Gold Recovery Cell

by: Ryan

Table of Contents

1. Safety Procedures 2. Materials 3. Setting Up 4. Removing Gold 5. Retrieving Gold 6. Finishing 7. Clean Up 8. Extra Information

1. Safety Procedures

This kit calls for the use of a battery charger. Battery chargers can be very lethal to a human. It only requires 1/10 of an amp to kill a person so be aware of your surroundings.

This kit calls for the use of lead and melting lead. When melting lead please be careful to properly ventilate the room, and do not handle lead anymore then you are required to. Lead can cause higher levels of metal in your blood, which can cause complications.

This kit calls for the use of high temperature torches. Use common sense when dealing with these torches and do not touch your bare hand to any bare metal around your workplace.

This kit calls for the use of acidic materials. When dealing with acidic materials use proper ventilation (preferably outdoors), hand protection (thick rubber gloves), face protection (a full face mask can protect against chemicals that react explosively), aswell as clothing protection (thick shirts, jeans, shoes, hair net).

IMPORTANT: For any situation where acid is on skin please keep (2) large buckets close by, one filled with soapy water and another filled with clean water. These buckets will serve the purpose to dunk your part of the body that was exposed to acids in for more than 15 minutes.

2. Materials

Minimum of 6 amp battery charger. For my home system I used a 10amp system.

Glass jar for the 'cell'. This jar needs to be larger than 2 1/2 cups and perfered to be tall similar to a mason jar.

Lead or Graphite cathode. If you are using lead, you can take some sinkers from home and using a stove or torch (listed below) melt it down to liquid form. Once in liquid form the lead can be 'poured' into a casting item. To cast my cathode I used a 10" long peice of angle iron. The end anode was about 8" long x 3/4" x 3/4".

You can also purchase a graphite anode from the internet for a little more money.

Roll of aluminum foil or aluminum duct tape. The aluminum duct tape withstands the chemicals longer and will not degrade as fast as aluminum foil.

Crucible melting dish. The best type of melting dish to use is a magnesia cupel. This cupel does not require you to use any kind of flux when melting the gold down.

MAPP gas torch. I have tried several other torches, such as propane, and butane. None of these torches had the heat needed to melt the gold properly. MAPP burns close to the temperature of Acetylene torches.

Plastic spaghetti strainer.

(5) 2+cup plastic bowls / containers. Preferred to be thicker bowls. (you can substitute one bowl for a NEW oil funnel)

Bag of 100+ coffee filters.

(3+) alligator clips preferred to be stainless steel. You can use any clips but the alligator clips are a little easier to work with.

A roll of sturdy house copper wire, 14 guage or better would be fine. You can use a smaller diameter aswell but it might take longer in the 'dipping' process.

Rubbing Alcohol (70% isopropyl)

(2) large buckets. 5 gallons is preferred to be able to dunk any body part in them.

Optional: You can use a hotplate or reptile heating lamp to help dry out the coffee filters.

Large bucket ~1 gallon. A 4-quart pitcher will work perfect. 1-gallon ice cream bucket would work aswell.

Liquid Glycerine - This can be obtained from any pharmacy like store. Wal-Greens, Rite-Aid, or CVS would have this product. It is the primary ingrediant in FLEET Adult liquid suppository. These can be somwhat tricky to locate. They are in small eye dropper bottles. Sometimes depending on your state laws they can be found in other forms aswell. Look for the manufacturers name FLEET on the front (generally a green case).

Virgin Sulfuric Acid - This can be purchased from any Lowes, Menards, Wal-Mart ...ect. Look in the hardware department for drain cleaners with 'Virgin Sulfuric Acid'. These bottles generally say Sulfuric Acid right on the front to notify you of its contents. 32oz bottles in size.

Borax hand soap - Borax is used as a flux when melting the gold. This flux helps to remove impurities and melt the gold to a fine carat.

