is ideal. There is almost always Nickel present, which does not seem to cause big problems, it does contaminate your electrolyte over time which can be a pain. Zinc and Tin are also pretty common for brass and bronze pins, in that case, they end up in the slimes with the Gold.
@@successfulengineer hi, my electrolyte changed color from nice blue to dirty green. I used many types of pins and not sure how much copper was there, probably brass, will gold and silver separation to anode slime work now?
Hi very interesting video and other then the recovery of the gold you recover also the copper that is use full for other procedures, is there any way to recover the copper dissolved in muriatic acid by Electrolysis
Hi there, you can look at electrowinning for recovering Cu from CuCl, but I think you will probably find that doing it with a single replacement reaction (with iron) is generally favored. I don't think CuCl electrowins very well.
Hi sir, I am sridhar from india . We have more studded diamond jewellery product any one share how to remove the diamond from gold . Need electrolysis process
Great video mate. I thought bout doing this myself. I haven't gotten around to it. Question though, in my research of the copper sulfate electrolyte solution I seen that you can add 0.5ml per gallon (US) or 3500 ml of solution. Have you read anything like that?
Could it possibly have been 0.5 mol instead of ml ? 0.5ml seems like a very small amount of something. I am currently running around 75g or Copper Sulfate per liter of electrolyte. With 100 ml of 98% H2SO4 added. Seems to be doing the business.
Successful Engineer what I meant to say in my original comment is hydrochloric acid. I found the original link for that recipe . www.thinktink.com/stack/volumes/voliii/consumbl/cplatmix.htm Not sure what the purpose of adding HCl to copper sulfate solution. Again great video mate! Cheers
Interesting ! I have no idea what the purpose of the HCl would be, probably improves the Copper deposit on the Cathode somehow. There is quite a long list of things that can be added for improved Copper deposits. Definitely haven't seen it in any of the other electrolyte recipes that I have come across! Thanks for the comment! much appreciated!
@@successfulengineer most of the acids can easily be bought here in Germany, unfortunately it's very difficult to get nitric acid here, Nitric acid and most nitrates come under the Explosives Act
You seem to be under the impression that anything that isn't copper won't go into solution because it's copper sulfate. Only things that are insoluble (like the gold) in water/sulfuric acid will drop and become part of the slime. Anything that's soluble ends up in solution.
Oh, not at all, I know that its actually the things going into solution that caused / causes me some problems. I think the main culprit here from memory was the Nickel fouling the solution.
Correct, this will separate the Copper and leave all the other metals. In my case I had pure Copper pins that were Gold plated, so ideal source material.
Hello...do you think we can separate copper from nikel with this methode? As copper sulfate and nickel sulfate both are soluble...Otherwise if any idea to separate this 2 methal with electrolysis, i am very interessted...
Hi there, sorry, I cannot give you a good answer on this, I know that this process is supposed to give very pure Copper out, but I have no idea if excess Nickel will cause issues for you.
Can I contact you to get so advice from you about recovering gold plating from new boards that have never had any circuits attached to them& so other questions as I am about to start my first gold recovery’s from all the types of stuff I have
As you can imagine, I tend not to talk to too many people directly, otherwise I would spend all day answering emails. But . . . I do keep a eye on the youtube comments and try to answer all questions, so if you get stuck, feel free to ask.
I like the look of this to remove copper from smelted dore bars with copper as the major basemetal fraction. It saves on acids. Im wondering if palladium will be dissolved and cemented out as well though?
I couldn't see why Palladium would be dissolved (not that I expect any Pd in the pins I'm processing). The electrolyte is just fairly weak Sulfuric, so I expect any Pd to be in the slimes too. But yeah, as a way of separating Cu I'm completely sold on this process!
@@successfulengineer thanks for posting the video and reply, thisll cut my acid use in half if i use it. have you tested the recovered copper purity? If theres no precious metal loss at all ill be sold on the method too, it been slow is of no concern as it can run as a background process
Yep, I'm running through about 1.2kg of pins a week now in that cell, recovering 200 - 300g of Cu per day. I haven't tested the Copper purity, but this is how Copper is refined industrially (and how a lot of industrial size PM recovery operations work) so I'm sure the Copper is going to be pretty pure. I'm also getting a good Gold yield out (see part 2), so I'm reasonably sure I'm getting all the Gold.
Dude is it just me or did I miss you mentioning at all how gold is a subject in all this as you go into great detail about getting copper on a cathode and also why this process of which the deposited outcome that mostly may seem to be a mess to someone not in the know would be useful?
