Electrolytic Gold Cell Part 2

From the rock bottom of my depression I would like to say big thanks. This channel takes my mind of negative and harmful thoughts.

Electrolysis is such a cool thing. My brother used to be one of the top printed circuit board production managers in the country, if not the world back in the 1980s and 1990s producing multilayer, flex, and exotic materials printed circuit boards doing small batch prototypes and large batch production runs for years. He was 17 yrs old when he got in the business. We used to use the large plating tanks to gold plate small items just to mess around. He was the first person to get circuits on a board made from Teflon. He was also one of the first to perfect the process of wire bonding processors to circuit boards. He knows all the chemistry and electrical engineering , all the processes for plating copper, nickel , silver, and gold and probably more. Thanks for the video. It brought back some fond memories

I've never had an interest in chemistry until I started following you! Now I'm hooked after being a carpenter and fire fighter for 25 years

I so looked forward to seeing this video and the electrolytic gold refining process. Another great video, they never fail to fascinate me.

That was absolutely amazing Sreetips. Thanks for showing us the process.

Had me watching like a hawk. It never ceases to amaze me watching the gold disolve and float through the electrolite and reform. Beautiful. Thank you for sharing with us!

When you go to melt very high purity stuff; get a fresh graphite mold that has a graphite lid; load it, then put it in one of your melting furnaces.... The bar that comes out of it will look immaculate when you let it cool and solidify then remove it from the mold. Looks excellent. Keep up the good work Kevin!

Not sure how I ran across your video but I’m glad I did. Your videos are amazing and very informative. Can’t wait to watch more videos when I have time.

Man you do the coolest stuff with the perfect mix of entertaining and educational. Great job as always!

Looking forward to seeing where you take this Kev. Thank you for sharing your experience.

You’re welcome. That was good fun and didn’t take too much time away from other projects. Well worth it for the experience(and one more 9)! Thank you Sir!👍👍🤟

Your little gold bars are always so perfect shape sheen and pour lines everything looks great

I been watching you a long time Doc this was 1 super satisfying video. I can't wait to see where you go with this? The silver cell by itself is totally badass.

Wish I had the setup to do metallurgical chemistry, but I'll just continue to enjoy every video you post.👍

Awesome work Sreetips. The lighting and angle on the electrolyte has been one of your best shots, it actually looked like shining gold in solution rather than the forbidden chloroauric coolade. Room for improvement but I guess thats partially what this second attempt was for. Like other commenters I'm sceptical that a soldered anode is the best approach. Cant knock Bobs welding though... Great vid! Great result, great process... Hats off to Emil Wohlwill from 149 years in the future. Wonder what kind of hat he was wearing in 1874...

Thank you for a very informative workshop. I'm not sure if anyone else has mentioned this, but if you can't find a sharpie, you can use the lines on the beaker as reference points.

in the future for a setup that doesnt need soldering, you should run the anode through the rollers to make it thin enough that the alligator clip can hold the gold directly, and instead of soldering leads on, just make some ladder steps to hold it higher, and as the bar shortens you can lower it down farther into the solution, this will also mean that the excess gold in the end is smaller in mass and easier to process later without having to melt all the solder off. This also makes it faster to switch to a new anode, just have another thin long piece prepared and you can effectively hot swap it, you just have to get a little better at rolling them not in the shape of a banana lol

Your videos are very fascinating to watch. I've always been impressed by the things you can do in chemistry. I really appreciate your explanations too, very informative

A couple of tips: 1: obviously a pure gold anode is best, but if you use titanium, give it a light spray with WD40 - gold will peel off nicely. 2: best not to use a stir bar. You want any impurities to fall to the bottom as a sludge. Constant stirring will stir sludge into electrolyte and enable it to be entrapped in the collected gold sponge defeating the whole purpose of purification. 3: voltage control is critical. You want contaminants to sludge out and not be transferred to cathode. Slow and steady does the job - higher volt (and amps) will force contaminants across to cathode and not give them time to sludge out.

A Fantastic experiment ! Thanks so much for risking your gold to show us what happens when you leave your plating machine on too long , the gold collected was beautiful and would be nice to see a close up. Thank you much