PRECIOUS METALS From a Chemical Waste!

[Music] hello everyone during the last year i have run lots of galvanic metal plating experiments and i have accumulated a lot of used electrolytes which have turned into chemical waste for various reasons they no longer work which is why i have to either dispose of them as crap or recycle them myself that is why in today's video i'm going to share with you how i extracted different metals such as platinum gold and copper from my chemical waste i have got copper sulfate and nickel solutions and also gold and platinum electrolytes which are used for coating various items with precious metals i think we can start with simple things and then gradually increase the level of complexity i decided to start with copper because these bottles mainly contain copper sulfate mixed with sulfuric acid and different impurities i decided to extract the metal itself from these solutions using electrolysis and without using chemical reagents the only thing which is challenging here is the choice of electrodes i can use any piece of copper as cathode or in other words negative electrode i happen to have a piece of copper foil at hand but as an anode i need to use some inert material here i have a correctly indestructible titanium anode covered in uracinum and iridium oxides you can also use graphite anodes instead of it but they frequently break down when used and can contaminate solutions with carbon particles that is why it is better to buy such an anode once and not to torment yourself using graphite after putting together the setup and connecting the electrodes i decided to steer the mixture with a magnetic steeler thus we can intensify the current which will make the process run quicker and the copper will be deposited in the form of metal rather than flakes from the chemical point of view the process is quite simple copper is deposited into the cathode and on the anode oxygen is being released as a result when current is applied copper sulfate solution is divided into copper and sulfuric acid the entire process took about 12 hours to complete after that the solution became practically transparent and all the copper from the blue solution deposited on the cathode which got much heavier and thicker because of the deposited layer of copper the new layers of metal are easy to remove from the copper foil and we can see that after the electrolysis the metallic copper deposited on the copper foil is quite shiny and pure it weighs 62 grams by the way this analytical weighting scale can even detect the additional weight created by oxidation of the freshly produced porous copper in the ear after separating copper from the sulfuric acid i filtered the obtained solution and i'm saving it for later use maybe i will need this acid with light copper impurities after dealing with copper i decided to take on nickel because i thought that recycling nickel electrodes will be just easy as a recycling copper i was so mistaken i have accumulated several bottles with electrolytes for nickel plating which as far as i remember certainly contain a mixture of nickel sulfate and nickel chloride and seems like they also contain copper impurities but i don't really remember just like i did with copper i have assembled the same setup in which i use the very same indestructible electrode as an anode and as a cathode i used a piece of nickel sponge after all the preparation i turned on the stirrer again and started applying current and i left it around for 12 hours it turned out that there was quite a lot of copper impurity in the solution which deposited on the electrode and the bottom of the container to remove it i swapped the nickel cathode for a copper one in order to separate copper from nickel in the solution ten hours later it became apparent how much copper impurity there was in the solution because a large amount of metallic copper sand to the bottom of the container besides it turn out that nickel almost didn't deposit during electrolysis with the inert anode which is why practically pure copper is the form of such fine powder deposited on the bottom and on the cathode apparently because of the sulfuric acid being formed the freshly extracted nickel immediately dissolved and didn't have time to deposit on the cathode i filtered the extracted copper powder and left it to dry after that i proceeded to extract nickel from the solution i decided to use a steel plate instead of the inert anode for extracting nickel it will be substituting nickel atoms in the solution with iron atoms when i use the inert anode nickel just won't get extracted i use the same nickel sponge as a cathode interior pure and shiny nickel is supposed to coat it just as i did before to speed up the entire process and increase the current i steered the solution i had to wait for additional 16 hours and after that the results were not that impressive instead of a shiny nickel coating black loose and fragile nickel coating deposited on the cathode and most of this metal sank to the button in the form of powder however the biggest problem was that the solution was contaminated with carbon released by the steel plate i reckon the only way i can separate nickel from carbon is by using a magnet fortunately nickel is a ferromagnetic and i managed to collect most of the nickel from powder from the bottom of the container with the help of a powerful neodymium magnet i rinsed it with some 50 eternal solution after that before melting it i left it to dry just like copper while nickel and copper are drying it's time to deal with precious metals and i'm going to start with platinum from the experiment for my previous video i have some electrolyte for rough platinum plating left while rough plating that's because it almost doesn't contain any unchanging activities and consists of 0.1 percent hexachloroplatinic acid solution this substance is created when metallic platinum is dissolved in aqua region it's quite easy to extract such platinum from such a liquid using sodium formate or in other words sodium salt or formic acid to begin with i'm preparing a 10 solution of sodium formate using 8 grams of 85 formic acid and 6 gram of sodium hydroxide and