# Sodium nitrate for silver help



## rfran7788 (Jul 3, 2014)

Instead of nitric acid can I use Sodium nitrate for refining silver...
or are they the same


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## g_axelsson (Jul 3, 2014)

Nitric acid, HNO3, is an acid and a liquid.
Sodium nitrate, NaNO3, is a salt and a solid.

Not the same thing. You can use sodium nitrate with sulfuric acid and make nitric acid. If you use a distilling rig you can make pure nitric acid. Without distilling the acid you would get some sulfuric acid in the mix and it can make silver refining problematic...
I haven't made nitric acid myself so I have no experience there. I've always used bought nitric acid for my silver refining needs.

Göran


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## rfran7788 (Jul 3, 2014)

isnt there HNO3 in NaNO3


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## Shark (Jul 3, 2014)

You can use the Sodium nitrate to make nitric acid. Search for "cold Nitric" or "Killing two birds with one stone". As stated by g_axelsson in his post, you may run into problems if it is not distilled and working with silver. I have made it several times by the cold method and I would recommend studying the whole process several times before even trying it. It isn't all that hard, but there are serious dangers involved. Be sure also you understand the problems you may face when working with silver in non distilled nitric or you may find you have many more questions than this one.


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## solar_plasma (Jul 3, 2014)

rfran7788 said:


> isnt there HNO3 in NaNO3



Not that it would help you, but in fact you are to some degree right as soon as you dissolve it in water. But you also have NaOH, then and the base and the acid are at their equivalence point. Which means, there are as much Na+ as there are NO3-. Since NaOH is a strong base and HNO3 is a strong acid, the equivalence point is equal to the neutral point (pH7). That means, there are as much H3O+ (acid) as OH- (base). Yes, you have HNO3, but it is neutralized by NaOH. 

Now we could ask, why NaNO3 in aqueous solution won't dissolve silver. Sodium is much more reactive, than silver. It has a higher electronegativity. Much higher, I would guess it would theoretically kick silver atoms out of most, if not all silver compounds by giving an electron to the silver. When you have a positive charged silver atom, correctly called ion or cation, Ag+ and give an electron to this, you have elemental silver, Ag0. So, elemental silver stays what it is,when exposed to an aqueous solution of NaNO3.


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## solar_plasma (Jul 4, 2014)

Equilibria though can be forced to one or the other side, for example by removing some ions by precipitation. My first thought went towards the insoluble BaSO4, I just searched for this and found:

GSP


> I downloaded a couple of old industrial chemical books on Google Books. I found another process. Instead of sodium nitrate, they used barium nitrate. The equation, otherwise, is about the same. It takes about 1.5 times as much weight of Ba(NO3)2 as it does NaNO3. The big difference is that Ba(NO3)2 is only about 10% as soluble in water as NaNO3. Therefore, the nitric yield was only about 10%, by weight. They said you could boil it to raise it to 25%, the point at which HNO3 starts coming off. The 25% would work for our processes but, not as fast.* The beauty of using Ba(NO3)2 is that the resulting salt, BaSO4, is zero soluble in everthing and, therefore, could be completely removed at room temp.* About the cheapest I found barium nitrate was from pyrotechnic chemical companies, for about $3.30/pound. That was for one pound quantities. They couldn't ship it, so you had to pick it up.



http://goldrefiningforum.com/~goldrefi/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=19230&view=next

25% nitric is ok for dissolving silver, you can even dilute it more.


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## butcher (Jul 4, 2014)

Dilute nitric acid can be concentrated to 68% azeotropic solution, by evaporation of mostly water (not boiling).
You cannot concentrate nitric acid in solution further than this by normal means.

Many acids have have a point that they azeotrope at, and cannot be made stronger by evaporation of the water involved.


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## rfran7788 (Jul 4, 2014)

I was told to use urea after combining the distilled water, sulfuric acid to the sodium nitrate,after it recovers...that would kill the other acid and not the nitric acid


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## rfran7788 (Jul 4, 2014)

solar_plasma said:


> Equilibria though can be forced to one or the other side, for example by removing some ions by precipitation. My first thought went towards the insoluble BaSO4, I just searched for this and found:
> 
> GSP
> 
> ...



correct me if im wrong you are saying to use the same method...sulfuric acid & distilled water and add to barium nitrate instead of sodium nitrate
without distilling it..or would still need to distilled in other for silver to dissolve?


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## solar_plasma (Jul 4, 2014)

Without distilling, only filter off the BaSO4 precipitate. Then eventually evaporating some of the water.


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## solar_plasma (Jul 4, 2014)

Note, barium is very toxic. Never inhale dusts or ingest in any way even traces.


