Sodium nitrate and muriatic acid

Jewelry Discussion
1

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.

2

I don’t think you’ll have any luck with that.

Ammonia is combined with oxygen to make nitric acid. The process
involves three separate reactions including one which uses a catalyst
of platinum to speed up the first reaction. Oh, and aqua regia
doesn’t have any sulfuric acid in it – it’s concentrated
hydrochloric and nitric acids; verrry nasty stuff.

T.

3 
   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