Yeah, you hit the nail on the head, for those in the know, separating Copper from precious metals is a very hard thing to do. You either have to do it with wet chemistry (lots of toxic waste) or you have to use this kind of process. The vast majority of home Gold-recovery guys use wet chemistry and end up with buckets and drums full of toxic waste. This system gives you nice pure Copper (to sell or use) + all the other metals that also contain all the precious metals (the black goop)
@@successfulengineer I understand. This very fact as well as what the pros are of following the steps/procedures that you do, are not really becoming very clear in your video though, it could have done with some explaining. Tx anyway for responding!
@@successfulengineer Hello i got an question when do i see the solutin is over satuarted with metals lower than zero electronegativity like tin iron and co ? my ampere is dropping alot recently could it be that the solution it over saturated?
Hey there, yes, technically I guess you could, but this approach really works with Copper base metals and I don't think MLCC have much Copper, so you would have to deliberately add Copper, and in the end you would still have all the Tin left anyway, so probably not the best approach.
In copper refining you can only use sulfuric acid. If you refine using AP (hydrochloric acid and hydrogen peroxide) you would still need to convert AP solution to copper sulfate by distillation driving off the hydrochloric acid and collecting it to reuse. NurdRage has a video out on this process. You can see it here. ruclips.net/video/FjEoRidvgYE/видео.html According to the "reactivity series of metals" any metal less reactive (below copper on reactivity series chart) than copper will fall out of solution as black "slime". These are your "precious metals." those metals will be silver, gold, platinum, palladium, rhodium, ect. Those metals can be refined further using different techniques later on. I know this may seem lengthy but hope this helps to get a better understanding of process. 😊
@@successfulengineer iam planning to do trial pilot scale project, how many % of CuSO4 do you use? mine only 24%. how many % of CuSO4 should be in the solution?
@@bintangsyamon3002 I didn't realise you could get anything other than 100% CuSO4 ?!? What is the other 76% of yours? I think I have the concentration of CuSO4 somewhere in the start of the video, will just have to work out how much of your lower concentration it takes to get to that.
i have 2 bars of non magnetic metal ( in cuboid shape) about 1.5 kgs each , this consist of 16% of gold, 1 % silver 83% copper (ie : after a test made by specialist)… what should i do if i want to extract the Gold ,.. does electrolysis could be proceed? If can how to do it ,… at this moment i have Cloric acid , Nitric acid, copper plate, carbon rod, copper sulfate (granular)… hope to hear ur best advise
Dissolving big bars of Cu with acids is never a good idea, it creates a LOT of waste that is very toxic. The electrolysis method works great, but I think in your case the Copper has too much other metals, you really want your Cu to be about 95% before the electrolysis process for best results. You could certainly add some more pure Cu to your bars and then run them through a cell like this one.
I guess you could strip the Gold off the initial pins, you don't even need a Gold cathode if you use a Sulfuric cell, but this was more done out of interest than purely for the Gold recovery. I was interested at the time to compare the amount of hazardous waste created by the different processes.
Hmmh, so I think I showed that the Copper plates are basically melted Gold plated pins right, the Copper cell separates Copper from everything else, the Gold is the black stuff that accumulates on the anodes. The next video shows how to turn the black stuff into pure Gold
Die elektroliet wat ek daar gebruik is basies flou swaelsuur, so eks redelik seker dit los nie Koper op nie. Die swart Goud slym is ook redelik swaar, so nie rerig enige manier om dit in die water te laat dryf nie. Wanneer ek die Goud slym uitgedroog het gebruik ek Saltersuur om die oorblywende Koper op te los, werk mooi en vinning.
@@successfulengineer No criticism, just a consideration. Using a computer power supply and light bulbs to regulate the current certainly works, but you can do better. High current and low voltage adapter like a led strip power supply is more suitable, after that you can use the chinese module to step down the voltage and increase the current but I suggest to add an analog ammeter so you can check continuously the conditions of the cell (i saw that the change in size of anode and cathode tends to increase/decrease the overral resistance, but you noticed it too in the 2nd video). Your voltage was good anyway, the range 0.2 - 0.3 V allows to recover almost pure copper while all other metals remain in solution or, in your case, fall at the bottom. I hope to see more videos about this in the future ;)
@@Icchy92 Hey mate, thanks for the comment. Yeah, This is going back a bit now, but I think initially I tried to use some switchmode CV-CC power supplies, but they always had stability issues when trying to regulate down to 0.3V ish. I also used my lab supply for a while, but that was linear, so probably similar power wastage to the light bulbs! I think in the end the light bulbs and PC supply worked well because they were cheap and I didn't care if acid vapors destroyed them. The Sulfuric was not too bad, but everything in the area still corrodes super fast! All up though, it was one of the better ways I explored for recovering Gold, anything that avoids tons of acid waste is awesome! I have cast a few trinkets with the recovered Copper too, which was nice :)
I've watched plenty of vids - you for sure make the easiest to follow/absorb info vid i've seen in this neck of the yt woods 👊
Appreciate the message mate 👍
That's an incredible and new (for me) way of gold recovery!!
