Chemistry Forum

Hi.

I'm trying to make some gold chloride salts and am having a problem evaporating the hydrochloric acid. I am thinking about vacuum evaporation.

I have a vacuum distillation setup with a 2000L. boiling flask with a 24/40 neck. But I'm thinking that digging the small amount of gold chrystals out, will be difficult.

Heating on a hotplate seems to get too hot and turns some of the gold back into metallic powder.

Or should I just turn the heat down & be more patient?

Certainly you should use Vacuum Evaporation not do destroy the salt.

I believe you would find it most useful to read this article on vacuum distillation, especially the section on laboratory setups:

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Vacuum_distillation