# Silver, What ever U want to call this!!



## jjohio (Mar 13, 2012)

This is the stuff from the pork rind business..I was told to put it in crock pot to evaporate it down..This is what i was left with, A black tar like mess!! I no there is silver in it just dont have a clue what to do with it...It is a silver nitrate solution that it was in..Any help or suggestions??


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## jjohio (Mar 13, 2012)

I am no longer doin it this way...I am now siphoning the liquid to other barrells until i get to the last 3-4 inches..than I am collecting the silver mud..


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## jimdoc (Mar 13, 2012)

jjohio said:


> I am no longer doin it this way...I am now siphoning the liquid to other barrells until i get to the last 3-4 inches..than I am collecting the silver mud..



You keep calling this silver mud, have you actually tested any of it? Or are you going by the color and what you have been told about it? Its hard to follow completely with the posts disconnected.

Jim


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## jjohio (Mar 13, 2012)

Jim, what would be the best way to test it?..Can i put small amount in nitric or is there better way??


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## Geo (Mar 13, 2012)

melt a small amount of what you have now in a melting dish or crucible with equal amounts of borax and sodium bicarbonate. if it is silver the button will form at the bottom of the slag.


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## jjohio (Mar 13, 2012)

Geo, would I mix the 3 all together or put in mud than other 2 on top??


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## Geo (Mar 13, 2012)

mix together well before melting.


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## jjohio (Mar 13, 2012)

thanks Geo 8)


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## jjohio (Mar 14, 2012)

Geo, took some of this ''mud'' mixed it with baking soda and borax like u said...melted it in oven, poured it in my mold..All i got was a chunk of orange material...Im assumming the borax?? I guess im back to square one...I am positive this stuff is silver nitrate solution from the pork rind factory..Would the mud just be junk and the silver still in solution?? Or would this mud not be elemental silver? ANY help from anybody would be greatly appreciated!!


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## Geo (Mar 14, 2012)

did you break the chunk into pieces. any metal will be locked inside. it needs to have been brought to a near white hot state. do you have a torch? bust the piece with a hammer and see if any metal shows up. it will be small, smaller than a BB.


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## jjohio (Mar 14, 2012)

Geo, I redid the procedure and melted...same thing happened, just a chunk of black junk...busted it up good and nothing...I filled up a milk jug of the solution, stuck a copper pipe in it..ill wait a few days and see what happens!!


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## butcher (Mar 15, 2012)

jjohio.

I would like to help if I can.
But I am very confused as to what you have or what you have done, none of this in this thread makes any sense to me, and from what I have read in it I would not advice you to melt anything unless I knew more about it.

You speak of adding something from a pork rind factory to a crock-pot and evaporating it down, what was this it makes no sense, was it sodium metabisulfate? Was it a nitrate? Or nitrite? (There is big difference in last two chemicals, and what the would do in solution)


And you speak of a silver nitrate, so it sounds like at some point you had silver in nitric acid, I see no mention of acid in your post.

Also you say this should have silver metal in it, how do you know this? What metals or other things were processed, what steps have you taken, chemicals did you use?

None of this thread makes any sense to me, and I would not advice you to melt anything, unless it did make more sense to me.

Please explain in detail what you have and what you have done, so maybe we can help, without these details it seems a waste of time to give advice.
Maybe I missed where the real details of the materials and process involved was written if so please refer to me where I can read it and maybe me or others can help you better.


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## Geo (Mar 15, 2012)

Butcher, 
this is the second thread on this material. jjohio made a thread describing some material he received from a pork factory. he was told it was silver nitrate and ask if anyone had heard of it being used in meat packing plants. i told him, that as a matter of fact it is used in meat packing plants as a disinfectant. he says there is mud in the bottom of the barrel he received and wanted to know if it might contain silver. then he started this thread about how to reclaim the silver from this material.


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## Palladium (Mar 15, 2012)

I was with Butcher on this one until you filled in the blanks geo. I remember this coming up before.