Have a GREAT Day!!!
Appreciate the comment Shane, yep, was one of my favorite techniques.
Finally......LOL. This is why I keep you around. This thought process has been rolling around in my head for some time now. Awesome brother. Keep up the good work
Haha thanks for the comment Pete, I have been wanting to do this for ages! The first little test anode I ran worked great, looking forward to running the slimes for this one sometime this week hopefully!
@@successfulengineer Waiting patiently. What I love is, I've seen the big refineries do this, but you have the understanding and abilities to bring things down to a level someone like myself can use and understand. Not to give you the big head but the biggest thing I enjoy about you and your videos as you don't turn into this conceited wannabe
Again can't wait for the final video
sincerely happy you posted this that's a great setup I would over think the crap out of it and still not come up with that its brilliant in my book I have been wanting a new "mission" to use the power supply I used for my silver crystal experiment thanks
Thanks for the comments mate, happy 2020!
@@successfulengineer Hello , I have both gold & copper in solution, so my gold will not stick to the stainless and fall back down as a black slime ,while the copper sticks to the stainless cathode ?
I like that noisy cow. She does not explain things all that well, but she really enunciates and emotes!
If you use a titanium anode basket inside a filter bag the copper plates across to the cathode and the slimes stay in the bag. You can keep topping up the basket with copper mixture and swap out the filter bag to recover the gold etc
Most of the pins I come across are made from some kind of yellow brass, not copper.
Good technique for copper pins. Thanks for excellent video.
Yeah, I definitely lucked out that these were Cu base, Brass or Bronze would create a lot of headaches!
i do a lot of electroplating copper, and it's a very similar setup. in my experience, the most cost effective source for copper sulphate crystals is by the 50 lb. bag from the agricultural supplier- it's used to prevent algae in ponds and to disinfect cattle feet. the cheapest sulphuric liters seem to me to come from make-your-own-at-home biodiesel chemical suppliers.
Awesome, thanks for the advice!
Brilliant video, thank you! Can't wait for Part 2! Take care, Poo
Thanks mate, yep, slimes are accumulating well, had to shake the anodes clean this morning. Will hopefully get the next part done in the next week or so!
a titanium mesh basket (you'll have to stitch or spot weld your own from wire) helps hold all the last little bits, once your annodes are almost gone. get a fine enough mesh going, and you can just drop plated pins directly into that.
Cool! I've read that the industrial refiners used Titanium hooks, I have some old Thinkpads under the house, I believe they have a Titanium skeleton inside, wonder if I can cut them up to make hoods or a basket ?!?! Will investigate.
Why would the Titanium basket not be dissolved in the process? It is more reactive than the copper pins right?
@@joshspiers8888 I guess Titanium oxide is probably VERY inert. I know they use Titanium mesh and hooks commonly industrially, so it must work. I have actually ordered some Titanium mesh, so will definitely give it a try at some point soonish.
The density of copper is 8.96 g/cm3 or 0.324 lb/in3. You can work out the weight required from there.
I don't have any pins at the moment but this looks interesting. Great work as always.
For sure, shows you how misleading a "gut feel" can be! I have reprinted a modified anode pattern for future melts anyway, definitely want to maximize the surface area to minimize time!
1. I tend to pull the Steel and peel the copper off after a day by slightly bending the center of the steel. Allowing the copper to accumulate to long makes the copper very thick and difficult to get off.
2. You can always add more copper to the pins to reduced the percentage of other metals.
3. I like watching the molten metal get poured, and just being all melty and pretty...
Cool, I will have a look tonight to see if I can 'peel' the Copper. Definitely want to try and avoid any of it ending up in the slimes. It does seem to be a very smooth coating.
These pins seem to process OK as they are, but I think pins with a high Tin or Zinc content will have to have Copper added to work.
Thanks for the tip mate, that worked exactly as you described! Uploading an update video now showing the progress.
Have you tried using solar panels to produce the DC for the hydrolysis? It works fine all day long on sunny days anyway.
Off to Part Two I go! Dankie... lekker om te sien hoe jy dinge doen!👍😁
Very very good job ....I appreciate your idea....very nice 👍
Thanks for the comment :)
Excellent, I look forward to the rest of the process, well done. 👍
Thanks for the comment, have a bit of blank sludge now accumulating on the bottom, hope to have the next part done in the next week or so!
