Aqua Regia

[Doc Maker]

I've been doing some light reading and I stumbled across Aqua Regia, nitric acid and hydrochloric acid (1:3). AR dissolves gold into a precipitate powder. After a little more research, namely a story about hiding nobel medals from the Nazis, I thought that this may be a good way to keep gold secure at a bug out location or cache. It also has the advantages of helping remove gold from recovered electronics. It does require some very caustic chemicals and a place to re-melt the gold. Has anyone ever done this? Thoughts on the practicality?

[MacAttack]

When the bad guys find this container of acid don't you think they will just smash or dump it out out of spite? Then boom there goes all your gold.

How do you plan on spending it?

It would probably be harder to hide the smelting and refining gear than it would be to just hide the original gold.

[crypto]

a smoked brown bottle full of gunk at the bottom blends in well with 20 other brown bottles full of gunk. The Nazis didnt smash them last time.

The problem with aqua regia is that its a pain to make nitric and hydrochloric acid, and it doesnt last forever.

[Doc Maker]

All valid concerns. However, I would probably just filter out the precipitate powder and keep it somewhere. Also, in a SHTF scenario I would think that forges would be common among survivors. Lead bullet making and scrap collectors would make them fairly common.

[raptor]

Honestly it seems like a lot of trouble when several holes might do the trick.

[Doctorr Fabulous]

Honestly it seems like a lot of trouble when several holes might do the trick.

This. False floor with a crate on it is easier. Or the attic. Nazis didn't find Anne Frank either.

[Doc Maker]

Holes take time. Digging the gold out could take time I may not have when I'm bugging out. Also, If I'm robbed on the road by an ignorant thief, I may just be able to hang on to the precipitate. I'm considering the practice of hiding in plain sight for this stuff at my cache's and BOL. Which are remote and have very little security when I'm not there. On the road, I only need a small torch and a melting dish to make "buttons" of gold to trade.

[crypto]

Thats a negative on that, I think you misunderstand how aqua regia works on gold:

Once its in solution in the aqua regia, you need to add sodium sulfite to it to get any precipitate to fall out of solution. What falls out isn't gold, its gold sulfite, and useless to you as a trading good. Its also rather bulky when dried.

To recover the elemental gold, you need to undergo another process. You need to use borax and a 2000-degree oven to get gold.

Good luck getting a small propane torch to heat everything up to that temp.

[MacAttack]

If you think you'll be recovering gold from electronics in the PAW.

Using acid you'll collect more than just gold. You'll get tin, lead, copper, several other trace metals and plenty of plastic.

You'll need a bit more than just a bullet mold to separate all that.

[goofygurl]

Honestly it seems like a lot of trouble when several holes might do the trick.

This. False floor with a crate on it is easier. Or the attic. Nazis didn't find Anne Frank either.

Unless I'm mistaken, yes they did find her and her family? But it's 2 am and I'm running on 2 hours of sleep so maybe I'm wrong? and I agree? Sounds like a lot of work when there are other viable options for keeping things hidden.

[Doc Maker]

Not really considering scrapping in any real amount but separating the gold is what the AR does. I do understand the process and I wasn't asking about using the raw precip as a trading good. But if I had to leave my BOL, I would re-melt the gold first. 2000 degrees is easy with a handheld propane torch. I'm considering the concept of leaving the precip at my BOL. Hiding it in plain sight. Remote cabins get burglarized regularly and this seems like an option. But it also depends on how bad the PAW is. Do we have Nazi's occupying the streets or is it just a Cascadia subduction quake that will settle down in a couple of months?

Anne Frank was betrayed, by the way...

[dukman]

I don't get the need to go through some elaborate steps just to hide it in plain sight, when there are so many ways to hide it out of sight with far less effort.

As someone mentioned, it would be easy for some burglar to just smash your bottle to bits and that would make it even harder to recover. Or what if they stole your forge, crucibles, and other tools needed?

I see the point about getting gold from electronics, but it is hard for companies to make a profit doing that right now (most send it overseas where the EPA is non-existant and cheap labor is abundant), how would it be cost effective in the PAW? I am sure those chemicals are going to get harder to find as well.

[smiffy]

If you don't "have" enough Chemistry that you need to ask about Aqua Regia on-line, you don't have enough chemistry to really handle the stuff safely (or achieve what you want to achieve without loosing half the gold in the residue that gets washed down the drain).

I'm sorry. I'm trying not to come across as a condescending jerk, but your first post actually rather scares me.

(Actually, I do hope I'm not running down your level of Science education too much, but Chem is loaded with many misconceptions and "expeditions to the rule".
Worse, many theoretical chemists will tell you the reaction goes:
Solution A + Liquid B ---> Product.
Unless you read the methodology v. carefully, you won't find out that is goes: put a tiny quantity of Soln A in a beaker surrounded by a large ice-water bath. Add Liquid B a drop at a time, (one drop every minute) and swirl gently, unless you want to lose your eyes. You'll purify your product after 3 painstaking recrystallizations)

The super-concentrated acids required are evil, evil, things to handle even in a well equipped facility and with non-ZPAW levels of emergency care in reasonable proximity. They are far beyond the dilute "bench acids" used in senior school and lower-college teaching laboratories. The nitric acid of the required concentration is referred to as "red, fuming nitric acid". I hope the name gives you a clue how horrid this stuff is to handle.

