# Coffee filters recovery



## ray0266 (Dec 30, 2011)

Hello Everyone;

This is my first post here after reading numerous posts and learning as much as I can. 
I do have one question though. Does anyone have any experience recovering silver from coffee filters with Silver Chloride residue on them? I have been refining for a while and have plenty of these coffee filters that I'd like to recover the silver from. 

Thanks,

Ray


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## MysticColby (Dec 30, 2011)

Hi and welcome!
I'm not too experienced, but I have read what others have said on this topic, and I believe I can tell you what they would say:
do not let the silver chloride dry out. KEEP IT WET.

If they are wet filters, you should be able to rinse the silver chloride into a beaker with a spray or squirt bottle.
If not, you might have some luck leaving it on the filter, immersing in water, and converting to silver. (when silver chloride dries, it gets irrevocably rock hard - it will probably never come off of filter. it'll also be much harder to do further reactions).
An idea I had: If they are dry, it might be possible to put the filters in a stainless pot, set on fire (don't melt, just burn away the filters), dissolve the remains in water, convert to silver (someone else should confirm this is an option before you do it)

Ways to go from silver chloride to silver:

1) what I do: add sodium hydroxide (about 1 g for every 2 g of silver chloride - you will need excess sodium hydroxide in solution). this will give you silver oxide (AgCl + NaOH -> NaCl + AgOH -> Ag2O). add sodium carbonate (about 1 g per g silver oxide), gently heat to evaporate water. Scrape off powder into crucible, cover with borax, heat to melted. (Ag2O + heat -> Ag + O2)

2) add sodium hydroxide (about 1 g for every 2 g of silver chloride - you will need excess sodium hydroxide in solution). this will give you silver oxide (AgCl + NaOH -> NaCl + AgOH -> Ag2O). add corn syrup and heat to boil (maybe 1 ml per g sodium hydroxide added?)

3) I've read this is not recommended: add sodium carbonate (about 3 g per g silver oxide), mix heavily, add to crucible, cover with borax, heat to melted

4) another option involves iron... I'm not too sure of the details, but I have heard of it and wasn't too interested


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## Geo (Dec 30, 2011)

if i remember correctly you can incinerate and melt adding borax and sodium carbonate and that will reduce the silver chloride to elemental silver.


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## kadriver (Jan 2, 2012)

MysticColby said:


> 4) another option involves iron... I'm not too sure of the details, but I have heard of it and wasn't too interested



lazersteve has a video on his web site: www.goldrecovery.us

The video is free and it shows how to use sulfuric acid (available from Ace Hardware as drain cleaner) and scrape iron (from an old desk top computer) to convert silver chloride to elemental silver metal.

It is quite simple, as per the video, you just add some dilute (about 30%) sulfuric acid to your cleaned wet silver chloride.

Then, you stir the silver chloride and sulfuric acid mixture with a piece of scrap iron metal.

The iron metal goes into solution (making ferrous sulfate) and the silver comes out of solution as nearly pure silver metal!

The process seems much slower than the lye and sugar method, but facinating non-the-less.

The video on Steve's web site shows how to do it step by step.

kadriver


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## ray0266 (Jan 12, 2012)

Thanks everyone for your help. Now I know what to do.

Ray


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## philddreamer (Jan 12, 2012)

Hi Ray!

I hope you are well aware of the dangers of nitric fumes!

Take care & be safe!

Phil


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