Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Hybrid aqua regia from NaNO3?

nannah - 2-12-2014 at 13:29

Hi, i have for a few months collected old circuit boards, and other electronic parts thats plated with gold and silver, and now i think that i am ready to harvest. :)

I am going to dissolve it into aqua regia, but i dont have access to any nitric acid, and heard that it is possible to make some sort of NaNO3 aqua regia hybrid.

Someone knows how to prepare this, and preparation of NaNO3?

Thanks in adance. :)

careysub - 2-12-2014 at 13:48

Quote: Originally posted by nannah  
Hi, i have for a few months collected old circuit boards, and other electronic parts thats plated with gold and silver, and now i think that i am ready to harvest. :)

I am going to dissolve it into aqua regia, but i dont have access to any nitric acid, and heard that it is possible to make some sort of NaNO3 aqua regia hybrid.

Someone knows how to prepare this, and preparation of NaNO3?

Thanks in adance. :)



You are inquiring about "Poor man's aqua regia", made by dissolving a nitrate salt in strong HCl:
http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=16232

You have to get the nitrate salt from somewhere, either NaNO3 or KNO3 usually. I can get KNO3 as a "stump remover" from my local Bog Box harware store. You can order either nitrate from Elemental Scientific or a pyro supplier (Firefox, Skylighter, etc.), among others.

nannah - 2-12-2014 at 14:57

Quote: Originally posted by careysub  
Quote: Originally posted by nannah  
Hi, i have for a few months collected old circuit boards, and other electronic parts thats plated with gold and silver, and now i think that i am ready to harvest. :)

I am going to dissolve it into aqua regia, but i dont have access to any nitric acid, and heard that it is possible to make some sort of NaNO3 aqua regia hybrid.

Someone knows how to prepare this, and preparation of NaNO3?

Thanks in adance. :)



You are inquiring about "Poor man's aqua regia", made by dissolving a nitrate salt in strong HCl:
http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=16232

You have to get the nitrate salt from somewhere, either NaNO3 or KNO3 usually. I can get KNO3 as a "stump remover" from my local Bog Box harware store. You can order either nitrate from Elemental Scientific or a pyro supplier (Firefox, Skylighter, etc.), among others.


Yeah, that is it. :)

What's "stump remover"? Used for blowing away tree stumps out of the ground?
Do they sell that to the general public where you live, careysub? :)

I must say that i am a little bit of a wimp in the way that im hesitant with ordering chemicals that are "precursors" to explosives, or that are explosive be themselves. With my luck, they would probably go off at the post office, and get me into some serious trouble. :/

So if someone know of, and would recommend a safe and easy way to make the NaNO3, i would be most greatful. :)

I guess i have to buy or make some nitric acid, right?

Thanks.

Ps. I am thinking of experimenting a bit with the recovered Au. Does anybody have some suggestions on what Au salts that can be fun to make, and experiment with?

/Nannah.

j_sum1 - 2-12-2014 at 15:13

Well if the current discussion on obtaining nitrates from faeces is anything to go by, the general consensus is that it is a while lot easier to buy some sodium or potassium nitrate than to make it from primary sources. It is possible to make nitric acid from fertilisers that contain a reasonable quantity of nitrates. Nurdrage has a nice Youtube video on making nitric acid that is a good primer on the subject. It does generally depend on having some sulfuric acid available though. It might be easier to simply buy some nitric acid if that is what you actually need.

Zyklon-A - 2-12-2014 at 15:38

No matter how unlucky you are, KNO3 will never explode by itself. NaNO3 is slightly less stable, but both are safe.
No, the KNO3 in stump remover aids in the decomposition of plant material, not used to blow tree stumps outta the ground!
I just bought this 5lb lot of potassium nitrate on eBay for $13.50 with free shipping. It came in just 4 days during Thanksgiving weekend.

careysub - 2-12-2014 at 16:56

Quote: Originally posted by nannah  

What's "stump remover"? Used for blowing away tree stumps out of the ground?
Do they sell that to the general public where you live, careysub?


Potassium nitrate is a highly soluble fertilizer and nitrogen source, you drill holes in the stump pour in the product, and it provides nitrogen to enable microorganisms to digest the wood, speeding decay.

Type "stump remover" into Google. Most of the products returned (but not all of them) are potassium nitrate. Spectracide, the "Hi Yield" brand at Walmart, etc.

