# HCL Rinse of Silver Cement



## metatp (Jun 22, 2009)

Hi again. The silver refining is going great (other than dropping the silver cement once). I have about 50 oz of silver that I cemented out so far. I want to wash it in some HCL, but have one question. How do I know when I rinsed all the HCL with DI water. Rinsing the silver cement was easy. I rinsed until the filtration was clear.

Again thanks,
Tom


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## Lou (Jun 22, 2009)

No real reason to rinse with HCl unless you suspect iron or nickel contamination.

If you want to check for chlorides in the DI water wash, dissolve up a small bit of the silver in nitric acid. If it all dissolves and leaves no precipitate, then it is chloride-free. Do not be surprised if you're silver still has chlorides in it, it is very difficult to rinse out chlorides once present; the only guaranteed way is to add ammonia water and then heat.


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## metatp (Jun 22, 2009)

Lou thanks again. 

I have no concerns about nickel or iron. My only concern would be with leftover tin. I did wash the silver in HCL prior to dissolving in nitric acid. There was also some material that did not fully burn off while incineration. I am afraid that all of the tin was not wash off in the HCL, but trap in the mixture. 

The dissolving in nitric acid seemed to go well. The non-silver residue did fall out and sink to the bottom. There was some fine black that looked like carbon that eventually fell to the bottom as well, but that's it.

It seems that a final was in HCL may me worse than doing nothing at this point. 

Tom


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