# Need help please



## Lonnie (Feb 18, 2011)

Hello 

I'm new to this but have been reading and doing my homework . Been having trouble getting my nitric acid to work right so desided to try heating it some . 

I finally get it working good enough to react and digest some of the contacts they are alloyed 52 % Ag 45 % W and 3% Mo . After the Nitric played out I filtered and had a nice clear blue solution . I add some urea to make sure and place a copper coil in my small beaker . 

Right away it starts cementing out a black substance I'm thinking what the heck . Turns out that molybdenum is black in powder form , i think the tungsten also makes a black powder. It formed about 1/2 inch in the bottom of black and my solution went from a nice clear blue to almost clear with no color . 

Not sure what to think i leave the coper coil hanging in the beaker and start doing some more reading . Thats when I find out the Mo will make a black powder . I do some reading and in about an hour I go back out to clean up put things away and and see what I think is silver . 

A couple big globs about the size of a quarter had cemented out after I left to read . Plus another glob was hanging on the coil . I tried to carfully remove the coil but no luck it falls in the bottom with the rest . 

It appreas the copper coil cements the Mo and W first and then the Ag . Had I known this when my solution was clear I could have filtered the black out and had this little dab fairly clean . Not knowing they mixed . 

Any suggestions on how to seperate the Ag from the Mo would greatly be appreachated . 

Thanks


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## Palladium (Feb 18, 2011)

Tonight must be a Peroxide night. lol
I'm not sure about this but with nearly 50% being tungsten and molybdenum try soaking them in warm H2O2. It should dissolve them leaving the silver.


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## Lonnie (Feb 18, 2011)

Thanks I will give that a try with a small test tubes worth . I picked up a bottle and all I could get was the 3% stuff is that 3% going to be enough ?? 

I did try 2 experiments and both seemed to work with the best results from regular house hold ammonia . This is what I did first I stirred the beaker real good and you could see my silver just little sparkling flakes all mixed in with the black crud . 

So I stirred it good and took a small sample and placed in test tube A . Then poured about equil amounts of ammonia filling the test tube about half full . Just shook it good and set it down . 

Took another test tube marked B and added just a little of this home made nitric . Shook it up and set it down . After about an hour I went back and have semi promising results . 

Sample A when shook has nothing but black crud in it . Sample B has just a few shinny flakes but still has some mixed in the crud that you can see . My control ( the rest of my beaker ) has thousands of sparkling things still in it . 

Going to go try and find that stuff I read about getting the silver back from the ammonia using lye . Thanks again for answering I will try that with a sample . I need to use the one thats the easiest to recover the silver from . 

If it was just this small dab I wouldn't worry about it much . However I have quite a bit of these I wanted to digest in nitric and cement out . If i can't find some other metal that will cement out the Mo and W before cementing with copper I'll have this problem with it all . 

Lonnie


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