Copper (II) method details- Zinc?

[Flying Farmer]

Greetings from Central New Hampshire,
I've been following along for better than a year and am preparing to begin with Copper (II) chloride separation of base metals from gold filled items. I'm clear on preparing the etch with HCl, Copper, and oxygen (perhaps a bit of peroxide to start.) Copper (II) will remove the copper where exposed and make two Copper (1) that each will become Copper (II) with addition of oxygen, yes? Water is a byproduct- this is not clear to me, how? Also, much of the gold filled is karat gold on brass- what becomes of the zinc contained in the brass, and how do we deal with this? What materials might foul the solution and require starting fresh? What is the best method to reclaim and clean for re-use the copper (I) and (II) after removing the karat gold foils?
Thank you for your guidance!
Very Respectfully,
Tim Psaledakis

 

[Yggdrasil]

Greetings from Central New Hampshire,
I've been following along for better than a year and am preparing to begin with Copper (II) chloride separation of base metals from gold filled items. I'm clear on preparing the etch with HCl, Copper, and oxygen (perhaps a bit of peroxide to start.) Copper (II) will remove the copper where exposed and make two Copper (1) that each will become Copper (II) with addition of oxygen, yes? Water is a byproduct- this is not clear to me, how? Also, much of the gold filled is karat gold on brass- what becomes of the zinc contained in the brass, and how do we deal with this? What materials might foul the solution and require starting fresh? What is the best method to reclaim and clean for re-use the copper (I) and (II) after removing the karat gold foils?
Thank you for your guidance!
Very Respectfully,
Tim Psaledakis

You are overthinking it.
The solution will eventually be too fouled for further use, but that takes a long time.
Zinc is relatively forgiving.
Just add some extra HCl when it looses effect.

There is to my knowledge not a cheap practical way to remove the Zinc.
But I think there are other alloys used in the Gold filled that may contaminate the leach faster.
Anyway i think it is not necessary to completely remove the base metals,
just enough to let the outer shell be removed from the core.