# Method for producing pure silver metal



## Noxx

Hello,
I'm currently developping a simple process to make pure silver nitrate (or metal if you prefer) from Sterling silver. This should yield a product a least 99,9% pure. I'm not the inventor of the process in any ways, it's just ideas I gathered from *ScienceMadness.org*. Special thanks to Fleaker who helped me indirectly lol. If you think there are any flaws in my process, please let me know ! Any comments is also welcomed.

Cementation of silver with copper is a well know technique to produce silver metal of an acceptable purity, but you will always get some impurities from the Copper.

*Method for producing 500 grams of photo grade AgNO3*

-Start with incinerating you scrap silver to remove any dirt and oil residues. Do not melt the silver. More informations are available on this forum on how to do it properly.

-Let it cool then add your sterling (343,25 grams in this case) in a large beaker. 2000mL should suffice.

Following steps must be performed in a low light environnement. 

-Add at least 1100mL of 30% nitric acid. When the reaction has stopped, add small amounts of HNO3 to dissolve the remaining pieces. Try not to add too much acid.

-Vacuum filter your solution to remove any insoluble particles. Use a fast to medium speed filter paper. 

-Add NaCl (lab grade, food grade or equivalent) until no more precipitate forms. You now made Silver Chloride (AgCl) and Lead Chloride if there was any present.

-Decant your solution, you only want to keep the precipitate. Rinse the powder once in tap water.

-_Then add enough HCl to cover it. Digest the powder in boiling HCl for one hour. This will dissolve any remaining metals. Use a magnetic stirrer if you have one. Keep your beaker covered with a watch glass. Decant the solution and rinse the powder two times with tap water. Not sure if this step is useful or not._

-Rinse you powder two times with boiling distilled water.

-Now dissolve your powder in Ammonium Hydroxide (lab grade, try not to use too much). Ammonia water will form a complex with silver but will not dissolve any lead chloride that may have still been present.

-Vacuum filter your solution using a medium to slow filter paper. Discart any precipitate.

-Add HCl to neutralize the ammonia and destroy the complex. This will form new AgCl. The amount of HCl used is not critical. Better too much than not enough. Add HCl until pH becomes acidic (under 7).

-Decant the solution and rinse your powder two times with tap water and two times with distilled water. This will remove the NH4Cl that formed during the neutralization.

-You can convert your Silver Chloride to Silver Oxide by the addition of an alkali solution like NaOH or KOH. Both are soluble in water in all proportions.

-Rinse your powder again with water a few times and heat to 300°C (590°F) to decompose your Oxide back to silver metal.

-At this time, your silver powder should be very pure, with only traces of other metals. You can either melt it to cast ingots or dissolve it back in Nitric acid (lab grade or higher) to make silver nitrate.


That's it !

Any comments ?


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## goldsilverpro

Looks like you made AgCl instead of AgNO3. I assume you're not finished. I would use hot water rinses and rinse until a small sample of the rinse water shows no blue color, against a white paper background, after being made alkaline with ammonia. Test tubes are nice for this. You can also test a small amount of the AgCl, after the HCl leach, by dissolving it in ammonia in a test tube and looking for blue (copper). Also, the hot water will get rid of lead chloride. The HCl wouldn't hurt and might help, but you'll have to rinse it all out. I would probably use HCl, instead of salt, to drop the AgCl. 

The 1100 mLs of 30% nitric sounds right on. The best way to avoid using too much nitric is to only use enough to dissolve about 95%+, of the silver. Get the acid just below boiling to make sure it's used up. After dissolving, there should be a little bit of undissolved silver left.

AgCl is hard to work with. It traps stuff. Don't ever let it dry. Try to prevent clumps. Light is a problem. Maybe you could use a red photo lab light.

99.5 isn't very pure and, with care, you shouldn't have much trouble making it.

Lou is the master formulator. He probably has some better ideas.


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## Noxx

GSP, I still haven't finished the process yet !
You was not supposed to see what I am writing since I checked the box: Make this post a draft, but since you're a moderator, you can see it lol.  That's why all my writings are in red. What you see is about half of the process.

I will continue the writing later, I now have to got back in class.


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## Oz

Noxx,

We can all see it, and now that I know it was to be hidden, it makes more sense.


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## Noxx

Oh, I taught it was hidden lol.