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## butcher (Mar 15, 2012)

Geo thank you for helping with details, and I do not know if your melting steps would work, it is very possible they would, as I am unsure what else the “MUD” is, either one of our solutions to this problem may work, and I am not trying to step on any body’s toes here, and I will just give some Idea How I may try and handle this hog fat “Mud”.

Silver nitrate is soluble in water, or dilute nitric acid, the picture, and the materials in the jar, what is that cooked hog meat, or silver and hog fat?

Silver nitrate could be brought into solution, you could test to see if silver was actually in the solution, after filtering if the solution had silver, by taking a sample of solution and add HCl, a white cream or white curds would prove silver, silver from solution could be cemented on copper, as fairly pure silver.
If oils or hog grease was involved that should also be dealt with, the evaporation down to mud would have helped, and incinerating the mud would be my next step.

At this point I think I would dry what you call mud, incinerate red hot, (you can test a sample of this powder before proceeding), get silver into silver nitrate solution filter and then go from there.

I would not skip testing steps, as you could just be cooking hog fat for nothing.

My idea on this other members may have a different approach.


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## jjohio (Mar 15, 2012)

Geo is right on...this is silver nitrate used as disinfectant..has no acid in it...The liquid has like a pink tint to it and gets a little foamy when poured into a bucket..I have no clue what the mud is at the bottom of each 15 gallon barrel..Im thinking it is some waste of some sort..Ive melted just the mud and the mud with baking soda and borax with no luck..My friend who works for a environmental place picks this up from the factory to dispose of..It is considered hazardous waste and cant just be dumped down a drain or anything...There is silver in it, just have to figure out how to get it out and melt..I can get 30 gallons per month so im hoping to figure it out.. I will try to post pics of the mud in the barrel..Right now I have copper in a milk jug with some of the solution to see what happens..I will post pics tomorrow of that too..Thanks, JJ


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## jjohio (Mar 15, 2012)

Butcher.. The pic of the stuff in the quart jar is from 15 gallons of that solution...I kept crock pot on low and added to it daily until it was left with that black tar like syrup..My friend is the one who told me to do that, and than melt it at that point...Im thinking he was way wrong!!


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## jjohio (Mar 15, 2012)

Also after comparing nitrite to nitrate it makes me wonder...Sure sounds like it would be a silver nitrite more than a silver nitrate..Im gonna have to have my friend double and triple check with this company to see what this is for sure!! He has it labeled as silver nitrate but im questioning it now..If it is nitrite and not nitrate maybe that is why im having troubles..Again ill post pics tomorrow


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## butcher (Mar 15, 2012)

I would also ask him what other contaminants the solution may contain, like hog blood or fat?


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## jjohio (Mar 15, 2012)

Got a text back from friend..It is 10% solution of silver NITRATE...Company makes rinds and deal only with pig skin,not a whole hog..There is no blood in this..The only info he has and gets is it is used as disinfectant... Yes im sure it has contaminants, but see nothing close to any skin or fat...ANY help or tips Butcher would be greatly appreciated or by anyone else...If your interested I could send pics via text, or post more on here...thanks, JJ


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## Harold_V (Mar 15, 2012)

Dilute the solution, which should then be allowed to settle well. Decant, and recover silver on copper. A few drops of nitric acid introduced to the decanted solution would most likely be desirable. 

In regards to the solids, I would recommend a sample be taken and dried. It should then be incinerated, with the ash either processed with dilute nitric acid, or processed in the furnace with soda ash and borax. If there's any silver in the solids, it will report in those two processes. It also may be rinsed out of the solids to satisfaction by simply adding distilled water. I expect there's not a huge amount of silver present, so don't get your hopes too high.

Harold


Edit: My comment about rinsing with water would apply only if the silver is in solution, not cemented or otherwise reduced, and certainly not if the material has been incinerated. At that point, any remaining silver will most likely be elemental.


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## jjohio (Mar 15, 2012)

thanks so much Harold!! Gonna give these a try 8)


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## jjohio (Mar 16, 2012)

This is the mud @ bottom of barrels!!


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## jjohio (Mar 16, 2012)

The silver nitrate in solution!!


