Sun, HP "scrap" (???)

As it goes, having actually run the gold scrapping grunt work (Read: Play with the Aqua regia) The reason you don't melt gold like that is the sheer amount of energy you have to waste to do it! Not to mention contaminating your final gold product with whatever crap is in the batch. As other people mentioned you can use mercury or cyanide agents, but good luck getting ether of those agents in any quantity, much less an EPA permit to use them for gold refining. Aqua Regia is bad enough, as you need to neutralize it before disposal. As it should be noted we refined chips, leads and anything gold plated Our usual contaminates were tin, lead, platinum, silver and iridium. ( Note: Using your left over Nitric Acid to make RDX does *NOT* count as disposal; However its a lot of fun)