[Jewelry making - Article 00054] - Re: [Orchid] Sodium nitrate and muriatic acid

[Peter W . Rowe]

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>        Hi,  I was wonder if anyone can help me with this I'm Looking
>     for correct amounts of (sodium nitrate and muriatic acid) in place
>     of (sulfuric acid) to get nitric acid in which I will use to make
>     aqua regia to desolve gold. 

    Huh? I'm guessing you need to recheck either your typing, or your
    chemistry.  aqua regia is a mix of HCl, or hydrochloric acid 
    (muriatic acid is very dilute HCl), and HNO3, ornitric acid. 
    Sulphuric acid plays not part in the recipe for aqua regia.  Sodium
    nitrate is a salt of nitric acid, and mixing this with muriatic acid
    will give a dilute form of aqua regia, since the result, once the
    salt is dissolved, will be the equivalent of aqua regia (dilute),
    with a bunch of extra sodium ions, which might slow down the action on
    gold a lot, but will still allow it.   It's kind similar to a trick I
    sometimes use in acid testing gold, using Nitric acid, and table
    salt.  the salt contributes chloride ion to the nitric, and lets the
    acid react with the gold streak on the test stone, but more slowly
    than it would with stronger HCL mixed with the nitric... 

    So in the above post, if you eliminate the whole reference to
    sulphuric acid, and just say you're gonna mix muriatic with the
    nitric salt, and hope to dissolve some gold, then you might have
    success.  But note that what's usually labled muriatic acid, instead
    of HCl, is usually a quite dilute version of the acid, commonly sold
    in hardware stores and the like.  Mixed with just the nitric salt,
    this is likely to be a variant of aqua regia that might be VERY slow
    acting indeed.  If that's what you want, fine.  If you're trying to
    dissolve gold more quickly, you might need to mix it from stronger
    acids.  At least that's my guess...  I might be wrong... 

Peter Rowe

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