gboneu - 8-1-2017 at 06:04
Hi everyone !
I was recently doing some gold recovery process and it is well known that HCl and H2O2 dissolves copper, nickel and other metals but not gold. However
if you do the math's It should.
Gold with chlorine has a reduction potential of
AuCl4(-) + 3e = Au(s) + 4Cl(-) E°= -1.002v
Less than the more common
Au(3+) + 3e = Au E°= -1.50v
And hydrogen peroxide has an acid medium reduction potential of
H2O2 + 3H3O(+) + 2e = 4H2O E°= 1.77v
So in theory it should dissolve it .. but ir doesn't ... i wonder why ? I know that the equilibrium position is just information on the end point of a
reaction and does not give information of the speed of a reaction, I whant to do some experiment but i run out of Gold trying to build a Gold
electrode ... Thank's for your help 