Dissolving gold
The University of Nottingham published a video showing gold dissolve into aqua regia (a mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid). Aqua Regia is a mixture of two acids, hydrochloric acid and nitric acid. Now the exciting thing about Aqua Regia is that neither of the two acids by themselves can dissolve gold. Nitric acid doesn’t really react with gold very much at all, and HCl, hydrogen chloric acid can’t get a hold of the gold to get the reaction going. But if you can put gold into solution that contains both acids, then it can react, and in fact, can indeed dissolve gold – which is why Aqua Regia is also known as ‘royal water.”
So, if you are thinking of getting some gold jewelry for your mom for Mother’s Day this weekend, you can treat her royally, but stay away from the aqua regia.
Watch the video of dissolving gold.
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That is so interesting. I love the story of the gold nobel prizes being dissolved in solution during the war and reconstituted after the war.
Thanks for your comment, Calla.j
Very interesting. Calla, did you discover how they reconstituted the gold? Now that would be interesting.
I’ve been a pawnbroker for 20 years and didn’t realize adding Nitric and hydrochloric acids together would dissolve gold how would you reclaim it just out of curiosity
We’re not in the business of gold extraction, but maybe some of our readers can help you.
you neutralize the acid then you add a metal that’s easier to oxidize zinc is the easiest. Iron is also used. A redox reaction take place where gold oxide is reduced to metallic gold, which precipitates
you would add sodium meta bisulfite (Bondie’s Stump out) to the aqua regia mix…To reclaim the gold from solution. One needs to be very careful to only use minimal amounts of acids to dissolve the gold in, and once it is disolved, then you would dilute the acids with water x4..so if you had 100ml acids, then would need minimum of 400-500 ml of water added to acids combined with the stump out…Simply add spoonful of stumpout at a time until no more reaction occurs and begin to see dark colors forming in acid water solution, and allow to settle for hr or few hrs,then filter off the water acid solution and collect powdered gold/brown substance from bottom of container..this is your pure gold of around 995-999 fine gold…rinse well and melt down to gold button,burning filter and all at once.
Hi Bill have tried a mix of fine sand with gold particles from creek and added the aqua Regia. Had the reaction as described and then drained the solution out of the mix. Treated the solution with the sub and did not get any gold forming in the bottom of the glass container. is there anything you can suggest I can do. Thanks Col
Thanks for your inquiry, Bill. Unfortunately we were just commenting on someone’s video. But maybe our readers can help?
I’m doing some research. Why would someone dissolve gold? Or gold for that matter. Yes, I heard the story of the scientists who dissolved the Nobel Prizes. But practically, why would someone want to essentially destroy precious metals. I know there are uses and reasons for this that my Google searches are not showing up the mineral experts and rock heads are too smart for me; I need elementary explanation. : -)
Thank you Charles for your comment. Let’s hear from our readers!
You can dissolve gold to separate and refine it from other metals or impurities. I use aqua regia solution to reclaim gold from scrap. It’s not an easy process, but after a lot of research, one can become a gold refiner with a lot of practice. I run at least one batch of gold chloride every week. Got a nice little collection of gold going.