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    gman77h's Avatar
    gman77h Posts: 2, Reputation: 1
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    #1

    Sep 26, 2011, 01:36 PM
    What to do with the mudd. Reverse electroplating
    Hello , I have a reverse electroplating machine and have used salt water as the liquid to carry the currents. It works very well , a lot faster than chemicals I was using before( battery acid). It strips so fast but now I have a buch of this mudd it creates after. Dark brown mudd , yellow mudd, blue mudd. And I don't know what to do with it... do I just melt it down or something. I only have a propane blow torch, will I be able to melt it down. I used flux but just got a buch of lava rocks that test with the present of gold but can't sell them. How can I change this mudd into gold?? Has anyone else had this problem?
    jclifford's Avatar
    jclifford Posts: 12, Reputation: 3
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    #2

    Oct 24, 2011, 09:04 PM
    First every electroplating machine plates or strips either way, just reverse the contacts. In the 1980's we used to do electro-stripping. The best solution uses sodium cyanide. I am not sure if it is available today. (I am still around so it really was not that dangerous unless you decide to drink it!. Please do not). The cyanide was one of the few chemicals that would dissolve gold. I have never tried salt water, but my inclination is that it will not work on real gold. (think of all the old ship wrecks they recover gold from, the coins etc. are usually pristine after a hundred years or more. Granted there is no electricity involved, but it is salt water). Removing gold required a very high current to do the job. The major difference between gold plating and gold stripping was the current used. Gold plating is done at less than 5 amps, gold stripping was done in the 50 amp range.
    I would accumulate the "mud" you have, dry it out and find a refinery that will deal with it. Torching it may work, but it is going to be quite a mess. I have attempted similar "burn outs" with an oxy-acetylene torch and ended up with a small little bit of molten metal at the bottom. You need to torch off all the extra components, vaporizing them. This could also be dangerous if you are burning off unknown materials, (lead, etc). I suppose one of the questions I should have asked is "what are you removing gold from?"
    gman77h's Avatar
    gman77h Posts: 2, Reputation: 1
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    #3

    Nov 2, 2011, 07:38 PM
    Im stripping gold from plated jewlery. Gold plated coins, awards and other items. The gold comes right off and turns into a mudd at the bottom of the reverse plating machine. I remove the gold and can see the copper under the plating. Do I just smelt with some type of flux or just melt back into gold. The thicker the gold the longer it takes. It took me a few days to strip gold filled rings but I can now see the copper base. I focused on 24 to 22 karat plated stuff. I figured it would cut down on my refining but expected to see gold in flake form not just mudd. I have read aboout a in popular gold machine(simplicity) using salt water it turns the gold to black mudd and then you go from there. Is melting at 1850 the only thing I need to do next?
    jclifford's Avatar
    jclifford Posts: 12, Reputation: 3
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    #4

    Nov 2, 2011, 11:14 PM
    Please don't shoot the messenger with the bad news, but I am going to guess that you have a lot less gold than you would expect. I will re-check my information but as I remember gold plating solutions are purchased in quart containers that normally contain 0.5 gram to 1 gram of gold. With this container you could plate many hundreds of pieces of jewelry. That would mean that if you wanted to recover the gold after you have plated the jewelry you would have to strip hundreds of rings to get a gram of gold. That is not much considering the work and time involved. A gram of pure gold at current gold spot would be in the vicinity of $55. (1725 divided by 31.1)
    Gold fill on the other hand may actually be worth your while. Gold fill items vary in qualities, 1/20 of 12kt is a good medium. To calculate the gold: 1725 divided by 20 times .5 (12kt divided by 24kt= .5) a little over $43 per ounce. You would have to strip about an ounce of rings to get about $43. If your gold fill was 1/20 of 14k you would get a slighter higher return. 1/20 of 10k would be less. Also remember the quoted prices are 100% of value, that number is unavailable because the person you are selling to could not make a profit to stay in business!. Kind of an overlooked idea, but the spot price of gold is not a "real" price, the person selling wants more than spot, the person buying wants to pay under spot.
    gpdnp's Avatar
    gpdnp Posts: 1, Reputation: 1
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    #5

    Mar 23, 2012, 01:08 PM
    Put your mud, in a glass pyrex container add 3 parts muriatic acid and 1 part nitric acid, heat about 300' degrees for about 3 hours then filter it off, add water, kill the acid with urea. Then add, dissolved in water ferrous sulfate to it let Stan over night, to precept the gold, this method will give you 999.9 fine gold.

    P.S. If you have any questions please feel free to email me.
    [email protected] I can give you more Info. On this
    JorgeGetson's Avatar
    JorgeGetson Posts: 1, Reputation: 1
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    #6

    Jul 23, 2012, 08:06 PM
    Thanks for answering these guys.
    They need to study a bit more as you can see they really don't have any idea what they are doing.
    The precipitationg the gold out after disolving it as you stated works fine for me.
    It looks like these guys think the gold is dissolved in the salt water during plating!
    NO! The salt water just makes water conduct. Pure water is an insulator. I have very high power Radio and Radar equipment that uses thousands of volts from on the plate of the vacuum tube. The water from a heat exchanger arrives at the plate that is at 18,000 volts Positiv through a plastic tube. It picks up heat from the plate and via another short tube travels to the cathode which is at ground or the negative side of the 18,000 volt supply. The now heated water travels to the heat exchanger to be cooled. Once again. Then around it goes again and again.
    So water insulator plus sodiem chloride, "salt" makes it conduct. The elecric current is what makes the plating work. Arsnic does not desolve Gold either. You are mixing up two different processes. The process of disolving the gold with a sollution of Nitric Acid and Hydrocloric Acid also known ad Muratic acid is now known as Aqua Regina. This will disolve the gold and leave behind the other metals so when you recover the mud and melt it you will have 99.99% gold.

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