As usual, GREAT VIDEO. It makes me want to try it. Popcorn is ready for part 2, LOL.
Thanks for the comment! Yes, I'm certainly liking this a lot so far. The casting is really the hard part, every other aspect of this is better than the alternatives! I've got some slime accumulating in the bottom now, hope to have the next part done in the next week or so.
You can skip the pin melting step if you use a titanium pan for the chip pile. You will end up with more foils and less slimes to deal with. I also used the "waste" solution from a Poor Man's Nitric process as the electrolyte. 5v power supply and about a 1/2 square foot SS cathode.
Hi David, sounds like a fantastic system, would you have problems with fully plated pins ? Is it much slower than working with melted and mixed anodes ?
@@successfulengineer
It was one of those "had to try it" experiments, since I didn't have a way to cast the copper anodes. It's not much faster than AP, but like you pointed out, it generates much less waste liquid to deal with. "Full plated pins" are rarely plated heavy enough to keep acids completely out, but haven't tried any yet.
Yeah, AP is just so much waste, would never consider doing pins that way!
@@successfulengineer what is AP stands for? What is the meaning of AP?please.
The only problem I've run into, after 20 pounds of material is the supposedly nickel fouling of the electrolyte.
the pins are often brass so the acid h2so4 gets full of zinc solution. A chloride solution with cu2+ will work better. A divider of cloth will stop the contamination of anolite & catholite solutions. agitation is good to get the sludge to drop off the anode. Anodes can be cast in the frog of bricks which have been pre heated.
Hi Julian, great suggestions thanks, I tried once electrowinning from a Cu2Cl solution, but didn't really have that much luck. But yeah, If you could get around the Zinc and Tin issues that would be great!
Or you could just boil your slices in hcl after....
Is it possible not to melt the anode, but to dissolve just a handful of contacts?
Yes , that's what I'm doing now . You need to make an anode basket out of plastic, drop in a few coffee filters and find an acceptable anode rod . Works perfectly even without the sulfuric acid.
works out to about 130mA per sq inch. Good video, thanks for posting
Thanks for the calculation and comment :)
Great stuff
Thanks for the comment mate.
If you put a plastic divider with holes in it you could segregate the two precipitate slimes. That way yoy would have gold waste on one side and copper waste in the other, then you could retrieve them one at a time im thinking something like a plastic wall that has holes in the top so the electrolysis will still transfer a current , then solid wall at the bottom, then glued in or even melt sealed to the container, then you would have two separate piles of slimes.
Hey Roy, yeah, that would certainly be an improvement. In line with some other suggestions of using anode bags. I think your solution would work just as well and be fairly easy to diy. Thanks!
@@successfulengineer what is anode bags
I love it, great video!
Thanks for the comment, slimes are accumulating at the moment, next video will probably be done in a week or so.
great idea from the science to know the extraction of gold and copper specially the technology
Tell me please, from which company do you buy old processors?
Thank you for making this video.
And thank you for taking the time to leave a comment, appreciate it!
Метод рабочий, но есть несколько нюансов. Во-первых, при плавке меди с золотым покрытием много золота переходит в шлам. Во-вторых, при электролизе нужно учитывать, что лигатура содержит никель в подложке, который так же выпадет в шлам. По затратам на газ и электричество проще все растворить в азотке или снять позолоту смывом в царской водке. Но как с точки зрения эксперимента - поучительно.
The method is working, but there are several nuances. First, when melting copper with a gold coating, a lot of gold turns into sludge. Secondly, during electrolysis it is necessary to take into account that the ligature contains Nickel in the substrate, which also falls into the sludge. For the cost of gas and electricity is easier to dissolve in nitric acid or to remove the gold by flushing in Aqua Regia. But as from the point of view of experiment - it is instructive.
Привет, спасибо за ваш комментарий. Я только плавил Медь и Золото, не плавил, поэтому золото не теряется для флага в этот момент. Да, в слизи есть немного никеля, но это не проблема, чтобы удалить позже. Затраты на электроэнергию для этого почти ничто, менее 0,20 долл. США в день, HNO3 очень дорог, и вам придется использовать более 2 литров кислоты, чтобы растворить столько меди. Я думаю, что это один из лучших способов восстановить покрытие из штифтов хорошего качества. Надеюсь я правильно понял ваш перевод!
@@successfulengineer Thank you, all right. The only "thin" place in this process is the furnace with a temperature above 1200 degrees. We do not use nitric acid in its pure form, poison or melange or a mixture of battery electrolyte with ammonium nitrate.
@@successfulengineer please translate what was written into English.
We use both inches and cm's in the States...
