Can silver be recovered from black and white photos from the late 70’s

[BGDOCK]

Running out of silver, I came across a few pounds of black and white photos and was wondering if there’s any silver to be recovered from them.

 

[andu]

Yes

 

[BGDOCK]

My plan :
shred the prints
Submerge in weak HN03
Recover w/ the silver sugar lye method (my favorite )

 

[andu]

That method works for radiology foils so I guess it will work with the pictures. Keep us up to date with pics n such .

 

[galenrog]

Don’t expect much from a few pounds of photos.

 

[BGDOCK]

Thanks , I’m really not expecting much those photos were going to be tossed . 4-5 pounds ? So I thought a would try and recover the silvet , running out of scrap

 

[BGDOCK]

Finally shredded the photos I’m petty sure it’s closer to eight pounds ,
I was thinking of using weak poor man’s nitric and distilled water or would there be a better method ?

 

[eaglekeeper]

I was thinking of using weak poor man’s nitric and distilled water or would there be a better method ?

Sreetips on YouTube has an older video doing x-ray film using water and bleach. I'm not sure if it would work on photo's.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Finally shredded the photos I’m petty sure it’s closer to eight pounds ,
I was thinking of using weak poor man’s nitric and distilled water or would there be a better method ?

It has been discussed in length in this forum several times.
Smelting seem to be the best route.

 

[kurtak]

Smelting seem to be the best route.

Yes - smelting is the way to go (after in incineration)

Wet chem leaching (whether with nitric or bleach) is a mess that creates a lot of chem waste

For one thing - especially with "paper" photos (which is going to turn to "mush" it will be next to impossible to get all the silver leach solution washed out of the mush

Incinerate - smelt the ash with borax (anhydrous) & soda ash (50/50) plus "a little" fluorspar to thin the slag so little beads of silver don't hang up in the slag --- does hurt to add a bit of silver cement to the smelt to help collect the silver which also helps beads from hanging up in the slag - pour to cone mold - knock the slag off the silver that settles in the bottom of the cone mold = no real chem waste to deal with

Once I got past doing this on a hobby level (doing it myself) & got into it for a living (refining) I sent X-ray film by the gaylord to a smelter in Minnesota - any black & white photos I happened to get just went in with the gaylords of X-ray film

Finally shredded the photos I’m petty sure it’s closer to eight pounds

Don't expect much from 8 pounds

or would there be a better method ?

If you have a furnace - incinerate & smelt

Kurt

 

[BGDOCK]

Thanks for time spend responding , almost seems like it not worth the time or cement silver . I’m going to shelve this project until there is nothing else to do.


Edited for clartity