Go to your local hardware/gardening center at look at the labels on the stump remover products.

Here in California I can even buy 50 lb bags of the stuff for $25 or so, no questions asked if I go to a farm supply outfit.

CuReUS - 3-12-2014 at 05:53

IIRC ,instant cold packs contain ammonium nitrate ( NH4NO3 )

and myst 32 has a video to distill nitric acid from concrete cleaner

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6GpMQ98u8I

there is a thread on gold here ,if you are interested

http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=41465

i am not very familiar with the process of extracting gold from circuit boards,but could lugol solution be an alternative to aqua regia or is lugol solution only used to extract colloidal gold from clay particles during field tests ?

http://www.sciencemadness.org/whisper/viewthread.php?tid=217...

http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=21769

also ,nitric acid is not the only oxidizer that can be used
strong hydrogen peroxide will also work,but a lot of the peroxide will decompose


in another thread ,i had asked whether chloric acid(potassium or sodium chlorate +acid) could be used as a replacement for aqua regia

one of the members said that it would be too unstable,and the discussion was closed:(


[Edited on 4-12-2014 by CuReUS]

Fantasma4500 - 9-12-2014 at 06:59

chloric acid.. once happened to decide to wash a granite mortar with some weak acid and suddenly it popped and cracked loudly
after having washed it totally i realized the granite had been etched abit in the bottom, i think chloric acid really do have some really useful properties
recall +30% concentration is said to be capable of spontanous detonation (''spontanous'') aswell as its said to decompose into perchloric acid (and ClO2?)

if you can manage the concentration (5%??) it should be doable

anyhow -- OP..
aqua regia is 3:1 HCl:HNO3
HCl forms with fx KNO3 HNO3
so just use massive excess HCl and you should have some aqua regia formed

Metacelsus - 9-12-2014 at 13:38

I sometimes use chloric acid (hydrochloric acid and sodium chlorate) to clean glassware. It's quite aggressive.

nannah - 11-12-2014 at 08:34

I live in EU, and i dont know if we can buy any nitrates otc here. Are there any europeans here that know of any otc sources over here?

I have thought about ordering nitric acid from the uk, and hope that the customs doesnt take it, but that just seems like such a headache for me.
I think i will wait doing this for a while, and pick up on it in the future.

I would like to thank everyone for the help. I appreciate it. :)

dermolotov - 14-12-2014 at 14:58

What one always forgets is that all necessary precursors are available.

I believe the restrictions of getting HNO3 for private companies as myself is around 500cc. But they don't restrict Sulphuric Acid and only restrict NaNO3 or KNO3 to 2.5 kilogrammes.
If you have easy access to Nitrate salts (be it Sodium, Potassium, Barium, Calcium, etc) you can technically just make 70-90% Nitric Acid from a simple distillation of the Acid+ Salt solution. The less water you have in the reaction vessel, the higher the concentration. You can get a relatively pure Fuming Red nitric acid that way that one can dilute down to get the stable 65-70%.

Theoretically, you can also use poor man's Sulphuric Acid (Sodium bisulphate) which is readily available in pool supply shoppes. The bisulphate is technically the weak monoprotic acid of sulphuric acid if used properly and can be used to make Hydrochloric Acid. Unsure if it can be used to generate NO2 or HNO3.

Metacelsus - 14-12-2014 at 15:37

It will generate nitric acid, but it requires higher temperatures (it needs to melt and dissolve the nitrate salt). This causes more decomposition of the nitric acid.

Zyklon-A - 14-12-2014 at 18:50

But yields can be increased with vacuum.

zenosx - 18-12-2014 at 18:52

In my experience using ammonium nitrate + H2SO4 distilling to HNO3 produced horrible yields and I later read that it can be prone to detonation (not sure how reliable that source was). Either way, the yield from NH4NO2 compared to KNO3 was very noticeable.

If you don't feel comfortable even purchasing stump remover, I would be leery of pushing you to distill HNO3 from it and a strong acid. NO2 fumes are very prevalent if not done either slowly or with a vacuum, and pulmonary edema is no laughing matter.

A 2 second search lead me to an alternate forum that might help you out
http://goldrefiningforum.com/~goldrefi/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?...

This entire forum is dedicated to refining gold from used parts.

Have fun and Be Safe