I'm now going to attempt to translate English University levels of knowledge to US-college levels, based on what international students have told me in Gradschool. (It's not better or worse, it's just different; actually the States follows the Scottish model fairly closely)

In order to retrieve pure gold from "virgin" Aqua-Regia that's had nothing but pure gold put in it - I think you'd need "Junior-year" (3rd year - have I got that right?) chemistry experience, if not the full honours degree with Chem as the major. Plus the right kit to do the necessary reaction stages.

In order to extract pure gold from an "admixture" of metals (such as crushed up old mobile phones) by using Aqua-Regia, including toxic heavy metals, so that you don't poison yourself with heavy-metal vapour when you re-melt the gold to make jewelry etc. is postgraduate level IMO.

As for the Chemist who dissolved the Nobel medals:
He wanted to hide the gold from the Germans, as gold is useful in wartime to buy stuff from neutral countries.
He wanted to destroy the medals, they belonged to German scientists and the Germans had just marched into his country of birth (Hungary), then his country of residence (Denmark), and then he was forced to flee the Holocaust.
That the original gold was later recovered was *not* his intention at the time.

As a penultimate point, to demonstrate how hard it is to safely handle strong acids; did you know that the waste-water plumbing in chem labs is wide-bore glass tubing rather than copper pipes? This is so that when acids are washed down the sink (even at high dilution, as they should be) they don't eat through the metal.

As a final point (and I've left it to last so that the PTB can snip the last line if they think I've gone to far already).
You'll have a hard time getting your hands on strong nitric acid. It, (with other ingredients that I'm not going to tell you) is one route towards making propellants and explosives (and we do not discuss it in great detail here on ZS, eh). The gov't in many places don't like us doing this, so I'd think the supply of that material is closely restricted/regulated.

[smiffy]

Honestly it seems like a lot of trouble when several holes might do the trick.

This. False floor with a crate on it is easier. Or the attic. Nazis didn't find Anne Frank either.

Sorry, but they did. 4th of August 1944. It's why signed copies of the Diary are rather rare.

[Bishop Drake]

The gov't in many places don't like us doing this, so I'd think the supply of that material is closely restricted/regulated.

^That. Even if you did have the know how and the equipment, the materials are likely to be very hard to aquire legally, and if you were to aquire them illegally they would assume it was for uses of ill repute.... If thats your thing, bully for you but I try to stay off "the grid" as it were as much as possible.

[Doc Maker]

This thread was not intended to debate anything other than the practicality of hiding precip powder and re-melting. It's assumed that the chemistry is done now as a prep, not in the PAW. Again, I'm NOT interested in scrapping but knowledge is always useful. It might save my hide if I can convince some guy I know a little alchemy. I also wouldn't leave the precip in the bottle, like that scientist (who actually did save the Nobel Prizes and returned them to the Committee himself.) The powder is more easily hidden by itself and besides, if my BOL is looted at least I'll have something to salvage. Making fire is easy, even a forge can be made from a 55 gal drum.

I appreciate the input smiffy but I'm no stranger to the scientific method and you scare too easily. I wasn't asking how to do it, I have the background. I wanted to consider the practicality in the ZPAW after reading the tale from WWII. But the scenario was different. He was hiding the medals from confiscation by the Nazis for a period of time. People expect a war to end. In the ZPAW there is no end, just one continuous fight for survival. As far as the preps for this go, this is a high school chemistry experiment. Stick to basic lab safety and you'll be fine. The acids involved are easily acquired in the small amounts needed, at least here in the US. Now all that being said, Some good points have been made about the practicality of cacheing precip powder. Namely if the BOL is looted except for the powder, then all I have is a non-tradeable commodity. Not to mention it's a pain in the ass to re-melt but won't everything be a pain in the ass in the ZPAW?

[smiffy]

This thread was not intended to debate anything other than the practicality of hiding precip powder and re-melting. It's assumed that the chemistry is done now as a prep, not in the PAW. Again, I'm NOT interested in scrapping but knowledge is always useful. It might save my hide if I can convince some guy I know a little alchemy. I also wouldn't leave the precip in the bottle, like that scientist (who actually did save the Nobel Prizes and returned them to the Committee himself.) The powder is more easily hidden by itself and besides, if my BOL is looted at least I'll have something to salvage. Making fire is easy, even a forge can be made from a 55 gal drum.

I appreciate the input smiffy but I'm no stranger to the scientific method and you scare too easily. I wasn't asking how to do it, I have the background. I wanted to consider the practicality in the ZPAW after reading the tale from WWII. But the scenario was different. He was hiding the medals from confiscation by the Nazis for a period of time. People expect a war to end. In the ZPAW there is no end, just one continuous fight for survival. As far as the preps for this go, this is a high school chemistry experiment. Stick to basic lab safety and you'll be fine. The acids involved are easily acquired in the small amounts needed, at least here in the US. Now all that being said, Some good points have been made about the practicality of cacheing precip powder. Namely if the BOL is looted except for the powder, then all I have is a non-tradeable commodity. Not to mention it's a pain in the ass to re-melt but won't everything be a pain in the ass in the ZPAW?

If you're convinced you can do both steps (dissolving the gold, then getting it all back again) safely and reliably, then good luck. However, IMO, the Gold chloride powder will be prone to both loss (it can blow away - gold coin or wire can just be picked up again) and be prone to contamination (it absorbs moisture, never mind dirt getting blown in) if it's kept in that form for too long.

As for de Hevesy, dissolving the medals. OK, I accept I was wrong there. It seems he was minding the medals for his German peers due to Hitler's opposition to the Nobel foundation. I had assumed ill-will in 1940, followed by reconciliation in 1946/7.

All in all, wouldn't it be simpler to get gold-wire, label it "copper wire" and hide it in you electrical toolbox?