pH swing process

I am curious about an issue involving the pH swing process described under the calxes of metals section of your web site. You stated the gold becomes a hydroxide when the pH is raised and a chloride when lowered in the presence of chlorine which would be the case if using hydrochloric acid to lower it. What I am wondering is what it would be if you used an acid which contained no chlorine such as ascetic acid?

Gold acetate. And if you used sulfuric acid, the gold sulfide, and if nitric acid, then gold nitrate.

I would also like to reiterate for those people who didn't read that section of the website -- the white calx of gold made by the pH swing method is what people sell on the web as "monatomic gold" or "white powder gold" but if you simply dissolve it in hydrochloric acid, then evaporate the acid gentle, and repeat until the pH is neutral, you will have poisonous gold chloride. Go ahead and touch it with your finger, and in a few minutes it will be black. That's what it does to your brain.

Hey nick i was wondering if u have tryed using soduim chlorite and Hydrochloric acid to disolve gold. Heres a pic after a week of it sitting in a beaker . It has had a wash with distilled water, Its a rough clax but u can see some crosses . I was thinking if i left it longer or reapplied the solution i mite be able to get it a bit more uniform. During the reaction theres a gold coloured vapour that comes of it possibly gold cloride,could this be worth collecting by distillation? thanks look foward to hearing from you


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Yes that gold vapor contains some of the sulfur of the gold. It's essential to not let that escape, and use a condenser.

Acids can indeed be used to dissolve metals in our alchemy work, and the stone can be made using nothing but normal acids (with dew) to dissolve the metals, but they are so corrosive they bring out the spirit of the metal during the dissolution and it can be captured in the fumes. Hence the reason ammonium chloride can be used to sublime the spirit of a metal and capture it. You can tell when all the sulfur is removed from the metal because it remains as a calx that won't return to metal again.

That's the reason the Volpierre process won't work unless you either condense the vapors, or have a large enough flask to keep the vapors inside until they reabsorb in the water. I have a 5 liter flask for that purpose, but a condenser works faster so the process can be completed in a very short time.

This also means that if you use a metal that has already been dissolved in acids in some previous processing, then it will lack most of it's spirit, and that is the true reason gold nuggets work so much better for alchemy work.

If you used processed gold instead, it will still have the spirit, because if it didn't then it would just be ashes, but it contains less of the spirit. And when we buy gold, as alchemists we are looking to buy the spirit, not the metal.

If you use bleach and hydrochloric acid to dissolve gold, then add some hydrogen peroxide to help it along.

Forgive my ignorance in this matter as I am a relative new comer the the alchemical arts, but as far as the spirit of metal is concerned isn't it possible to obtain it from a metal such as antimony or bismuth and then infuse it with the already powdered gold? Or is it necessary to also take the spirit of gold itself? It would seem that with the dew sea salt method that the spirit is taken from the dew and then infused into the powdered metals inherently trapped in the salt.

Silverdragon07

I don't understand your question. You seem to be just mixing everything together with these ideas of taking a spirit from one place and putting it in another, so I don't understand what you are saying.

Thank you for your reply Nick in regards to the sulfur of gold vapor ,if all of the sulfur of gold come over into the receiver flask. Would there still be any redness left in the clax ? or is all the redness in the yellow sulfur

kind regards Justin

You can't get all of the sulfur out of the gold just by using an acid, so the gold calx will always have color in it, and it will always melt back to normal looking gold, but with a little less color than normal.

But with sal ammoniac (ammonium chloride) you can indeed get out all of the sulfur until you are left with a white calx that can't be converted back to gold metal when you try and melt it. If you want to do this, the gold is first made into gold chloride by carefully dissolving it in Aqua Regia and condensing the vapors. Then once the gold is dissolved, add the condensed liquid from the receiver flask back to the gold chloride solution and evaporate at low temperature of 120°F.

When you have crystals you don't need to wash them to make the pH neutral, because it's better if they are still acidic. Don't touch the crystals because they will make your skin black because gold chloride kills cells. Powder the crystals in a mortar with an equal weight of sal ammoniac, then place in a distillation flask and heat until the sal ammoniac sublimes to the condenser. If it only attaches itself to the walls of the flask, then you need to heat it up further so the flask is hot enough to sublime the sal ammoniac all the way up into the condenser.

Then you wash out the sal ammoniac from the condenser with cool water, and a fine red powder should precipitate out. That is the gold that contains the spirit or sulfur. You can then decant the water solution of sal ammoniac from the top of the bright red gold precipitant, and evaporate the water to form sal ammoniac crystals again, which you then mix again with the gold calx.

After many sublimations, you will have taken out all of sulfur from the gold calx, and it will no longer convert back to gold, but will remain an ash. This must be calcined to a snow whiteness, then you can reunite the sulfur with the gold.

Thank you