# Silver removing from copper.



## Elektrikis (Jun 19, 2018)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udTfxnh90Os

Solution is concentrated sulfuric acid and 65% nitric acid. In various mixtures. 4:1 and 20:1

After silver stripping. Copper items need place in stainless plastic mesh and spray with cold water. To eliminate silver cementing on copper.Silver precipitate like silver chloride and use sodium chloride.


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## everything (Nov 21, 2020)

I like collecting silver so for fun I was able to collect some fine industrial wire that is electroplated and I have just under 10 oz. of silver connected to fine pieces of copper wire. I found a video on it, and the yield is 2% so plenty of copper wire to deal with, and it's such fine pieces of wire. It seems cost-prohibitive to just go after silver like this. What happens to such fine pieces of copper wire when they get the nitric acid? I'd have to dissolve this stuff to separate it to start with?

Can people just melt this stuff down with a larger crucible, make a big block of it now, and deal with separating it all later?

This is assuming I could ever go through the process of getting the wire out it's sheathing which I'll never get around to doing. This is a good lesson in the difficulty of refining base metals. I enjoy scrapping copper, it's kind of a side hobby, I live in a city so I find it everywhere. I even became lazy and walked away from some nic easy to make bare stuff the other day. I can work a torch for taking metal apart, bending or breaking lose and rig pieces of metal together, I can wire a muffler up pretty fast!, but am far from metal master of anything.

Metal from a commodity standpoint is good to get to know as well, Alcoa stock went from 6 dollars to 18 dollar s a share this year, guessing aluminum prices went up, yeah well I hate recycling aluminum, they never give you anything for it.


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## kjavanb123 (Nov 21, 2020)

Hi
I have used the following formula with great results. 

1000ml concentrate sulfuric acid 
20ml nitric acid 

Temp 60-70c

It dissolves silver and leave copper


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## Martijn (Nov 21, 2020)

Hi. To get the wire out of its sheeting, just cut the end along the wire on a flat surface with a knife, just enough to get the sheeting and the wire apart. You can then probably just pull them apart. 
You could try electro deplating with plain tap water to get the silver off. Filter the water and melt the silver. It's been discussed here on the forum.

Or melt it in with your copper anodes and run it through a electrolytic copper sulfate cell. The latter method is often used to get precious metals out of copper. 
Using it for silver plating may be too coslty and too much work if you don't have a copper cell already running. 

Martijn.


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## niks neims (Nov 22, 2020)

kjavanb123 said:


> Hi
> I have used the following formula with great results.
> 
> 1000ml concentrate sulfuric acid
> ...




To get the silver out, do you convert it to silver chloride, since you can't cement it on copper anymore?


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## kjavanb123 (Nov 23, 2020)

niks neims said:


> kjavanb123 said:
> 
> 
> > Hi
> ...



Yes you add hcl or salty water to sulfuric solution it forms silver chloride


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## Martijn (Nov 23, 2020)

How do you get the silver chloride out of the concentrated acid? Filtering is not an option, i guess? Dilute the sulphuric? 
Martijn.


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## kjavanb123 (Nov 23, 2020)

Sorry forgot to add once sulfuric solution is cool pour it to water to make it dilute.


Then filter and drop the goodies.


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