# Sources other than nitrates



## rewalston (Feb 8, 2012)

I'm having a heck of a time finding any nitrates where I live. I've talked with quite a few co-ops and nurseries and they all are negative. Is there any other way to work with silver besides nitric acid or homemade nitric using sulfuric & nitrates? I am really getting to hate regulations and the meth-heads who caused it. Because of the nitric problem I'm going to stick with hcl/cl instead of AR. But just don't know what to do for silver and PGM's (if any). Thanks.

Rusty


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## butcher (Feb 8, 2012)

For century’s farmers made niter, it was almost as important as the crops or animals on the farm, farmers sold it for supplies they needed. Leached from manure and compost piles usually blood and urine was added to these niter beds, many country's defense was dependent on this source of nitrates to make gunpowder with. 

Can you order it from the intranet I have bought online from those who sell fertilizer, or Dudiesel has it.

How far are you from the boarder?

They sometimes use some nitrates in instant cold packs.

Concentrated hot sulfuric and nitric acid is about the only things I can think of off the top of my head that will attack silver.

I do not know about this idea and even if it would work whether it would be economical,
What if we melted silver with copper (much like we in=quarter gold), and parted the copper using copper II chloride etch (acid peroxide), possibly leaving silver chloride powders???


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## maynman1751 (Feb 8, 2012)

Veerrryyy interesting! (think Arty Johnson on Laugh-In) :lol: Interesting concept Butcher. Not to change the topic, but do you or anyone have pics of the different chlorides crystals( silver,lead and tin)? For us new guys it's difficult to determine what's what. I've had several different crystal residues that are generally white, but have different structures to the crystals. Some are long 'sticks' and others resemble sparkly sugar, while others are larger irregularly shaped and have an almost metallic (silvery) appearance.


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## Geo (Feb 8, 2012)

there are different salts for the same metal so that would be a long list. chlorides, sulfates to name a couple.


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## butcher (Feb 8, 2012)

maynman1751,
The primary white salts I run into are Copper I chloride, lead chloride, silver chloride and sodium chloride (table salt).

Here is a way to separate and determine what you have.

Copper I chloride is soluble in HCL, silver or lead is not, dissolving copper I chloride can make a dark brown to green to blue colored copper II chloride solution depending on how much water or copper is involved.


Cold water sodium chloride (table salt) is soluble. 
Lead or silver chlorides are not soluble.

Boiling hot water lead chloride is fairly soluble silver chloride is not.
After bringing water to boil lower heat but keep hot, giving time for the silver chloride salts to settle well, before decanting (suction bulb) solution moving this hot clear dissolved lead chloride to jar to cool, after cold you will see the lead salts precipitate back out as white powders,

Silver salt if washed and sit in sun (keep wet), you will see the salts darken to violet to black color, here the sunlight is converting some of the white silver chloride to violet silver metal, same principle used in photography. 

Try seperating your white salts then you can see the crystal shape. I never paid much attention to shapes, maybe when you do you can post back here and tell me what shape they have.


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## maynman1751 (Feb 9, 2012)

Geo said:


> there are different salts for the same metal so that would be a long list. chlorides, sulfates to name a couple.


Thanks Geo! That's why I was specific and ask about chlorides. So far, I'm only using chloride solutions.


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## maynman1751 (Feb 9, 2012)

butcher said:


> maynman1751,
> Try seperating your white salts then you can see the crystal shape. I never paid much attention to shapes, maybe when you do you can post back here and tell me what shape they have.


 Thank You Butcher! I'll try that. :idea:


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## Dr. Poe (Feb 10, 2012)

rewalston said:


> I'm having a heck of a time finding any nitrates where I live. I've talked with quite a few co-ops and nurseries and they all are negative. Is there any other way to work with silver besides nitric acid or homemade nitric using sulfuric & nitrates? I am really getting to hate regulations and the meth-heads who caused it. Because of the nitric problem I'm going to stick with hcl/cl instead of AR. But just don't know what to do for silver and PGM's (if any). Thanks.
> 
> Rusty



Rusty, you know of several alternatives to nitric acid as aqua regia. If you want to part silver without nitric acid, use hot concentrated sulfuric acid of 97%. In commerce, this is done first and nitric acid is used to finalize.
Calcium nitrate 15-0-0 can be purchased in the U.S.A. as 50lb bags from FARMER'S COOP stores. Dr. Poe


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## rewalston (Feb 10, 2012)

Dr. Poe said:


> rewalston said:
> 
> 
> > I'm having a heck of a time finding any nitrates where I live. I've talked with quite a few co-ops and nurseries and they all are negative. Is there any other way to work with silver besides nitric acid or homemade nitric using sulfuric & nitrates? I am really getting to hate regulations and the meth-heads who caused it. Because of the nitric problem I'm going to stick with hcl/cl instead of AR. But just don't know what to do for silver and PGM's (if any). Thanks.
> ...



