# material containing 36%ag



## arthur kierski (Mar 6, 2011)

i have 20kilos of a material containing 36%ag------i made a test with 100grams(assay) of the material-------could i use ar to dissolve the material leaving silver chloride as white powder? doing this i would safe many liters of nitric-----if i do the process with nitric alone , i would have to use 70liters of nitric-----by using ar4:1 i would need only 20 liters of hno3 and 80 liters of hcl


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## goldsilverpro (Mar 6, 2011)

I would think that, when using AR, the AgCl crust immediately formed on the surface would quickly block the penetration of the acid and you would have very incomplete conversion of Ag to AgCl and incomplete dissolving of the other metals.


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## arthur kierski (Mar 6, 2011)

thanks gsp for the quick reply----that is the reason that i decided to ask the question--
i will do the recuperation with nitric acid(not very expensive here--2,5dollars per liter)


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## rusty (Mar 6, 2011)

arthur make shot from your gold/silver alloy then use a tumbling barrel with your AR, this way the AgCl crust is constantly scrubbed from the shot while being digested.

Regards
Rusty


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## Juan Manuel Arcos Frank (Mar 6, 2011)

Arthur:

I agree with GSP,AR forms AgCl if silver is present,so the reaction stops because AR does not dissolve AgCl.

Look,What kind of material is the rest?,copper?,gold?,nickel?,stainless steel?....If you want to save nitric acid then you have to use electrolytic dissolution...it works nice.

For your 20 kilos of material you will use 3 liters of nitric.Take a look to the post "Manuel needs your help"...

Keep us posted about your progress.

I send you a big hug.

Deus te abençoe

Manuel


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## arthur kierski (Mar 6, 2011)

Manuel,the rest of the material is copper----they are round tiny rings(silvered coloured)----hundreds of rings in a kilo


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## arthur kierski (Mar 6, 2011)

Rusty,it is copper plated rings with silver(i think)


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## skippy (Mar 6, 2011)

Could you maybe melt the rings together with some extra copper and then electrolytically part the silver? 
If you've got a melting furnace and if the copper part of the ring is pure, it should be workable.


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## Goldfinger4 (Mar 6, 2011)

Always compare you method with the possibility of selling your silver and buy fine silver bars 
And dissolving that much silver in nitric acid will produce a big toxic brown cloud..
AR will not work. A cheaper way is using sulfuric acid and throw nitrate salts (e.g. potassium nitrate) into it .That produces nitric acid and both ingredients are much cheaper than pure nitric acid.


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## goldsilverpro (Mar 6, 2011)

I doubt if you could electrolytically part copper from a 36Ag/64Cu alloy. Silver sulfate is not very soluble and I think it would soon form a crust on the material.

I come up with about 60 liters of nitric (120 liters of 50/50) needed - 8.75L for the Ag and 51.8L for the copper. I would probably do it a kilo per batch in plastic buckets and just dissolve it in a proper (just what's needed) 50 nitric/50 distilled water soln. - no heat - it will get hot from the reaction. I would cover it with distilled water and then feed the nitric in increments - letting the reaction die down a bit before adding more. When you get no reaction from an addition, stop adding. I would then use copper to cement the silver.


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## skippy (Mar 6, 2011)

GSP, I was thinking Arthur could add extra copper to get around that, get it down to say 20% and hopefully the silver wouldn't interfere with the electrolytic process.

It would save a lot of nitric, on the other hand with silver prices being what they are, paying a couple hundred dollars for the nitric acid isn't so bad.


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## arthur kierski (Mar 6, 2011)

thanks all, i will do the gsp way ----i did this before (gsps sugestion)and it worked well-----batches of 1kilo material----when i did these i precipitates the silver as agcl with nacl----the only diference is that i will precipitate it with copper


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