# silver chloride precipitation



## kjavanb123 (Jun 19, 2012)

All,

During my processing CPUs in CPU lot post, I have filtered the lead/silver salts, boiled in hot water, filtered the solution and dissolved the remains in ammonia then drop hcl and got the following white mud which I assumed to be silver chloride. So I decant the solution on top, add nitric and boiled it and the following remained. Assuming this might be silver nitrate, I added a copper sheet to it, and solution turned green.




How should i have done silver chloride? do i filter it? or decant and let it dry?

Thanks and regards
Kevin


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## Geo (Jun 19, 2012)

dont let it dry. filter and rinse with water really well. there are several ways to convert silver chloride to elemental silver. for a good video of the conversion with caustic soda, go to Lazersteve's website and check out the silver videos.


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## Westerngs (Jun 19, 2012)

Kevin,

Silver chloride does not dissolve in nitric acid. Geo's advice is good, use lazersteve's method for converting silver chloride. There ias currently another thread for this method here.

http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=14618

Good luck.


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## MysticColby (Jun 20, 2012)

as west said, silver chlorde + nitric does not react. the nitric simply stayed in solution and dissolved the copper when you added that.


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## kjavanb123 (Jun 23, 2012)

Now with this new fiber CPUs, 3 of them with monolithic capacitors attached to them, were in nitric leach, so I filtered and captured the pale yellow solution, thinking this could be the Ag nitrate solution, dropped in a copper sheet, and nothing happened, just fizzing and copper got dissolved solution turned to green blue as following


what happened here?

Thanks
Kevin


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## lazersteve (Jun 23, 2012)

Kevin,

A few points about your methods that I would like to discuss. Please take these comments in the spirit that I offer them; to help you further your thirst for refining knowledge.

1). Stop going headstrong into the processes without doing your due diligence first. Read Hoke, watch my videos, and read everything in the Guided Tour link below.

2). You are processing way too small of a batch to produce measurable results. Three green cpus have a minimal amount of any type of precious metals.

3). Learn how to process know samples of silver and gold to observe how they react, then move on to 'real' scrap. When you move on to the scrap process learn one fully before you proceed to the next. If you have a question or run into a snag do a forum search and/or ask about the problem you are having.

The photo you posted of the copper in the nitrate solution looks like copper has dissolved into the liquid. The clean surface of the copper indicates to me that you have no metals below copper in the activity series present (see activity series chart in the documents section of my website). I would recommend learning about silver refining using a few mylars from several keyboards. This is a nearly pure source of silver and yields are good on a per keyboard basis (about 1/4 to 1/2 gram).


Steve


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