How to get gold?

Gold can be mined not only on an industrial scale, using sophisticated equipment. You will also feel like a gold miner at home if you get the right starting material and first familiarize yourself with some chemical processes.

Getting gold at home can carried out only with the appropriate license. Moreover, it is issued only to a legal entity registered at a legal address. If a person wants to just get gold in his apartment, then he will violate the Criminal Code.

By mining precious metal in this way, you can make good money in a short time. Certainly activity flaws also exist. For example, the reactions performed are not safe, and the search for a sufficient amount of starting material can take a lot of time and effort. Again, to legalize domestic gold mining, you will need to spend enough effort.

As a starting material for producing gold, completely ordinary objects, most often available in the household, are suitable. For example, you can use old phones, microcircuits, computers and radio tubes - that is, any devices with radio components - both from radio engineering and from electronics. However, it is important that they be released a long time ago, since it was during the Soviet era that a sufficient amount of gold was used to create radio components, which means that it will be possible to extract it.Thus, it turns out that the greater the age of the device, the more it will “give out” a precious metal.

A fairly traditional solution is use of household items with gilding, for example, jewelry, cutlery or decor. However, this source material gives a small amount of gold, because initially the precious metal is applied in a very thin layer. On the contrary, a good "catch" is obtained when processing old capacitors containing not only gold but also silver.

All workpieces are recommended to be sorted first. First, they are laid out in size, and then all unnecessary elements are eliminated from their surface to save time and chemicals. At the final stage of preparation, it is necessary to sort the parts using a magnet. It is important to form a handful of those elements that respond to it, and those that are not attracted at all. The sorting process significantly saves further on the chemicals used.

It is also possible to obtain a precious powder from sand and clay, but this process is very time-consuming. Again, it is difficult, but you can try to extract gold from mercury, silver and lead.

In fact, there are enough ways to mine gold, but at home, it is customary to use two of them: electrolysis and etching. Each method has both advantages and disadvantages. Carrying out electrolysis is more labor-intensive, but less reagents will be required for its implementation.

The resulting gold can be used to repair jewelry, restoration, soldering parts, or, in the case of high quality, for the manufacture of new decorative products. The easiest way to use at home casting methodwhen the heated metal is poured into a mold in a thin stream. To give the metal a more attractive appearance, its surface is polished with a felt rag, on which ordinary toothpaste is applied. Jewelry solder for soldering is made by mixing gold with additives.

Having given preference to the etching method, it will be necessary to prepare a plastic basin and bucket, scales, a glass vessel resistant to high temperatures, as well as a refractory crucible or its equivalent, necessary for melting metal. Durable Cotton Flap tissue adequately cope with the task of filtering, and latex gloves provide the necessary hand protection. Of course, the entire procedure will require electric stove. By the way, in the absence of a crucible, you can replace it with a piece of burnt brick, in which a depression is created with the help of a Bulgarian saw. Since gold, being a chemical element, has a high inertness, to activate etching a certain oxidizing agent will be required.

Experts recommend using for this purpose. a mixture of hydrochloric and nitric acid, combined in a ratio of 1 to 3. This solution, by the way, is popularly known as "aqua regia". The oxidizing agent should be used immediately, as it will be prepared, since delay will lead to the start of the settling process, which, in turn, contributes to the decomposition of nitrogen dioxide.Visually, this can be determined by noticing how the transparency of the liquid changes to a light yellow hue. As a result, the oxidizing agent begins to function much worse, and the process of gold synthesis becomes less effective.

The whole process consists of lowering boards, microcircuits, and other details into a solution, as a result of which gold particles form a thin film on the surface. Some experts also recommend warming up the liquid somewhere up to 70-80 degrees. You should be prepared for the fact that the rest of the starting material is completely dissolved. By the way, in the case when gold is to be precipitated, iron sulfate, hydrogen peroxide, or oxalic acid can be added to “royal vodka”. At the end of the procedure, the liquid is filtered with a cotton cloth. If everything is done correctly, then a layer of gold will remain on its surface.

Gold particles appear to melt in a crucible using borax. As a rule, the crucible is heated on an electric stove or using a burner, after which the heated metal is poured into a mold with a thin stream. Such gold is stored in a dark place where the sun's rays do not fall. In the room it is important not to allow excessive humidity, as well as temperature fluctuations.

To prevent gold from evaporating during etching, it is advisable to supplement the mixture of acids with a small amount of ordinary salt. Typically, 10 milliliters of a mixture requires 0.2 grams of grains. You need to add salt during evaporation - that is, periodically heating to a temperature of 70-80 degrees. Similarly, the combination of boiling water and 2 milliliters of hydrochloric acid will work, poured into the solution.

Another common way to get gold at home is electrolysis. It is suitable in cases where microcircuits, SIM cards, semiconductors or similar parts are used as the source material. Conducting electrolysis is more difficult than etching, but gold is also more pure. In addition, it is possible to obtain a precious metal from lead. The work begins with the fact that a suitable vessel is filled with either hydrochloric or sulfuric acid.

Several plates made of iron or lead are lowered into the liquid. The essence of electrolysis will be that they will become the cathode, and the parts of gold found in SIM cards and other processed parts will be in the role of the anode. Using the copper wire, the cathode plates must be connected to each other, and then to the electrical network. Electricity should be approximately 0.8 amperes per square decimeter. Having launched electricity, it is possible to carefully lower prepared parts into acid. After the gold moves to the cathode, it is necessary to turn off the current and remove the plates.

On how to get gold at home, see the next video.