Sorry Chris, my bad 

About the purity concern, I must admit that the number I gave was a wild number. I have no idea exactly what purity the silver will have. What I know is that I can remove all Lead Chloride and copper metal that may be present in standard copper cementation.

We'll discuss that later, when I'll finish the process.


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## Noxx

Ok I'm done. So now you can have a good idea of the process.

Anyone knows the silver purity it should yield ?

Thanks


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## Platdigger

"-You can convert your Silver Chloride to Silver Oxide by the addition of an alkali like NaOH or KOH."

How are you adding the hydroxide? With water?
So the purity of water is not critical?
Randy


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## Noxx

Sorry, forgot to mention that your dissolve the NaOH in water.
Purity of water is not critical but you should use distilled water if you think some strange things may be in yours.


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## Lou

As a rule, I use distilled water. Harold has mentioned obtaining 99,95+ percent pure gold using tap water. Being somewhat on the anal side, I just use distilled water. It is easy to setup a water distiller (Barne's type) that will give 5-6 megaohm water.


My comments on the silver:

1.) use no more HCl than you must, otherwise it will bind up some silver in solution as a complex. While boiling in HCl will remove many impurities, it will also form that AgCl2- which you can wash away. Guess what though, this only happens to an appreciable extent when there is very concentrated amounts of chloride in solution. So decanting off the HCl, rinsing (3 times, 400mL dH2O per 200g) the AgCl and then pouring the rinse water into the HCl that was used for the boil. You should see some silver chloride drop out of it.

2.) Similar to what I said about the chloride complex...this can also happen with the use of too much base giving you Ag(OH)2- which is colorless and is easily tossed out! Use only as much base as is required to stop the precipitation of silver oxide.
Sodium carbonate can be substituted in lieu of sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide. Both will give the same results. 



A test for purity: take a sample of pure silver powder and dissolve it in quality nitric acid. Note if there is ANY color whatsoever to the solution--it should be colorless. Evaporate this (still watch color) to dryness and heat in a porcelain dish to 440*C. Cool this and dissolve in hot distilled water and look for any sediment on the bottom. Sediment on the bottom indicates metal oxides that formed during the fusion of the silver nitrate at 440C...just about every impurity will form an oxide at that temperature. No oxides and no color mean that your silver is over 99,995% pure. 

This procedure can be repeated and high quality reagents used to yield silver that is factors of ten more pure. Eventually, however, there comes a point where Ksp and solution equilibria put a cap on what ultimate level of purity you can get. Just think, 107g of silver, roughly a mole, contains 6.02214 X 10^23 atoms. Even if your silver were 99,9999999% pure you would still have a large number of other atoms!! There is interesting chemistry behind the purification of metals, both from the analytic and from the physical standpoint!


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## Noxx

Thanks Louis for the answers.

But do you think I should use the HCl boiling process or the ammonia water dissolution ? (or both ?). I don't know if the difference in purity would be negligible. HCl is cheaper for me than ammonium hydroxide.


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## Lou

If I had to pick one, certainly ammonia water. If you suspect lead, ammonia will get rid of it. You can also rinse out the lead with copious quantities of hot water, but depending on how much lead chloride is present that may not be an option. What you want to do and what you can do is something you must decide upon.


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## Noxx

Yesterday I was washing my AgCl with 30% HCl (I forgot about what Lou said) and my solution turned yellow (almost canari). I did not understand what was happening at first but I remembered what Lou said... I diluted the solution and it turned white again...

So obviously, AgCl IS soluble in HCl.


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## 61 silverman

hi every one,a question about silver chloride.. I think that I read in one of the posts that if you had a piece of material that had formed silver chloride on it's surface, that a dip in Ammonium Hydroxide would disolve the AgCl,?? then rince and return to further disolve in main solution, If this would work at may take a little more time and an extra container, But may be able too process some jewelry this way, poor man's AR may have been used in the thread ,I remember this from..

Thanks MARK 


P.S still trying too not have too inquart jewelry- melting the small gem stones i cant remove..


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## Lou

Mark, unless you roll out that jewelery to very thin pieces, forget about it! It would be too much trouble to keep putting them in and out of solution. 

Inquarting isn't a big deal--do it right and it's a huge time saver and you'll get a superior product in the end. 

