If you are engaged in copper recycling business, you may come across the copper with gold plating. And you have to remove the gold if you are willing to get the pure copper. Speaking of gold plating, it is an activity of beautifying objects by deposing a thin layer of gold onto the surface of another different metal, mainly copper or silver. Then, how can we remove the gold plating from the copper?
Well, if you want to strip the gold plating, you have to prepare a potassium-iodide solution, which can be made by mixing distilled water, potassium and iodine in a ratio of 1:10:4 in the terms of weight. The iodine can oxidize the gold plating, and iodide can dissolve the iodized gold.
If you want to achieve a better result, you are suggested to follow the procedures strictly: firstly, add the potassium iodide into the distilled water and keep stirring until the potassium iodide is dissolved. Then add the iodine into the solution without stirring. Heat the solution to the temperatures between 350 and 400 degrees Celsius, and immerse the gold –plated copper into it until the gold plating has been removed completely.
Then, you need to remove the dissolved gold by adding 30% hydroxylamine hydrochloride solution. And the solution is usually neutralized by using of sodium hydroxide, which is added to the solution when its color turns from brown to clear. During the precipitating process, both the sodium hydroxide and hydroxylamine serve as reducing agents separately in the acidic environment and alkaline environment.
In the end, remove the precipitated gold through filtration and wipe the copper with clean rag.
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