Shopping for some of these chemicals can take time. Be sure to leave yourself about $100 USD and about an hours time.

3. Setting Up

Clean a large wooden surface to work on. Make this area about 2-3' wide by about 3-5' long. More space the better. (You dont wanna knock something over and get burned).

Setup your battery charger close to the work area, attach the negative end to your lead or graphite cathode. Hang your cathode over the edge of the Glass jar from above. Make sure the cathode only hangs about 1" from the bottom of the jar.

Pull off a peice of the aluminum foil and fold it over so it is relatively thick and place it opposite of the cathode. you do not want the cathode and the foil touching. Clip your positive end of the battery charger onto the aluminum foil so it clips the foil to the jar.

Place (3) of the small ~2cup plastic bowls in a row and fill (1) of them up with water. This will be your rinse bowl.

Fill up the large ~5gallon buckets with water and soap water, keep them close by.

Take the 14 gauge wire and attach it to your alligator clips. Cut this wire so it is about 6-8 inches long. Bend the wire so it is shaped like a \/ and place the \/ so it is over the aluminum foil ring and the alligator clip end is in the hold of the glass jar. Repeat this process for all (3) of the alligator clips. Once bent properly remove them from the jar.

With a measuring cup measure EXACTLY 2 cups of the sulfuric acid drain cleaner and add this to the glass jar.

With a different measuring cup measure EXACTLY 1/4 teaspoon of the liquid suppository (liquid glycerine) and add this to the glass jar.

Rehang your alligator clips over the edge of the jar again touching the aluminum foil. be sure to hang the alligator clips about 1/4" - 1/2" above the chemical bath below.

4. Recovering Gold

When ready clip your item into the alligator clips and dip them into the chemical bath. Submerge the most possible material without putting the alligator clip into the solution.

The chemicals will start to boil a darker color, which is the gold being removed from the product. Once this 'boiling' is slowing down or stopped pull the material back out and using your alligator clip still dip the item into your first rinse bowl to remove any left over chemicals. While wearing rubber gloves remove the material left behind from the alligator clip and put it either in the 'clean' bowl or into the bowl designed for material with gold still on it. ( these 2 additional bowls are the ones from above using ~2cup bowls)

Once this process is complete reclip another piece of material and start the process over again.

5. Retrieving the Gold

Once you have dipped all your material or you have noticed that the solution is not bubbling or removing gold from the items, unplug your battery charger.

Take out your cathode and rinse it in your rinse bowl to clean off the acid solution. This will also remove any gold that has stuck to the cathode. Use some paper towel and wipe down the cathode to further remove and precious metals. If their is any black residue on the paper towel set the towel aside to be used in a little while.

Take your large 4+quart container. Most likely the pitcher or ice cream pale and fill it up half way with water (distilled if available).

Now pour the contents of the cell into the pitcher very very slowly. The chemicals and water cause the solution to give off large amounts of heat and could rupture your pitcher. Since the container can rupture I generall put a large garbage bag or another container around my pitcher to keep from chemicals getting on everything.

Check all of your containers for any black sludge. Use the same paper towel to remove as much of this sludge as you can. Put water in the containers and slosh it around to further remove the black sludge.

Pour all of the water into the pitcher

6. Finishing

Take a large 2-5 gallon container and place the spaghetti strainer securely over the top of it so it will not fall in.

Now take a small 2 cup container and cut the bottom out of this container. Place it inside the strainer. (this bowl will catch any of the fluids from going outside of a specified area. (you can also use an oil funnel)

Now take 3 coffee filters and dip them into some clean water to pre moisten them. Rinse the excess water out of the filters. Carefully lay the filters inside the 2 cup container so they touch the strainer.

Once the coffee filters slow down and take a long time to let the chemicals pass through, stop filtering them and set the coffee filters aside (if you have used the hot plate or heat lamp set them on / under the plate or lamp to help them dry)

Setup another 3 pre moistened coffee filters in the same position as the last ones. Repeat this process until no more solution remains.