Even if you make thin pieces, you'll still get a scruff of silver chloride forming on the karat gold. You'll need agitation and heat to get rid of it. Also, some of the AgCl dissolves in the aqua regia and gets carried along when you go to purify your gold. 

Inquarting is the easy way out.


Lou


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## Harold_V

Lou said:


> Inquarting is the easy way out.


It never ceases to amaze me how some folks will go 1,000 miles out of their way to avoid a ten mile trip. 

Inquartation is key to easy success, and is a very useful tool in gathering traces of platinum and palladium for later recovery. I'm mystified why the process isn't broadly accepted. 

Harold


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## 61 silverman

Trying too make a short cut will usually get u're self lost in the forest !!! allright ,..  I do have HOKE'S book and she say's simply to inquart , and I should listen too the wise !!! Thank You All
MARK


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## Oz

Harold_V said:


> Inquartation is key to easy success, and is a very useful tool in gathering traces of platinum and palladium for later recovery. I'm mystified why the process isn't broadly accepted.



Perhaps one reason for the crazy work arounds is the problem in purchasing nitric for many.

A person new to chemistry is also unlikely to have the skill and knowledge to make their own nitric. They are also the most likely to have crazy ideas about how to refine from the online world trying to sell a process.


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## Harold_V

Excellent points. I think you may be right. 

I've commented a few times how there's way too much BS being promoted where refining is concerned. If readers had the ability to sort out what is factual and what is promotional, they'd be well served. 

Frankly, that's one of the reasons why I promote Hoke's book. It may not be all inclusive, but it provides reasonable guidelines to the processing of precious metals. Once digested, it makes the task of sorting good and useful information from the garbage that is often promoted, usually at a price, much easier. I can't think of a better bargain than a copy of her book-----for a person interested in learning the art of refining. It builds a very solid foundation from which a person can launch in any direction desired. 

Harold

edit: completed the intended message


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## Oz

Well as you and perhaps a few others on here may know, I am a reader. I have not yet seen a text that makes a better foundation for an individual wishing to learn refining. It gives all the fundamentals and one can specialize from there if they so desire. On this forum it is for free, as well as experienced individuals that can answer questions one has in reading it. What modern book comes with that?


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## Lou

One can go from silver nitrate to silver metal and preserve the purity of the silver (no introduction of copper or other transition metals) using sodium carbonate. Sodium carbonate will react with the silver nitrate to give silver carbonate, a very weakly soluble salt. This is then filtered and heated to 350C/660F yielding silver metal.

The following happens:

AgNO3 + Na2CO3 --> Ag2CO3 + NaNO3
[NaNO3 is removed in filtration step.]
2Ag2CO3 --> 2Ag2O + 2CO2 --->4Ag + O2.
[220C for first decomposition, 310C for second decomposition.]

This is useful because carbonate is cheap and less hazardous than using lye.


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## Harold_V

Nice post, Lou. 

Food for thought: Silver nitrate can be allowed to grow crystals, which will reject the majority of impurities contained in solution. Collect the crystals, re-dissolved in distilled water, than allow them to grow again. Each iteration raises the quality of the silver. 

Harold


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## Oz

Lou,

If I understand you correctly then if I had a silver cell that the electrolyte has become overburdened with Cu the addition of sodium carbonate will give silver carbonate with limited drag down of Cu.

In addition I would think that you could recover your nitric from the filtrate buy simple heating and a condenser coil and get a rather pure nitric. The sodium will not carry over but is there a problem with the carbonate that I am unaware of that would affect the purity of the resulting nitric?

There would be a fair bit of nitric bound to the Cu so I wonder if I would have to stop short of heating the filtrate dry to recover the nitrate from the Cu without impurities coming over from the carbonate or sodium. In the case of heating to dryness I would have the condenser output bubble the gas through distilled water. If I am not pipe dreaming here what temperature is needed to break the bond between the Cu and nitrate?


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## Lou

If you have excess nitric acid that means excess protons and that means you'll be making CO2 gas and sodium nitrate. Residual carbonate will remove any copper and most other base metals out of the system. You'll be left with sodium nitrate solution and probably quite a bit of effervescence. 