Yep, have had a few people point that out!
For those who cannot melt copper pins into bars for the anode, instead could the pins be put into a porous bag with a connection to the power supply and dunked into the electrolyte? Similar to using silver shot or cornflakes in a silver cell.
I wouldn't think so, the idea is that the Copper atoms can migrate through the solution to the cathode, if you put the pins in whole, the Copper is surrounded by Gold. Sulfuric deplating cell is probably the best bet if you can't melt and cast anodes.
Good job, and this is the best way to deal with pins so that they benefit from copper and provide acids but I ask maho 's question and the correct voltage for copper
Waiting for Part 2 sir
I'm new to how to separate gold & silver from concentrated hard rock material with propane torch.Thanks for your videos
32:00 I think the Ampere short circuit thru the electrolyte . You want the copper particles to move the distance, not the electrons .
Thanks for sharing your knowledge, you mentioned 75 grams of CuSO4 per liter, do you mean 75 of copper as CuSO4 which mean you will dissolve about 300 grams of CuSO4 or you mean 75 CuSO4? Cause I read in different sources that copper content should be 50 grams per liter that mean we need 200 grams of CuSO4 per liter.
Another question, 10% of sulphuric acid mean add 100 ml sulphuric acid to 1 liter of water, or water plus Sulphuric acid should be 1 liter?
Thanks for your help
Hi there, this is going back many years, so I am a bit fuzzy on the details. Im pretty sure I used 75g CuSO4 and it would have been 1 to 10 H2SO4, even though that is not 10% total. For a DIY test I doubt it makes that much difference. Use those numbers as a starting point and do some controlled experiments. Good luck mate 👍
@@successfulengineer many thanks, will test it and post my results
great info video thanks for sharing most use this the next time i recover gold from pins
For sure, if you have enough pins to make the melting worthwhile, I think this approach has a lot of merit! Will see how the final recovery from the slimes goes at the end of the week, then we will all know!
I love your 📹 video well explained very informative
Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment, appreciate your feedback !
Very informative and credible. Many thanks
Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment mate.
Плохо,что нету перевода - но слышно,что это профессионал своего дела.
Спасибо за комментарий. Если есть вопросы, с радостью отвечу через гугл переводчик.
Very interesting solution to the issue. Would it be worth havingh some kind of receptacle under each anode to catch the slimes - I suspect it will make cleaning the cell out at the end much easier.
Yeah, when this is done industrially they use an anode bag to catch the slimes, when I did the small experiment I found that the slimes settle pretty well, much better than with a Sulfuric deplating cell for instance. So you can basically siphon off 90% of the electrolyte for re-use and you only have to filter the last little bit. I'm expecting a fair amount of slimes from this, so I guess time will tell how hard the filtration will be!
very good video thank you very much
Appreciate the comment, thanks Mazhar
thanks for your reply and I wish keep in touch with you because Im internet about copper electrorefining
When is the second part?
Can you make a text file?
Hi, second part should be coming out in approximately a week. There is black anode slime accumulating in the bottom now. Will leave it to run until all the Copper is transferred.
Happy to answer any questions here, probably won't bother making a text file, but happy to answer if you missed any details!
very nice
How are you sir, these days you are making very few videos, I am very worried about one thing that in Stannous chloride test, which metal is the mark of dark Brown color, I don't understand
You could use the system to copper plate anything you want as part of the process.
How to separate lead and tin from gold &Silver slimes which we get bottom of tub
For that I just used traditional chemical means, I think I started with HNO3, then used AR
To use a steel crucible, use steel not thin sheet stuff and spray a silicone spray as a release agent. I made a 5mm steel to make mine and the copper doesnt stick.
For sure, that was a tough lesson! The baking pan had zero chance, the second anode I cast into some 3mm steel, but that warped badly. Something 5mm+ Would probably work fine, but the sand casting is actually trivially easy and I can easily make shapes that are a bit more complicated.
Copper sulfide is Cu2S
Copper sulfate is CuSO4
How could you increase the A with keeping the V between the 2 plates same? You increase the space between the plate to increase R?
Yeah, I guess you could decrease the distance between the plates to reduce resistance and increase current for the same voltage, the problem being that with the plates too close together, the growing Copper hairs will short out sooner.
