# does this really work?



## gbaldwin75 (Jan 12, 2008)

i found these instructions on the shor website:

How to REFINE SILVER using baking soda, Karo pancake syrup, table salt, Red Devil drain cleaner and water: First dissolve your silver in nitric acid. You can do this in a plastic bucket but be sure to wear protective clothing like rubber gloves and to do it out of doors. When the silver is all dissolved, pour the acid into another plastic bucket. Be sure not to pour any particles along with the acid. Add ordinary table salt to the acid until the salt stops making white clumps in the acid. Pour off the acid. Add baking soda to the acid to neutralize it. Do not pour off the white "precipitate" that the salt formed. This is pure silver chloride. Rinse the silver chloride with water. To the silver chloride add Red Devil brand drain cleaner (lye) until all the silver chloride has turned black. Rinse with water. Add Karo syrup (dextrose) until all the black material (silver oxide) turns to pure silver

how acurate is this just out of curiosity?


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## Absolutsecurity (Jan 12, 2008)

http://www.goldrecovery.us/

I used his way and pulled 2 pounds of silver the safer way and I have another pound getting ready to pull.

You react your silver with nitric and then covert the silver nitrate with a piece of copper (i used bare copper wire) the silver nitrate turns into silver and the copper replaces that silver nitrate with copper nitrate in the acid solution - BINGO - no toxic silver chloride to deal with and less steps RIGHT!
:twisted: :twisted: 
G


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## Absolutsecurity (Jan 12, 2008)

NICE SILVER - this is the first batch 2 ounces of pure silver using Steve's method - The next batch I did was a 6 pound batch of scrap and I got over 2 pounds of silver! :wink: :wink: 

G


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## gbaldwin75 (Jan 12, 2008)

Thanx, i think this forum has been a great asset to refiners everywhere


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## Absolutsecurity (Jan 12, 2008)

I was tossing a lot of silver before I saw this forum and got intorduced to Steve's web site - today I am dropping another pound or two of silver so that I can get to the gold layer underneath!

Welcome aboard - stick around - I AM!!!!

G


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## ramalyus (Jan 17, 2008)

The method that you have described is the best method and the least polluting, I have used it to reduce thousands of kilos of silver chloride to silver .It is not more expensive because you en up with less toxic waste. The method of copper replacement is amaturish and does not recover all the silver, apart from the fact that you end up with lots of copper bearing solutions that you cannot and should not dump.


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## Absolutsecurity (Jan 17, 2008)

Your post dosent make sense - I can reclaim my copper and end up with a safe heavy metal free waste that can be safely dumped - whereas I choose not to deal with silver chloride because it is not as safe a method as cementing the silver out with copper - none of my metals are dumped and they are all used over and over again with slightly deminisioning losses.

I feel more comfortable with this method - Maybe some of the others on this forum would like to chime in and say their favorite method for silver recovery and why they know it to be safe and sane?

G


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## Noxx (Jan 17, 2008)

x2 for favorite method !


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## mwren (Jan 30, 2008)

Jus so I understand the chemistry and the process and please correct me if I am wrong.

So you start with nitric acid, then you add the silver (sterling or coin) wait for it to disolve, then you add copper to cement out the silver, and you then decant the solution winding up with copper bearing solution in one beaker and fine silver (.999)in another. 

So how do you get the copper out of the leftover solution?


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## Harold_V (Jan 30, 2008)

ramalyus said:


> The method of copper replacement is amaturish and does not recover all the silver, apart from the fact that you end up with lots of copper bearing solutions that you cannot and should not dump.



That is total nonsense. Recovering silver with copper is a well accepted and broadly used method. Working with silver chloride is far more labor intensive and has the potential to yield silver that is no better in quality than that recovered by copper. Typically, both of them should be subjected to electrolytic parting if purity is a requirement. 

For the record, one achieves a TOTAL recovery of silver with copper------there is no reason why it shouldn't. 

As far as disposing of the copper nitrate solution, all that is required to remove the copper is to subject the solution to scrap steel, which will remove it entirely, assuming it is left in contact long enough. Total extraction can usually be accomplished in less than 24 hours, and it requires no attention aside from transferring solutions. 

The only real negative of this process is that the recovered copper has no ready market. It costs more to melt than its worth when done on a small scale. 

Harold


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## peter i (Jan 30, 2008)

I can only agree with Harold.
I've been a chloride-guy for the last ten years, but after reading about cementation with copper, my faith is shaking, and I’ll probably convert.

Just to test it, I made the following little experiment:

5 grams of AgNO3 was dissolved in 50 mL of distilled water in a pyrex beaker. 
4 cm^2 of clean copper sheet was suspended in the solution, and small shiny crystals started growing almost immediately. The crystals seemed to be cubic at first, changing to needles as the reaction progressed.
After 1 hour, I tested the solution (now nice and blue from copper ions) with 4M hydrochloric acid. There was no precipitation (any silver ions would precipitate as silver chloride) only a very slight “milkyness”. This means that the silver ion concentration was almost at the threshold of detection, something like 10^-4 M (aka nothing to worry about).

Nice method, faster reaction than reducing with Zn or Al, no bulky silver chloride to wash free of copper and a nice crystalline precipitate that was a pleasure to decant and wash with boiling water.



But shame on you, for disturbing my conviction! :wink: 

Next I’ll try some silverware or coins, and then some scrap that’s heavily contaminated with gold.


*Some questions:*
What purity can be expected from the silver in this method?
How should the powder be washed? (I used only boiling water this time, but would hydrochloric acid or ammonia be an idea for washing?)
How about removing other contaminants like tin and lead? Tin should drop as stannic oxide in the nitric acid, and lead should not be reduced by copper, but that’s in theory… How about in the real world.


Oh bugger! I’ll have to build a parting cell too! Now see what you did!


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## Lou (Jan 30, 2008)

Yes, I think I will do it too! This redox is very nice, and definitely efficient. 
The copper nitrate solution can be reduced electrolytically, cemented to copper with zinc, or boiled down to copper (II) nitrate and crystallized out and sold on ebay as a lab chemical. It can even be heated to make copper oxide, which has use for pottery (and makes for an interesting albeit dangerous thermite). I bet one could make money on the copper nitrate and oxide...probably several times over spot price per pound of copper contained in the salt.


With regards to washing the powder...for me that seems a question of "what material did this silver come from, what other constituents were in this alloy?"
For example, if I knew or suspected that the silver I processed came from an alloy that may have had lead in it, I would dissolve the precipitate in ammonia, which would leave behind any lead chloride. 

So if you suspect your silver alloy that you are refining was just silver and copper (sterling or a coin alloy), the a hot water rinse will remove soluble copper nitrate. Only problem I can see is pockets of copper nitrate solution potentially being encapsulated by silver as it deposits out. I imagine that the silver produced in this process would probably be 99.9% pure. If you want it absolutely free of copper and other metals (save PGMs and gold) one should melt the silver nitrate--any copper, lead, zinc, iron nitrates will decompose to their oxides well before silver decomposes at 470 or so Centigrade.

Peter, what tin does with nitric acid depends on what the concentration of the nitric is...


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