As for separating silver carbonate from copper carbonate, it would not work well unless there was strict pH control--copper carbonate isn't very soluble, less soluble than silver carbonate even. I meant this as an easy way to get pure silver from pure silver nitrate in a jiffy. It's no a repurification step. If you fuses your silver nitrate and hold at 425 C all of the lesser metal nitrates will decompose into oxides with the release of nitrogen dioxide. Cool and break up the luna salt cake and dissolve in water, filtering out the base metal oxide residues. This is then reacted with sodium carbonate, filtered, and the precipitate heated to yield pure silver. It can also be melted straight from carbonate.


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## Oz

Thanks for the clarification Lou.


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## arie_pk

Hey guys - I was reading this thread with interest and wondering, when using Ammonia, what % of ammonia should be used and what ratio/silver?
I realize this is an old thread, but maybe someone can answer

Regards

Arie


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## SilverNitrate

If the silver is pure you wouldn't experience any loss if using it to rinse. The ammonia will form complex with silver ions, that is if any chloride oxide or nitrate is available. I do this all the time and at strengths between 5 and 10% NH4OH


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## Goldfinger4

When using the AgCl/sugar method i usually lose around 10% of the silver through washing. I think most silver is lost when I remove remaining sugar and NaOH because the silver particles are very small in that state of the process.

Is it better to use only NaOH and no sugar and put the AgO into the furnace?


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## goldenchild

Goldfinger4 said:


> When using the AgCl/sugar method i usually lose around 10% of the silver through washing. I think most silver is lost when I remove remaining sugar and NaOH because the silver particles are very small in that state of the process.
> 
> Is it better to use only NaOH and no sugar and put the AgO into the furnace?



If you suspect you are losing silver in the washes you have to filter the washes better. You should decant the lye/sugar solution saving it in another vessel and then filter the solution. A "charmin plug" or other very fine filters should work. If you think you're losing alot of silver the way you're doing it now you would be extremely dissappointed trying to melt silver oxide straight away :shock: So no its not a good idea.


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## rbramsey

Noxx said:


> Following steps must be performed in a low light environment.





goldsilverpro said:


> Light is a problem. Maybe you could use a red photo lab light.



I know how AgCl changes from white to purple in light, but I didn't know that it harms anything for it to turn. How does light effect the silver while refining?


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## rbramsey

Noxx said:


> -Add NaCl (lab grade, food grade or equivalent) until no more precipitate forms. You now made Silver Chloride (AgCl) and Lead Chloride if there was any present.
> ...
> -Now dissolve your powder in Ammonium Hydroxide (lab grade, try not to use too much). Ammonia water will form a complex with silver but will not dissolve any lead chloride that may have still been present.



I know you started with sterling, but I work with more e-scrap than sterling, and this would make this more a concise process. I would suggest that:

...You now made Silver Chloride (AgCl), Lead Chloride (PbCl2), Mercury Chloride (HgCl2), and Stannous Chloride (SnCl2) if there was any present.
...Ammonia water will selectively form a complex with silver but will not dissolve any PbCl2, HgCl2, or SnCl2 that may have still been present.

This is knit-picking, but I fought these others when I first started refining. It would have made life easier if I had known more about them.

Richard


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## lazersteve

Never leave your silver solutions basic, always add some HCl to them, enough to bring the pH to slightly lower than 7. 

This will push any silver out of the solution that may have become tied up.

Steve


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## Goldfinger4

goldenchild said:


> If you suspect you are losing silver in the washes you have to filter the washes better. You should decant the lye/sugar solution saving it in another vessel and then filter the solution. A "charmin plug" or other very fine filters should work. If you think you're losing alot of silver the way you're doing it now you would be extremely dissappointed trying to melt silver oxide straight away :shock: So no its not a good idea.



Why would I be disappointed? Silver in the oxide should not disappear while melting. I could imagine that it would be dangerous having dissolved much oxygen in the liquid silver as I normally only wear gloves, a leather jacket and protective goggles when casting..