after mixing i'm increasing the total volume to 100 milliliters for this reaction the solution as well as the platinum containing solution need to be heated up to their boiling temperatures after that the platinum solution will need to be neutralized with sodium bicarbonate in order to turn the chloroplatinic acid into sodium hexachloroplatinate when around in this reaction i used a bit too much sodium bicarbonate which causes solution to grow turbid to fix this i started removing vestiges of sodium bicarbonate with the help of formic acid until the turbines disappeared after tasting the solution with ph paper i realized that the solution was too acidic and that platinum won't get extracted to neutralize the solution again i started adding small quantities of sodium bicarbonate into the heated solution after reaching a weak alkaline solution fine black platinum powder began to be extracted from the solution as soon as it happened i added some hot sodium for my solution prepared beforehand to the beaker now i need to boil this solution for about 30 minutes in order to extract all platinum from it and also in order for the sediment to be more granule and easier to filter some time later the small platinum particles from the solution clotted and sank to the bottom as pure platinum now i can easily filter it and wait for it to dry before melting it while our metals are drying there i decided to recycle my electrolyte for gold plating in my previous videos i used it to gold plate a cup and different other items because of that the concentration of gold in the solution is critically low and it doesn't work as well as it used to besides i still have some gold containing solutions in which gold is present in the form of a complex compound called potassium hexanorate that is why zinc cementation will fit well for extracting gold from this solution to do that i'm adding 50 grams of the fine zinc powder in order for it to substitute gold in the solution for the reaction to complete i left this mixture heating for 10 hours some time later the solution changed its color from yellow to pale blue and a white zinc hydroxide sediment sank to the bottom first i'm pouring out the upper transparent layer of the liquid into another beaker and pouring in some concentrated sodium hydroxide solution thus this oxide of zinc should dissolve after everything has dissolved and settled i poured out the upper layer of the solution and added some concentrated hydrochloric acid in order to wash away wastages of zinc powder after dissolving zinc and rinsing several times with dilute hydrochloric acid there is some sediment left on the bottom apparently this is gold with iron impurities i'm going to filter and dry this sediment as a result of all my experiments i have got several sediments of different metals so i think it's time to begin melting them to do that i am going to use my new hydrogen burner the temperature of each flame can reach over 2700 degrees celsius we can start with the gold sediment since there can be wastages of iron in the sediment i decided to burn it with a stream of oxygen along with a paper filter after that i collected everything that didn't get magnetized and decided to melt it in all in most unusual crucible which was piece of potato in the comments to my previous videos many of my subscribers advised me to melt goat in a potato at first i thought it was a joke however let us try now and see what it's like to melt a gold in a potato potato turn out to be one of the best crucibles and vestiges of goat melted perfectly the charcoal formed as a result of potatoes burning served as a heat insulator which is why gold melted extremely easy to improve melting and for small gold drops to stick together i poured in some borgs which served as a flux after melting for some time i got such a drop of gold it weighs 2.2 grams and it goes about 100 euros which is quite a good result after gold i decided to melt palatino powder which after drying started looking like unremarkable black powder i decided to melt platinum also in a potato in order for the fine powder not to get blown away and for it to better stick together i decided to add a surplus of borax because of the extremely high melting temperature of platinum which is 1700 degrees celsius i had to melt it for a long time after melting i got such a tiny drop of platinum which weighs only 0.23 grams and it doesn't cost much after dealing with precious metals i decided to melt my pieces of copper along with copper powder as well to do that i'm loading the graphite crucible with all the copper and i'm adding several spoons of borax in order for the copper powder not to oxidize at a higher temperature i'm placing the crucible inside the melting furnace and i'm setting it to the maximum temperature after reaching the needed temperature and melting content of the crucible i'm pouring molten copper along with leftover borax into the graphite mold i have prepared after it had hardened i'm cooling it with a regular spray water tada a copper nugget is ready after removing the borax i got such a beautiful copper nugget weighting 142 grams what about nickel i sort of came to a sand steel visit i didn't find a big enough potato to accommodate so much nickel powder and most probably this metal will just burn down because it was a high chemical activity that is why i am going to save it for later until i find suitable furnace for melting it with the needed flux so now i think you know how to extract some precious metals from different solutions and also how to melt them in a potato if you like this video don't forget to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel to get to know more new and interesting you

Channel: Thoisoi2 - Chemical Experiments!

Views: 142,036

Keywords: precious metals, gold extraction, platinum extraction, copper extraction, scrap metals, chemical waste, video about metals, metals chemistry, affinage, metal based solutions, copper sulfate, gold chloride, metallurgy, metal melting, inorganic chemistry, chemistry video, metal extraction, Thoisoi channel

Id: 8DZvgP2eu4U

Length: 15min 24sec (924 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 13 2021