# silver from motion pic solution



## clint s (May 8, 2011)

hello all i have been dissolving silver scrap in nitric and percipitating with copper and have very good luck .

i just picked up 2 five gallon buckets of from what this guy said he works for a motion picture films place, and has had them for a long time said it came from developing the film ,they filter the solution in what he said looked like steal wool the buckets are very heavy and look blackish carbon looking stuff with brown and grey rusty looking stuff in them very fine material ,he said he had 4 of the buckets and sold 2 ,15 years ago he said they assayed them and paid him for 400 ounces for 2 buckets of same material any suggestions on how to extract the silver from them 
i didnt pay any thing for them i have to pay him a percentage of what i get from them


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## greatgems (May 8, 2011)

The red rust is a dead give away it's silver it will assay at 99.3 percent atleast it does for me almost everytime just melt it down to bar form save your acid


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## clint s (May 9, 2011)

thank you for the input that is what i was thinking of doing first ,but i did try a little of the powder in nitric and h2o . it did not seem to dissolve, could you tell me way ? it wont dissolve or what form it is in,i did heat it also i did read a kodak right up and it talked about the steal wool to turn the solution to sludge it said that the steal wool would take the place of silver but it did not say what to do after that to turn it in to metallic silver or is it already metallic silver so do i start with melting in crucible first ?


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## clint s (May 9, 2011)

well i let my solution sit over night and all day, filtered it then just for curiosity i took my copper pipe put it in the solution to see if silver would percipitate sure enough it did, shiny metalic silver was forming but first i did a stanous test and did not show nothing was in my solution it was muddy looking, but there is silver there and a lot of it, in the bottom of bucket that i picked up , there was a lot of black carbon looking stuff any idea what it might be i let it sit in nitric and h2o 50/ 50 all night and it left a gryish purple looking substance in bottom of beaker any idea what it might be. each bucket ways about 50 pounds i cant wait to see how much silver i get out of both buckets , 

can any one tell me what elements are in the developing solution to start with, it is old motion pic solution from at least 25 years ago just wondering if there would be other precious metals in the sludge as well


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## Harold_V (May 10, 2011)

clint s said:


> but first i did a stanous test and did not show nothing was in my solution


Stannous chloride tests will not yield any useful information for silver. 

Harold


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