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## mike677

Looking for answers. I received some old pieces of what is supposed to be sterling silver (no hallmarks but stamped sterling silver 1880.) I melted one damaged piece into small ingots (about 1oz. each) so that I could experiment with silver refining. I tested the ingots with red acid and it turned a yellow green color indicating that the silver content was below 75%.
I then dissolved the silver in 70% nitric acid dilluted with distilled water.
Shor says no water is necessary? After the silver was dissolved, I filtered it and precipitated it with table salt (no iodine). I filtered again and washed and dried the white compound that had dropped. I then transferred the white compund to a clean plastic bowl, added distilled water and introduced lye beads. The white compound turned reddish brown? I then added corn syrup, stirred and poured off the liquid. I was left with a reddish brown mud ball? I dried the mud and then melted it. It did turn a bright shiny silver but it seemed to melt very fast? I then retested with red acid and it still is a yellow green color. Any ideas? By the way, you guys are awesome in taking the time to explain this stuff to neophytes like me. I do appreciate it.


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## 4metals

Going to a chloride would still not produce a fine silver product and since your testing showed lower silver you may have lead in there. This comes down with the silver chloride and ends up in the next bar if you don't rinse it out with hot water rinses. 

Next time dissolve it in 50% nitric acid and cement it out with scrap copper. It comes down as a metal and melts without conversion. Still only 99% pure but the contaminants are easily dealt with in a silver cell. (lead is not) 

Is your red acid nitric or schwerters solution? Schwerters solution is physically red, nitric acid usually comes with a red cap and it is clear.


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## Goldfinger4

Is your red acid potassium dichromate? Iron- or aluminium-dichromate are green. Lead dichromate would look yellow.
Normally potassium dichromate is only used to prove the presence of silver and not its purity.
Chromium chloride can also look dark green.. there are many possibilities.


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## A9johnson

i have a question. i keep reading up on how to refine silver and gold and keep coming across people saying that you need to use "70%" nitric acid, or in the case of silver "30%" nitric acid. is this a certain kind of nitric i need to purchase are they different? or do you make them that way by adding water or something? thanks for your replies. '

also is there a website i can purchase these chemicals from? if so please list it. thanks.

-Adam


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## golddie

You can dilute the acid with water 
and there are many companies
maybe duddadisal


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## Sodbuster

I bought mine from Duddadisal. It will be cheaper from his website and not from his E-bay store.


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## goldenchild

I keep plugging this site and I'm sure this wont be the last time but... if you are paying dudadiesel prices for nitric acid you are better off buying from here. http://www.abprospecting.com


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## goldsilverpro

goldenchild said:


> I keep plugging this site and I'm sure this wont be the last time but... if you are paying dudadiesel prices for nitric acid you are better off buying from here. http://www.abprospecting.com



There's an error in their catalog. It says 1 gallon but it also says 7 pounds. Which is it? - it can't be both. I would imagine the 7# is right (sort of) because that's the way reagent grade usually is (was) packaged. I've never seen it come in 1 gallon jugs. A gallon of nitric weighs 11.8 pounds. Therefore, 7# would be 0.6 gallons. Therefore, at this weight, you are paying about $70/gallon plus shipping and that's way too much. There are cheaper deals out there. In the thread below, it says you can buy 5 gal of tech grade at $34/gallon, shipped! Terrace Packaging (same thread) might even have it cheaper. Unless you're using the nitric for fire assays, tech grade works equally well as reagent grade. Why waste your money?
http://www.goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=9551&p=91655&hilit=terrace#p91655

Actually, the old, so-called, 7# jugs are obsolete, I think. That's what they called them when they held 5 pints (5/8 of a gallon - actually .625 gallons or about 7.4#). Nowadays, the reagent grade jugs hold 2.5 liters, or .66 gallons (7.8#). That's a little better ($63/gal plus hazmat shipping, which isn't cheap), but not good enough to warrant buying reagent grade from abprospecting, or anywhere else.

To be fair, the abprospecting price for reagent grade is very good but, except in rare cases, you don't need reagent grade.


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## goldenchild

goldsilverpro said:


> Actually, the old, so-called, 7# jugs are obsolete, I think. That's what they called them when they held 5 pints (5/8 of a gallon - actually .625 gallons or about 7.4#). Nowadays, the reagent grade jugs hold 2.5 liters, or .66 gallons (7.8#). That's a little better ($63/gal plus hazmat shipping, which isn't cheap), but not good enough to warrant buying reagent grade from abprospecting, or anywhere else.




This is exactly what they are. 2.5L. Just figured I would post a better alternative if one is willing to spend so much and or has no other alternatives.