In `MURICA we would use centimeters in this application and either use Celsius or a thermometer that references both Celsius and Fahrenheit. In 'MURICA 100 degrees F is referenceable along with 1 foot or 1 inch. IE if you said it was 85 degrees weather I could easily imagine that or a piece of wood was 2 inches wide or 4 feet long I could also imagine that. IF you said 50 degrees C or 20 centimeters in means nothing to me. Only 1 meter is referenceable since its similar to a yard and I can imagine the length or a yard stick. In this example no imagining is required and they're just number perimeters to be measured off. But I would probably convert over to Fahrenheit just out of curiosity to reference a similar temp. say hot enough to burn you. Hot enough to cook a brownie. Anything hot enough to glow red becomes unreferenceable beyond that threshold. Anything that's colder than waters freezing point in F. becomes unreferenceable. In conclusion we use both metric and standard and usually only use standard for quantifiable relationships. IE a foot is about the length of a foot. A yard = your arm. an inch the length between the first and second knuckle. Everything else seems to be based on quantificational relationships based on experience of use similarly to how someone would be able to relate the weight of 5 stones when I would have no idea of the weight of the original stone they where referencing unless I became familiar to the measurement system.
Are you or were you spun buddy
I'm not sure if i missed it: What was the voltage across the electrodes over this run? It's surely somewhat current-related, isn't it?
Hi there, yes, you have it, I basically didnt worry at all about the voltage it was all about getting the right current density for the size of the plates
@@successfulengineer I'm a bit curiosity driven in this question... ;)
Is this setup still what you use for gold plated pins or did you find something better?
@@jackmclane1826 if you have anything that is Gold plated over pure Copper, this system works great. If the pins are brass or bronze, I would prefer to do a cyanide leach, that said, Cyanide is pretty strictly controlled, so have never actually tried it. But it is used so widely that it must work well.
@@successfulengineer I don't really want to work with cyanide in my place.
What exactly would happen with brass or bronze in this cell? I expect the zinc in brass to consume some of the sulfuric acid and thats it. Zinc sulfate is pretty safe.
With bronze? Not sure what tin et al. would do.
@@jackmclane1826 mainly just a problem with fouling the electrolyte and the whole thing doesn't work very well. I'm sure you could manage it if you needed to, still a lot cleaner and safer process than practically anything else for sure.
So what happens if you have iron, Nicole and other metals in the pins?
Iron is not really an issue, it will not melt and end up in the anodes, and you really want to separate iron based pins out early. Obviously using pins with a Copper base is ideal. There is almost always Nickel present, which does not seem to cause big problems, it does contaminate your electrolyte over time which can be a pain. Zinc and Tin are also pretty common for brass and bronze pins, in that case, they end up in the slimes with the Gold.
@@successfulengineer hi, my electrolyte changed color from nice blue to dirty green. I used many types of pins and not sure how much copper was there, probably brass, will gold and silver separation to anode slime work now?
Hi very interesting video and other then the recovery of the gold you recover also the copper that is use full for other procedures, is there any way to recover the copper dissolved in muriatic acid by Electrolysis
Hi there, you can look at electrowinning for recovering Cu from CuCl, but I think you will probably find that doing it with a single replacement reaction (with iron) is generally favored. I don't think CuCl electrowins very well.
what happens if we exclude HCL from the process. Can the system work?
Hi sir, I am sridhar from india . We have more studded diamond jewellery product any one share how to remove the diamond from gold . Need electrolysis process
When you do reverse electrolysis using sulfuric acid outside , what should the temperature be? What would be the lowest temperature and still be safe?
cool 👍😀👍
i want to this kit .can u help me
Can we separate gold from aqua Regia by this method?
Could you use copper nitrate instead of copper sulfate?
How or were u get copper to use an witch one on the copper hot or ground
what if you use Copper mesh (16 by 16). would that work/
I assume you mean as the cathode ? In that case, yes that would work fine.
Great video mate. I thought bout doing this myself. I haven't gotten around to it. Question though, in my research of the copper sulfate electrolyte solution I seen that you can add 0.5ml per gallon (US) or 3500 ml of solution. Have you read anything like that?
Could it possibly have been 0.5 mol instead of ml ? 0.5ml seems like a very small amount of something. I am currently running around 75g or Copper Sulfate per liter of electrolyte. With 100 ml of 98% H2SO4 added. Seems to be doing the business.
Successful Engineer what I meant to say in my original comment is hydrochloric acid. I found the original link for that recipe .
www.thinktink.com/stack/volumes/voliii/consumbl/cplatmix.htm
Not sure what the purpose of adding HCl to copper sulfate solution. Again great video mate! Cheers
Interesting ! I have no idea what the purpose of the HCl would be, probably improves the Copper deposit on the Cathode somehow. There is quite a long list of things that can be added for improved Copper deposits. Definitely haven't seen it in any of the other electrolyte recipes that I have come across! Thanks for the comment! much appreciated!
@Successful Engineer, it may have your interest to look at this paper: www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn/2013/930890/
What if I use salt instead of copper sulfate
where do you get your concentrated sulfuric acid from?