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## rfran7788 (Jul 4, 2014)

solar_plasma said:


> Note, barium is very toxic. Never inhale dusts or ingest in any way even traces.




can I use barium sulfate powder...can buy it on ebay....but strange, it says on description that its none toxic...is it the same...
also i assume after mixing the barium with the sulfuric acid and distilled water..it would form a powder ? or still be in a liquid form?


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## butcher (Jul 4, 2014)

rfran7788,
Your best bet at getting to your goal, is to spend some time studying, in doing so you will open a whole new world of ideas, learning what works and what does not work, and why it will not work.

You will learn the best methods of making homemade nitric acid, and how to do it safely, How to make impure, and even a fairly pure nitric acid, how to recover and refine silver and even where to find it, in many places you may not have even thought of.

Barium sulfate will not make nitric acid, at least not the way you are thinking now.

Spend some time studying, and if chemistry interests you (besides just the chemistry of metals), follow your interests, follow it to were it leads you, many of the questions you seek, you can easily find the answers to, most all of your questions will be answered there, if not a million more than you would ever think of to ask.

Ask one question, you may get an answer, or at least part of the answer.
Study and you find that answer, and a million more answers.


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## jason_recliner (Jul 4, 2014)

butcher said:


> Study and you find that answer, and a million more answers.


A million is about right. What an absolute rabbit hole it all is. Once chemical processes start to take your interest, there's no turning back!

rfran7788,
I'm still really new at this too. I've fouled my stuff right up. On a scale of 1 to Harold I'm still a 1. And it's with that ignorance that I can say these guys are being truly helpful and have your best interest at heart when they say that you need to read up. It's totally worth it. You'll find it hard to stop.


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## Shark (Jul 4, 2014)

Staying safe is everyone's concern for you. I think no one means to discourage you, they just want you to know and understand that there is some serious hazards involved. Just study and learn the dangers and problems you may face. I am new to this as well, but serious study, a lot of work and effort is paying off nicely. For me, I enjoy it way more than I have made a profit from it. I have found the entire knowledge base involved to be fun, relaxing and very addictive. 

Just to tease you a bit this was done with my home made nitric.


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## rfran7788 (Jul 4, 2014)

Every one here is just soo cool ..I wish I had a gold bar every for everyone.. I appreciate every ones opinion. its the amount of info that I receive that cause me to ask certain questions.. my main priority is safety when using the chemicals, also what my pocket can manage. I came across many procedures ..and want to try out the cheapest and easiest and safest method. Im willing to try them ..but would like to ask if anyone heard or tried of Hydrocloric acid or Muriatic Acid with Sodium Hydroxide for silver

thanks all


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## FrugalRefiner (Jul 4, 2014)

rfran7788 said:


> but would like to ask if anyone heard or tried of Hydrocloric acid or Muriatic Acid with Sodium Hydroxide for silver


That would give you salt water.

Dave


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## Shark (Jul 4, 2014)

> ..but would like to ask if anyone heard or tried of Hydrocloric acid or Muriatic Acid with Sodium Hydroxide for silver



There several steps missing from what you are asking. I will try to answer off the top of my head, and may need corrections by the more experienced members. I am not a chemist by any means, and would rather someone more knowledgeable of the technical terms explain it in the proper terminology. So don't take this explanation as pure fact. Any corrections by the more experienced are welcome as we can both have a better understanding of proper wording. 

I think it is silver chloride that can be converted to silver metal with sodium hydroxide. I have only ran into silver chloride a few times, when working with AR. After recovering the silver chloride and a thorough washing, I used sodium hydroxide to convert it into metallic silver (silver oxide?). I have only done this on a tiny scale just to see it work for myself. Sodium Hydroxide when combined with water can become extremely hot very fast, as well as eat at your tissue very harshly. It was not a method I would try to use if working with refining of silver just to recover th silver, but for silver from other processes such as AR used for gold that contained some silver that reduced as silver chloride. If your starting with silver, follow most any of the older posts on silver and nitric. There are fewer steps involved, which also means fewer chances for mistakes. If you have nitric, even homemade nitric (of reasonable quality, there are several great posts on making the nitric) you will have fewer steps, and a reduction in chances for mistakes as well. And it is also cheaper in the long term as well. 

Again, look into cold nitric by lazersteve, as well as check into goldenchilds posts on the subject, you might be pleasantly surprised at what you find there. On what those two have posted on this sight, with some advice from butcher, several months ago, I learned to make my own, and then how to do the silver, at least on a small scale, with it. I work this on a fairly tight budget myself so I can understand that aspect, but not all things cheap are worth it. Sometimes we have to bite the bullet, and put the extra effort into it to get it right. And again, I do this more for the fun and learning than I do a profit.

Edit to add the (Silver oxide?) above.