I no longer buy reagent grade nitric though. Or any grade for that matter. If I need reagent strength for say silver, I distill with lab glass and make my own. As far as for everything else... I have actually devolved. I no longer even make "poor man's" nitric like seen in my youtube videos. I now use "the poorest man's" nitric (you heard it hear first). I simply calculate the amount of nitrate, water and H2SO4 needed and mix. I place the nitrate in the vessel, add water and then put the scrap on the bed of nitrate. I then add incremented amounts of H2SO4. Believe it or not this works much better than adding nitric as a liquid. For me at least.


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## butcher

Search killing two birds one rock. A post on how I make nitric acid, dissolve copper from gold, seperate gold from the copper sulfate, all useable products.
but my distilling rig is still the gallon pickle jar homade teflon lid and hose in a sand bath pot, still have my fancy lab glass distilling rig never used in the box I bought it in, maybe this summer I will try it out?


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## kesavan

Good day everyone,


Im Kesavan and Im new here. Im kindly requesting some informations about how to recover silver from mylars(films) inside the keyboard.I hope to get a simplest but efficient method.Help me guyz...


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## jimdoc

kesavan said:


> Good day everyone,
> Im Kesavan and Im new here. Im kindly requesting some informations about how to recover silver from mylars(films) inside the keyboard.I hope to get a simplest but efficient method.Help me guyz...



Its all here already if you try the search box.
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=9728&p=93308&hilit=silver+mylars#p93308

Jim


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## kesavan

tq Jim....it works...i already got the silver chloride...now...i have to convert it to silver...


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## Williams55

nice post thanks for all...


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## AztekShine

What are the benefit of converting the AgCl to oxide. Can you melt either in an ingot?

I'm probably not understanding something. 

Can the AgCl only be cemented to Cu? And not melted.


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## butcher

Q?:
What is the benefit of converting the AgCl to oxide? Can you melt either in an ingot?
A:
Silver oxide can be melted (with carbon or soda ash), but it is better to convert silver chloride to metallic silver before melting, there are several methods to convert it to silver (NaOH and dextrose corn syrup),(dilute H2SO4 and zinc or aluminum or iron), (HCl and zinc or iron).

Q?: I'm probably not understanding something. 
A: just need to spend some time reading these things take time to learn.


Q?: Can the AgCl only be cemented to Cu? And not melted.
A: No AgCl is a salt of silver, it is insoluble. In AgNO3 the silver is in solution the copper gives one of its electron’s to the silver the copper atom then joins with the nitrate in solution as copper nitrate (blue liquid)the silver cements (precipitates from solution as gray powder that looks like cement but is actually silver metal).


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## AztekShine

butcher said:


> Q?:
> What is the benefit of converting the AgCl to oxide? Can you melt either in an ingot?
> A:
> Silver oxide can be melted (with carbon or soda ash), but it is better to convert silver chloride to metallic silver before melting, there are several methods to convert it to silver (NaOH and dextrose corn syrup),(dilute H2SO4 and zinc or aluminum or iron), (HCl and zinc or iron)
> 
> Q?: I'm probably not understanding something.
> A: just need to spend some time reading these things take time to learn.
> 
> 
> Q?: Can the AgCl only be cemented to Cu? And not melted.
> A: No AgCl is a salt of silver, it is insoluble. In AgNO3 the silver is in solution the copper gives one of its electron’s to the silver the copper atom then joins with the nitrate in solution as copper nitrate (blue liquid)the silver cements (precipitates from solution as gray powder that looks like cement but is actually silver metal).



Thank you so much friend!
Yeah man I've been studying about 4-8hrs a day.


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## AztekShine

So when I add the Cu the solution will turn blue and Ag will precipitate?


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## butcher

If you have pure silver nitrate solution it will be clear and look like water (usually ours is green or blue from some copper in solution), adding a large piece of clean copper metal buss bar to the clear silver nitrate solution, this solution surrounding the copper metal will start to leave whitish gray fluffy material on the copper bar (silver metal) it will fall off (or can be shaken off) and will fall to the bottom of your vessel with whitish/grayish cement looking powder fluffy with some darker specks, as the silver is removed from solution the copper will replace the silver in solution, changing this clear silver solution to blue copper nitrate solution.

Depending on purity of the silver dissolved in your solution, you may just see the green solution of silver/ copper nitrate, turn into light blue copper nitrate solution,

(Other metals like base metals or palladium can also change the color of these reactions somewhat).


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