So if gold is so much less corrodable?

Question

Then what is this green goo I got along with the black sludge when I placed some gold plated iron electrodes in chlorine bleach?

It appears to me that the gold went bye-bye the same way as the iron did.

I have a few pounds of gold plated iron electrodes I'm looking to strip for the marketable gold, but I don't see how I can do that if the gold perishes into sludge in the process unless I attempt to directly strip off the gold with something far more dangerous than bleach.

Any solutions to this gold recycling quandary?

Answer 1

Why not reverse the gold plating process on the electrodes? Run a current through a gold electrodes only make them the negative electrode.  Gold anions will dissolve in the water and travel to the positive electrode and plate to it.  

Answer 2

you might reverse plate he gold in a cyanide bath onto stainless, it will peal off the stainless

Answer 3

We now come to a highly important part of our subject, the practical treatment of ores and matrixes for the extraction of the metals contained. The methods employed are multitudinous, but may be divided into four classes, namely, washing, amalgamating with mercury, chlorinating, cyaniding and other leaching processes, and smelting. The first is used in alluvial gold and tin workings and in preparing some silver, copper, and other ores for smelting, and consists merely in separating the heavier metals and minerals from their gangues by their greater specific gravity in water. The second includes the trituration of the gangue and the extraction of its gold or silver by means of mercury. Chlorinating and leaching generally is a process whereby metals are first changed by chemical action into their mineral salts, as chloride of gold, nitrate of silver, sulphate of copper, and being dissolved in water are afterwards redeposited in the metallic form by means of well-known re-agents

Answer 4

can't you melt the gold because it has a lower melting point than the iron by about 500 C