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## butcher (Jul 4, 2014)

rfran7788,
Really you should study, that is the only way you will be able to answer these questions you have, you would never learn much by asking one question and getting a partial answer, you will stuggle forever to learn to recover and process silver, where in studying you will learn the methods of recovery and refining, learn how you can save money, and can even learn to make some of the chemicals you may need, also learning many sources for finding scrap to recover the silver from, basically being able to answer many of the questions yourself with a little effort.

A salt is formed when an metal is dissolved into an acid, or an an acid is mixed with a base, a base is opposite of an acid.

some examples:
silver metal Ag dissolved in nitric acid HNO3 forms a soluble salt of silver nitrate AgNO3:
3Ag + 4HNO3 --> 3AgNO3 + 2H2O + NO

Hydrochloric acid HCl and sodium hydroxide NaOH, an acid and a base, to form a salt of sodium chloride NaCl (dissolved in water), just like the salt you may recognize, and just like the salt you use on your food, which can be made from these two very dangerous substances both of which can burn your skin, that when mixed can form a violent reaction, resulting in something you could eat.
(caution unless the acid and the caustic soda NaOH was very pure you would not want to eat salt made in this manner).

HCl + NaOH --> NaCl + H2O

Silver will not dissolve in salt water (does that answer your question?).

Silver will not dissolve in HCl, the acid will oxidize and form a passivated layer of silver chloride, this oxidized layer forms a protective crust of silver chloride (salt), that will prevent further attack of the silver metal with the HCl acid.

Simple answer no it will not work.
Best answer study and find out what works and why.

edit I had meant to say metal dissolved in an acid (not acid dissolved in acid)


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## goldsilverpro (Jul 4, 2014)

Barium Nitrate MSDS

http://chemlab.snu.ac.kr/zbxe/?document_srl=42555


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## solar_plasma (Jul 5, 2014)

> ..but would like to ask if anyone heard or tried of Hydrocloric acid or Muriatic Acid with Sodium Hydroxide for silver



Now I am shocked! HCl and NaOH to form salt is one of the first reactions any child learns in the subject chemistry in schools all over the world. Whenever I try to answer a question without knowing someone's personal context, I presume, that you have had 1,5 lessons/week for 3 years in school. Having less knowledge about chemistry and wanting to make your own dangerous chemicals is like wanting to write philosophical books without knowing the alphabet, with the difference that any writing mistake can harm you and others for a lifetime.

I see only two possibilities:

*Start with reading Hoke and the forum threads about safety, waste ...all you find here: http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=6873#6873 = the practical way without unnecessary chemical theory*

or
*
Start finding some easy chemistry books for kids on the library and work yourself through the stuff up to end of highschool/start of college level and then turn back to the forum reading just everything = the more educated way. *



This sounds harder, than it is, because you will have your first small successes right from the start. Not doing one of them and going on asking meaningless questions is nothing else but forum trolling in my eyes.


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## rfran7788 (Jul 6, 2014)

I tested some sliver by adding silver nitrate to some silver plated and some pure silver bits & pieces...after 4 hrs they melted..most of the silver plated ones had copper under. so I added some distilled water and left the copper in there cause thats what needed any way for the silver crystals to form..I kept them there for about 27 hrs...there was white cloudly formation at the bottom..but its looks so soft dont know if it can be collected or filtered..if i shake it it spreads ..but will settle again at the bottom...

maybe i did something wrong...any advice will be appreciated 
thanks all


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## Shark (Jul 6, 2014)

It seems your lacking some understanding of what you have achieved so far. One last bit of advice in short hand.
Book page 74.

You most likely would be better off to read more first before adding valuable metals to acid. I have first hand knowledge of the meaning "jumping before you look", thankfully I got out of that stage long before attempting any refining.


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## rfran7788 (Jul 6, 2014)

Shark said:


> It seems your lacking some understanding of what you have achieved so far. One last bit of advice in short hand.
> Book page 74.
> 
> You most likely would be better off to read more first before adding valuable metals to acid. I have first hand knowledge of the meaning "jumping before you look", thankfully I got out of that stage long before attempting any refining.



shark u can learn to fly a plane... by reading all the manuals ..but eventually you will have to sit in the cockpit.


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## butcher (Jul 7, 2014)

Take off wasnt so bad.

Now I am just wondering how to land this air plane, before it runs out of gas, any HELP! would be appreciated.

I do not want to hear I should have learned to fly first, or should have read the manuals, before trying this solo flight.
I just want to know how to get my feet back on the ground without hurting myself.


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## rfran7788 (Jul 7, 2014)

butcher said:


> Take off wasnt so bad.
> 
> Now I am just wondering how to land this air plane, before it runs out of gas, any HELP! would be appreciated.
> 
> ...




exactly!!