Rinse the inside of the pitcher with small amounts of water and filtering them out. Once all the black mud is out of the container set the pitcher aside and wait for the filters to dry under the lamp.

Collect all the coffee filters and paper towel from earlier, cut away any white parts that DO NOT have black mud on them. Throw the remaining clean white pieces away.

Place the 'dirty' filters and paper towel into the melting dish and drop a few small droplets of rubbing alcohol into the filters. Do not fill the melting dish more than 1/4 full. Ashes may blow away while burning.

Now place some of the borax hand soap into a small cup. Lightly sprinkle the borax onto the 'dirty' papers covering all the black mud. drip a few more drops of rubbing alcohol into the borax. With a match light the borax on fire.

Place your melting dish on something flame and heat resistant, like a cinder block or large piece of steel.

Turn your MAPP gas torch on its lowest available setting ( do not rush into it or you may lose gold) hover your torch about 8" above the borax slowly heating the edges of it.

While this process goes on you will notice the borax bubbling and absorbing the filters and black residue. If not all the black residue is covered apply more borax to the batch.

While the borax begins to bubble and solidify turn the heat up and slowly move it into the center of the mass. You will notice a light yellow/orange gow inside the ball (this is gold)

Concentrate on the entire ball of borax with your flame, if you do not heat the entire ball you will miss gold. The gold 'shot' will form in the center of the borax.

If you let the ball harden now, you will have slag mixed in with gold. But if you have a small cup with a little drain cleaner in it you can heat the gold up to a liquid form again and with some pliers tip your melting dish over to roll the liquid ball out into the sulfuric acid. This will shatter any 'glass' that has formed with impurities in it. Leaving at the bottom of your cup a good sized shot of gold.

Once finished you can purchase a gold etching kit to test for purity of your gold. If you collect the gold into a large batch you can also take it to an assasy to get it tested for purity.

7. Clean Up

Now that you have extracted gold from scrap material, take your batter charger wrap the wires up to it and put it back into storage.

Wash out your glass cell and any plastic containers with warm soapy water to remove any remaining chemicals.

Place all recovery items into a cardboard or wooden box to be stored out of reach of little ones. All the remaining chemicals should be in a large 2-5 gallong bucket right now, add 1-2 cups of baking soda to neutrilize the acid and dispose of this solution.

Dispose of any paper towel used.

8. Extra Information

Gold recovery can be a very very good supplemental income. If you have access to large amounts of computer parts or scrap jewelry do some research on the value of the item before scrapping it into gold. The item could very well be worth more in its current state. A rule to follow in the business, if the computer is below 75mhz it is worth scrapping but if it is above 75mhz the resell value might be higher than scrap value.

Some good places to check for gold are pawn shops, computer repair shops, and the internet. A good idea is to make contact with all the local computer repair shops you can and make an agreement to stop by once every 2 weeks on a given day to pick up and DOA (Dead on arrival) computer parts. Even if the parts aren't worth gold scrap you can sell them as a bulk lot on eBay for a small amount. Its a good idea to stop in to any pawn shops in your neighborhood on the same day as your computer shops.

The internet is very powerful as we all know, a simple google search can result in hundreds of websites that manage the trading of junked parts. A handful of websites sell scrap in bulk such as 40,000lbs of scrap processors for 0.75$ / lb. These are the best of the best you will get some bad gold processors but also many many good ones. It would be best to order a small load of 50 lbs before ordering a large truckload.

If you look in the right place you can find some processors worth tens of dollars in gold. The Pentium Pro gold faced CPU is worth about 40-45$USD.

The material in this guide is for residential use only. Any use of the information in this guide means you have taken full responsibilty for any mishaps that might happen while extracting the gold. This guide is for the intended recipients use only. Any reproduction of this guide will result in VERO reporting and criminal action taken. This guide is not intended as a free gift.