Living in the USA would be easy. I'm in Canada. Not so easy

Rusty


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## maynman1751 (Feb 13, 2012)

butcher said:


> maynman1751,
> The primary white salts I run into are Copper I chloride, lead chloride, silver chloride and sodium chloride (table salt).
> 
> Here is a way to separate and determine what you have.
> ...



Butcher, none of these salts will dissolve in HCL or boiling water. These pics were taken after processing with acid and water. You can see the different crystal structures.


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## butcher (Feb 13, 2012)

maynman1751,

Like I said I cannot tell by looking, but thanks for pictures.
In your earlier post you stated these were chloride salts, how do you know that for sure?
in solutions (even a chloride solution) another salt can precipitate, example we can precipitate a lead sulfate from a chloride solution of gold.

The solubility rules say:
Common chlorides are soluble in water. Except: silver, mercury I, lead (lead II chloride is slightly soluble in boiling hot water. (And as we know Copper I chloride is not very soluble).

Using the instructions I gave you above you should be able to determine these chloride salts below:
CuCl (soluble in HCL)
NaCl (easily soluble in water)
AgCl (insoluble in HCL, or water Hot or Cold),
(But AgCl if not dried will dissolve in ammonium Hydroxide, which when HCl is added re-precipitates).

Drying the salts can make them very difficult to re-dissolve.
PbCl2 (slightly soluble in boiling hot water.

These salts if they are not responding as we discussed here may not be salts of chlorides,
I do not know where they came from in your processes so any attempt for me to guess as to what they are is a waste of my and your time.

They could be most anything potassium sulfates from your homemade nitric acid, sand from ore, 
Or any number of common Cations like (chloride, sulfate, sulfide, carbonates, even oxides or hydroxides, phosphates, phosphides, silicates, and so on).

And then we have the anions of metals, which the list can be very long.


Ok if you really need to know more here you will have to try and determine what you have by testing not by looks, knowing when and where these were formed is a big clue to what they can be, but you also have to consider all possible reactions and all chemicals and metals in your reaction that formed the salts, from this we can eliminate some of the possibility's as to what they may be, and concentrate on what we think they may be, if that still does not give us the answer we may even have to test for what we do not think they may be (who knows we may have not guessed all of the chemical reactions our pot of stew was cooking up).

A good place to start is with Solubility Tables, then Qualitive Inorganic Analysis, then also the Flame tests.

Look these up from multiple sources study them, and then use what you learn from them to test these salts, and determine what they are. 
Me I usually have a pretty good idea what a salt is when it forms in a reaction, and usually have a way to test for it them to see if it has value as a metal or has value as a chemical I can reuse in some other process,

These may be worthless salts, spending time finding out what they are would be educational and not a total waste of time.

You could also just do some experimenting to just see if they may contain a metal of value and worth trying to recover, taking a small sample and try and dissolve in boiling hot aqua regia, should put most valuable metals in solution working in test tube would work here, these metals can then be tested by methods your learning on the forum, do not forget to also test the insoluble’s from this solution for silver and (also if you wanted to the PGM's insoluble in boiling hot aqua regia, fusion methods are normally used with these).

Sorry John I cannot just look at these salts and tell you what they are, although some of those do look like potassium sulfate to me.

But then again a shinny piece of brass or pyrite can also look like gold, learn not to go by looks or what you think something is. It is always better to test to be sure what it really is if you really do not know for sure.

Hope this helps.


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## kurt (Feb 14, 2012)

Rusty - they use potassium nitrate for stump remover's. Spectracide is one brand name I am aware of. Should be able to get it at Lowes, Home Depot or hardware store.

Kurt


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## rewalston (Feb 14, 2012)

Thank you Kurt, that picture looks familiar. I'll look around when I get to that point.

Rusty


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