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## jjohio (Mar 16, 2012)

Solution after being evaporated down in crock pot


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## butcher (Mar 16, 2012)

Can you test a small filtered sample of the liquid with salt or HCl, to see if it turns white and clowdy or silver chloride precipitates?


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## Harold_V (Mar 16, 2012)

jjohio said:


> This is the mud @ bottom of barrels!!


I'd strongly recommend incineration, which will eliminate the vast majority of contaminants, leaving you with something that can be tested. 
Don't be bashful with this stuff. If there's value there, it won't be a lot, so you can afford to waste a little in the learning process. I generally don't recommend re-inventing the wheel, but this is a rather unique case, where you must determine what will work best, if at all. 

I went through that very thing the first time I processed a carpet for gold. Amazing, but there's one process that works, and very well, while all other things I tried failed miserably. 

You may experience the same thing. Just remember that you can reduce silver chloride to elemental silver with soda ash and borax (in the furnace) and that dilute nitric acid will dissolve silver, which can then be recovered with copper. Variations of these themes in the proper combination will lead to success, assuming there's anything of value present. The next thing to determine is if it is worth the price of recovery.

Harold


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## jjohio (Mar 16, 2012)

ill keep you all posted!!


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## jjohio (Mar 29, 2012)

Ok, Now will the silver precipitate and stick on the copper pipe or will the copper pull and drop the silver to the bottom?


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## Geo (Mar 29, 2012)

if you are cementing silver with copper pipe, the silver crystals will accumulate on the pipe and drop off to the bottom. thats why the solution needs to be clean and the pipe and container needs to be clean. the silver will pile up below the copper. you may shake the piece of copper ever so often to dislodge the silver crystals to expose more copper to the solution.


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## jjohio (Mar 31, 2012)

Harold_V said:


> Dilute the solution, which should then be allowed to settle well. Decant, and recover silver on copper. A few drops of nitric acid introduced to the decanted solution would most likely be desirable.
> 
> In regards to the solids, I would recommend a sample be taken and dried. It should then be incinerated, with the ash either processed with dilute nitric acid, or processed in the furnace with soda ash and borax. If there's any silver in the solids, it will report in those two processes. It also may be rinsed out of the solids to satisfaction by simply adding distilled water. I expect there's not a huge amount of silver present, so don't get your hopes too high.
> 
> ...


Harold, will soda ash have a different outcome than baking soda? Thanks, JJ


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## butcher (Mar 31, 2012)

In my opinion baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) (NaHCO3) would not work as well as the soda ash.

Soda ash (sodium carbonate), (washing soda) (Na2CO3), can be found in washing powders some types of automatic dishwasher soaps are almost pure washing soda,


Baking soda NaHCO3, can be made into soda ash Na2CO3, very easily by just heating it to about 200 deg C.

2 moles of NaHCO3 ----Heat----> Na2CO3 + H20 + CO2 gas


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## old thompson (Mar 31, 2012)

butcher said:


> In my opinion baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) (NaHCO3) would not work as well as the soda ash.
> 
> .... ....
> Baking soda NaHCO3, can be made into soda ash Na2CO3, very easily by just heating it to about 200 deg C.
> ...




I did not know that Butcher, sounds easier than buying a separate box of soda ash for the small amount I use.

Did I miss that in Hoke's book?

Edit: isn't baking powder sodium bicarbonate? I always mix up podwer and soda. One I use to brush my teeth and nutralize acids, the other is for baking.


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## Geo (Mar 31, 2012)

baking powder and baking soda is two different things.baking powder is sodium bicarbonate and yeast.


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## old thompson (Mar 31, 2012)

Geo said:


> baking powder and baking soda is two different things.baking powder is sodium bicarbonate and yeast.



Note to self: I must remember to properly label the Arm and Hammer. :shock:


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## butcher (Mar 31, 2012)

:lol: well look on the bright side it was not the Preparation-H you brushed your teeth with.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_bicarbonate

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_carbonate

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baking_powder

be careful brushing it can be hazardous.


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