Most acids are not very strictly regulated in New Zealand, so I just order it from my local chemical supplier.
@@successfulengineer most of the acids can easily be bought here in Germany, unfortunately it's very difficult to get nitric acid here, Nitric acid and most nitrates come under the Explosives Act
You seem to be under the impression that anything that isn't copper won't go into solution because it's copper sulfate. Only things that are insoluble (like the gold) in water/sulfuric acid will drop and become part of the slime. Anything that's soluble ends up in solution.
Oh, not at all, I know that its actually the things going into solution that caused / causes me some problems. I think the main culprit here from memory was the Nickel fouling the solution.
This method is for separating copper from gold but not other metals, right?
Correct, this will separate the Copper and leave all the other metals. In my case I had pure Copper pins that were Gold plated, so ideal source material.
Hello...do you think we can separate copper from nikel with this methode? As copper sulfate and nickel sulfate both are soluble...Otherwise if any idea to separate this 2 methal with electrolysis, i am very interessted...
Hi there, sorry, I cannot give you a good answer on this, I know that this process is supposed to give very pure Copper out, but I have no idea if excess Nickel will cause issues for you.
Would anyone be interested in making me one of these cells and what would you charge to do so
Can I contact you to get so advice from you about recovering gold plating from new boards that have never had any circuits attached to them& so other questions as I am about to start my first gold recovery’s from all the types of stuff I have
As you can imagine, I tend not to talk to too many people directly, otherwise I would spend all day answering emails. But . . . I do keep a eye on the youtube comments and try to answer all questions, so if you get stuck, feel free to ask.
I like the look of this to remove copper from smelted dore bars with copper as the major basemetal fraction. It saves on acids. Im wondering if palladium will be dissolved and cemented out as well though?
I couldn't see why Palladium would be dissolved (not that I expect any Pd in the pins I'm processing). The electrolyte is just fairly weak Sulfuric, so I expect any Pd to be in the slimes too. But yeah, as a way of separating Cu I'm completely sold on this process!
@@successfulengineer thanks for posting the video and reply, thisll cut my acid use in half if i use it. have you tested the recovered copper purity? If theres no precious metal loss at all ill be sold on the method too, it been slow is of no concern as it can run as a background process
Yep, I'm running through about 1.2kg of pins a week now in that cell, recovering 200 - 300g of Cu per day. I haven't tested the Copper purity, but this is how Copper is refined industrially (and how a lot of industrial size PM recovery operations work) so I'm sure the Copper is going to be pretty pure. I'm also getting a good Gold yield out (see part 2), so I'm reasonably sure I'm getting all the Gold.
Dude is it just me or did I miss you mentioning at all how gold is a subject in all this as you go into great detail about getting copper on a cathode and also why this process of which the deposited outcome that mostly may seem to be a mess to someone not in the know would be useful?
Yeah, you hit the nail on the head, for those in the know, separating Copper from precious metals is a very hard thing to do. You either have to do it with wet chemistry (lots of toxic waste) or you have to use this kind of process. The vast majority of home Gold-recovery guys use wet chemistry and end up with buckets and drums full of toxic waste. This system gives you nice pure Copper (to sell or use) + all the other metals that also contain all the precious metals (the black goop)
@@successfulengineer I understand. This very fact as well as what the pros are of following the steps/procedures that you do, are not really becoming very clear in your video though, it could have done with some explaining. Tx anyway for responding!
Did you watch part 2?
High five for the electrolysis fraction :-)
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@@successfulengineer Hello i got an question when do i see the solutin is over satuarted with metals lower than zero electronegativity like tin iron and co ? my ampere is dropping alot recently could it be that the solution it over saturated?
pro-tip for mold creations....raw potato, easy to cut & holds up wonderfully under extreme heat.
Can we also recover silver from mlcc using this method? Plss reply
Hey there, yes, technically I guess you could, but this approach really works with Copper base metals and I don't think MLCC have much Copper, so you would have to deliberately add Copper, and in the end you would still have all the Tin left anyway, so probably not the best approach.
any kind of stailes steel i can use or is an specific SS?
Hi there, I used 316, worked very well. Recovered from old medical sterilizers
cementation separates which elements? and what other chemicals can be used besides sulphuric acid?