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## butcher (Jul 7, 2014)

rfran7788,
Is this what they call flying solo?
I always thought you were supposed to study learn before trying to fly solo, spending time on the ground, and working to learn to fly, before jumping in and taking off. Especially when dealing with such a dangerous process.
When you ask those who have the ability to help you learn to fly, it may be a good idea to listen to those flying instructors, if they say you should spend some time studying, the basics, and the safety, before your first solo flight, maybe they are trying to help you learn to fly, maybe doing so will help before going solo with no clue of what to do after you take off.
Learning to fly by making many crash landings, not only is dangerous but also stupid, not a very good way to learn to learn to fly in my opinion.
At least learn how the plane works, and how to fly it safely, before taking off.

Now that you are up in the air with no place to land, maybe it is time to begin learning how this plan works, you surely do not want to touch the wrong buttons, that could cause you to come crashing to the ground.

Begin with the safety section, and dealing with waste.
As you had already created some very deadly gases you should have been aware of, and a toxic solution and waste you will need to deal with properly. 

As far as the silver, your solution, and the results do not look like what I would expect, with silver dissolved in nitric acid, and cemented, with copper.
You do have the blue solution I would expect, you do have some unwanted bits of metal copper (undissolved), and the powders color makes me suspect you also may have chlorides involved, in that toxic solution.

rfran7788,
We would like to help you learn this, but before we can, you will have to be willing to learn, you cannot do that by not doing the needed work, if you do not study we cannot teach you how to fly, with a few questions, and answers, you have to also do the required work to help yourself to learn to fly.
You will need to do some study, to learn the basics of flying, flying can be dangerous, studying safety is a good place to begin.

It is time to begin study, learn to test for silver in solution, and how to deal with waste, Hokes book, and the safety section will help with that study.


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## Shark (Jul 7, 2014)

Take a look at your first picture. Job one is safety, there fore the first problem is located in the picture. first step to fixing the problem; Take the stuff outside, or get a fume hood. Excitement can be a powerful thing to overcome, by reading continuously, even when you think you know, it will help to beat the rush of excitement. Relax, take a deep breath, and slow down just a bit. I work by a saying, "Slow down, we don't have time to do it twice". Explanation: Get it right the first time, (then we can move on to another job). 

Second I will let you tell us what you read and how you understand it:
"I tested some sliver by adding silver nitrate to some silver plated and some pure silver bits & pieces..."

Another example of my case in beginning to refine. This isn't over simplified, just the way I did it. I read and studied about cold nitric, ask butcher about a safe way to make nitric, then studied the cold nitric posts some more, then back to butcher's advice. I bet I read back and forth 50 times. From the time I ask about it until I made the stuff took me 4 months. I had to learn about each chemical, then I had to learn about what happens and what was formed by adding the first two chemicals together. From there I needed to know what problems arise from the heating process. Then I needed to know what happens when a third chemical is added to the first, and the effects of heating those mixed chemicals. Then I needed to learn what happens when it was cooled because left over chemicals are formed and needed to be dealt with. I also had to push myself to not rush it from the excitement of my new knowledge. And then, with my nitric "in hand", I took another three days to decide to put my silver in it, I needed to be sure I wasn't just throwing silver into some mixed up mess. So for my first try, I made a small test in a shot glass and added .5 grams of sterling jewelry. It worked. All those months of "baby steps" payed off for me. Even now, when I make nitric, I am quite cautious, I hope I stay that way for my safety. At my level of experience I am not out to refine silver in a large way, I just wanted to try it and to turn the little silver I have into a cleaner metal for future inquartation of karat gold. It took me those four months to learn something that I really could have gotten by with out at this stage, but I had to know just for the sake of learning. Learning the right way, combined with a cautious approach will aid you much in asking for help in such a way that can be understood and help to keep you safe as well.

I really hope you succeed, but learning is as big a part of refining, maybe the biggest part, even a bigger of it part than doing. Let us know if you find the answer to the second mistake I post about for you.


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## Harold_V (Jul 7, 2014)

rfran7788 said:


> shark u can learn to fly a plane...


The use of text jargon is not well received on this board. Refrain from doing so, as the price you'll pay if you persist will be to be banned. Consider this as your* one *fair warning. Also, understand that I have a deep hatred for those who are too damned lazy to spell it out. I give my posts my full attention, spending valuable time in trying to help others. In doing so, I expect that I have earned the respect of readers. I'll accept nothing less in return. 

Are you reading Hoke's book? If not, why not?

Harold


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## Harold_V (Jul 7, 2014)

rfran7788 said:


> I tested some sliver by adding silver nitrate to some silver plated and some pure silver bits & pieces...after 4 hrs they melted.


They didn't **melt**----that's a function of heating. What they did was *****dissolve*****. 

Please use proper terminology when you post----do not make misleading statements. I don't want this board to become one known as being misleading. 

Remember---some people who read posts here don't have a clue, so they may not be able to differentiate what is, from what is not. 

Harold


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