Assaying Gold Chloride

[BBM610]

Yes. The gold chloride does look like your photo. When I tried melting the precipitate I got first; black objects with pure gold powder on the sides. The metal looks like silver, the black looks like silver chloride, and the powder looks like pure gold.

 

[Capt Nemo]

Gold chloride would look like yellow orange crystals. What's in the test tube above is gold, not gold chloride. SMB strips the chlorine off the gold and precipitates the gold.

Finely divided gold will look brown. Even finer will look black. Take it finer still, purple. Darn near atomic, red.