In copper refining you can only use sulfuric acid. If you refine using AP (hydrochloric acid and hydrogen peroxide) you would still need to convert AP solution to copper sulfate by distillation driving off the hydrochloric acid and collecting it to reuse. NurdRage has a video out on this process. You can see it here. ruclips.net/video/FjEoRidvgYE/видео.html
According to the "reactivity series of metals" any metal less reactive (below copper on reactivity series chart) than copper will fall out of solution as black "slime". These are your "precious metals." those metals will be silver, gold, platinum, palladium, rhodium, ect. Those metals can be refined further using different techniques later on. I know this may seem lengthy but hope this helps to get a better understanding of process. 😊
Вторая часть будет?
The second part will be?
Hi, second part will be processing of the anode slimes, should be out in a week or so.
what SS blank did you use? was it 304 or 316? thanks
It was 316 harvested out of a medical sterilizer. 304 would probably work too
@@successfulengineer iam planning to do trial pilot scale project, how many % of CuSO4 do you use? mine only 24%. how many % of CuSO4 should be in the solution?
@@bintangsyamon3002 I didn't realise you could get anything other than 100% CuSO4 ?!? What is the other 76% of yours? I think I have the concentration of CuSO4 somewhere in the start of the video, will just have to work out how much of your lower concentration it takes to get to that.
i have 2 bars of non magnetic metal ( in cuboid shape) about 1.5 kgs each , this consist of 16% of gold, 1 % silver 83% copper (ie : after a test made by specialist)… what should i do if i want to extract the Gold ,.. does electrolysis could be proceed? If can how to do it ,… at this moment i have Cloric acid , Nitric acid, copper plate, carbon rod, copper sulfate (granular)… hope to hear ur best advise
Dissolving big bars of Cu with acids is never a good idea, it creates a LOT of waste that is very toxic. The electrolysis method works great, but I think in your case the Copper has too much other metals, you really want your Cu to be about 95% before the electrolysis process for best results. You could certainly add some more pure Cu to your bars and then run them through a cell like this one.
Why don’t you just strip the gold off using a piece of gold for the cathode
I guess you could strip the Gold off the initial pins, you don't even need a Gold cathode if you use a Sulfuric cell, but this was more done out of interest than purely for the Gold recovery. I was interested at the time to compare the amount of hazardous waste created by the different processes.
I must have missed something because I’m 22:34 into this video, and I still don’t know where the gold comes in.
Hmmh, so I think I showed that the Copper plates are basically melted Gold plated pins right, the Copper cell separates Copper from everything else, the Gold is the black stuff that accumulates on the anodes. The next video shows how to turn the black stuff into pure Gold
Successful Engineer yeah that’s right I do remember you saying something about that. Sorry
@@barryfields2964 Nothing to say sorry about mate, if anything isnt obvious from any video, feel free to ask, I'm always happy to help.
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As jy flou swaelsuur opgooi sal dit die koper op los en behoort die goud boontoe te dryf. Flotasie effek sal dit aanhelp.
Die elektroliet wat ek daar gebruik is basies flou swaelsuur, so eks redelik seker dit los nie Koper op nie. Die swart Goud slym is ook redelik swaar, so nie rerig enige manier om dit in die water te laat dryf nie. Wanneer ek die Goud slym uitgedroog het gebruik ek Saltersuur om die oorblywende Koper op te los, werk mooi en vinning.
@@successfulengineer Het jy al probeer om dit eers te verpoeier voor jy die proses begin?
The idea is good but the setup you made is not very efficient
No efficient in terms of how fast it recovers Gold from the anodes, or not efficient because it uses a few cents in electricity per day ?
@@successfulengineer No criticism, just a consideration. Using a computer power supply and light bulbs to regulate the current certainly works, but you can do better. High current and low voltage adapter like a led strip power supply is more suitable, after that you can use the chinese module to step down the voltage and increase the current but I suggest to add an analog ammeter so you can check continuously the conditions of the cell (i saw that the change in size of anode and cathode tends to increase/decrease the overral resistance, but you noticed it too in the 2nd video). Your voltage was good anyway, the range 0.2 - 0.3 V allows to recover almost pure copper while all other metals remain in solution or, in your case, fall at the bottom. I hope to see more videos about this in the future ;)
@@Icchy92 Hey mate, thanks for the comment. Yeah, This is going back a bit now, but I think initially I tried to use some switchmode CV-CC power supplies, but they always had stability issues when trying to regulate down to 0.3V ish. I also used my lab supply for a while, but that was linear, so probably similar power wastage to the light bulbs! I think in the end the light bulbs and PC supply worked well because they were cheap and I didn't care if acid vapors destroyed them. The Sulfuric was not too bad, but everything in the area still corrodes super fast! All up though, it was one of the better ways I explored for recovering Gold, anything that avoids tons of acid waste is awesome! I have cast a few trinkets with the recovered Copper too, which was nice :)
+👍👍
22:28
lol @ 'noisy cow'
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