# Suggestions for deplating spool of silver plated wire



## chemguy (Nov 23, 2012)

Hello Everyone

I am required to recover silver from a spool of silver plated wire in large quantities. I believe the wire is silver over copper/Brass. I've dissolved some of it in nitric acid but ended up in vain dissolving silver along with the base metal. Moreover nitric acid did not dissolve the spool of wire completely. It finally ended up in a incomplete process with small bits of base metal undissolved. As nitric acid dissolves both silver and copper and the silver content being extremely low as compared to copper in the solution thus prepared. I was not able to cement out silver using copper. 

I have read the posts for suggestion for deplating gold plated wire. But the solution provided in it to use nitric acid doesn't work out in my case and i also expect shielding because of the wires being closely spaced and touching each other. 

Can anyone suggest me whether i should go with Sulfuric stripping cell or should i fuse the entire thing and separate it via copper sulfate cell. 

Any suggestion/help will be greatly appreciated

Regards


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## goldenchild (Nov 23, 2012)

Just wondering why you are required to remove the silver from the wire. Trying to recover silver plating for the most part is worthless. The cost in trying to do so negates the value of silver. Usually by a large margin. The wire is probably worth more in its intended form than silver and copper.


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## chemguy (Nov 23, 2012)

Thank you for your reply.
But the wire is in the form of a spool and i cannot use it for any other purpose. It is sold as a scrap and i wish to extract silver from it and sell the copper too.


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## chemguy (Nov 23, 2012)

Moreover silver plating varies from 0.5% to 1%. 
Acids are not costly at our place. They cost approximately 0.5-1 USD per liter


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## goldenchild (Nov 23, 2012)

I see. Maybe put it on Ebay and see if anyone else can use it in its current state. You may even end up making more money there then you would retail. But again, as far as recovering it I would be surprised if anyone could help you in a way that you would make a profit. Even the smallest one. Everything you need is here on the forum. If you can't find something it's usually for a reason...


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## chemguy (Nov 23, 2012)

The material i have is a waste from the wire drawing process and it is completely entangled.
So neither i can draw a wire from it nor i can make into a useful spool.


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## chemguy (Nov 23, 2012)

If i can extract silver from it. I can make a good fortune. As i can get about 300-400 kgs of such scrap daily.
Moreover there is 1 industry doing it near our vicinity.


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## nickvc (Nov 23, 2012)

Well if you can get big volumes I would suggest setting up a copper cell if the silver is of a low percentage,it has to be below 5% silver or the cell won't work well, and the silver will be recovered as slimes from the anode bags. The advantage is that the copper should also be saleable as it should be fine if you operate the cell correctly. There is loads of information on copper refining its one of the oldest and best known technologies around just google it.


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## chemguy (Nov 24, 2012)

This is how the material will look like or it can be even more compact. 
There is an industry over here which process it into ingots and then it extracts the metals from it.
I suppose they use the copper sulfate cell.
According to me electrolysis is the best way out. But with a somewhat different composition of electrolyte or difference in the shape of the anodic material.
As it is in the wire form it is going to have high surface area. Can anyone suggest me what will be its effect in the process in terms of current density or electric field that will be set up.


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## nickvc (Nov 24, 2012)

Only my opinion but it needs melting into anodes and bagging to collect the slimes so big crucibles will be needed and the necessary safety gear to protect you in case of spillages or splashes of molten metals, good lifting tongs are a must. The cell is very widely discussed on the internet and in books so setting it up should be easy enough as should running and maintaining it.


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## chemguy (Nov 26, 2012)

is it possible for me to use the sulfuric stripping cell if i change the form of by raw material by shredding it?


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## butcher (Nov 26, 2012)

If using the concentrated H2SO4 stripping cell (5% HNO3), I would leave the wire as it is, the silver should strip from the copper. You will need good contact with the anode connection, and it may help to put the silver bundle of wire in a square box smashing the ball into a loose entangled bundle of square flat anode wire, clip one end to the anode connector and strip half the bundle, flip it over to strip the other half, Have not tried it but I cannot see why it would not work, I also believe silver would begin to accumulate after a while in the cell, (it may form silver sulfate and some silver remain in electrolyte), stripping the silver I think would be the easy part, and recovering the silver probably would not be that bad, but getting it converted back to silver metal may be a lot more difficult to deal with later to get back it converted to silver. 

The wire looks to be thin and has a lot of surface area; I think for this material I would just use nitric acid (even if I had to distill a batch of home made nitric from sulfuric acid and fertilizer).

Another option I would just save the wire and use it next time I wanted to cement silver from a batch of silver nitrate solution, or use it for a collector in a melt.


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## chemguy (Nov 26, 2012)

I tried with nitric acid, but as the silver content was too less, even after dissolving the entire quantity silver did not cement out properly when i used copper for cementing. Still i will give it a try again. 
On this forum i read that there will be wire shielding effect and i will not be able to extract silver from the portion where the two wires are touching each other. So according to you will there be no trouble if i used the sulfuric acid cell.
I am going to take its trial in a day or two.


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## chemguy (Nov 26, 2012)

GOLDSILVERPRO
can you please help me out.


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## nickvc (Nov 26, 2012)

In the quantities your looking at 1.5-2 tons a week I really don't think a sulphuric cell will cope with the volume. The big refiners I'm pretty sure would pass this material onto a copper refiner for recovery especially if it's low grade as it would fit into their production very easily, the problem been would be the payment time as its usually 3 months plus for settlement if I remember correctly. The only choice for you in my opinion if you want a faster turnround is to run your own copper cells but your going to have to calculate the size your going to need to cope with the volume or to broker the material through a copper refiner, the latter may well be the better option as the set up costs for the cells would be considerable. Silver recovery is not cheap or easy and despite the rise in prices it's not cost effective unless it's high grade and I don't believe there is an easy option on this material, if you dissolve it in nitric the acid costs and volumes of solution would be large and disposal would be a big problem as would fume control, if you use a sulphuric cell or probably multiple cells the acid is very dangerous especially if hot and I'm not to sure how much the solution will hold and I'm fairly sure it will not strip all the silver without taking some copper into solution decreasing the amount of silver it can hold, I'm sure someone will correct this statement if I'm wrong. 
GSP may be able to give you some insights into possible ways to recover this material as he has processed many tons of silver bearing scrap but in honesty I can't see a simple cheap method to handle this much material continuously.


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## goldsilverpro (Nov 26, 2012)

*Electrolytic Stripping*

I don't think that any electrolytic stripper will work on a mass of wire because I don't think that the current will "throw" into the center of that mass. In my experience, it will only strip the wire on the outside surface of the mass. 

If you did shred it (good idea, by the way), you would need (in my estimation) to tumble it in the stripper in a barrel plating machine. They make polypropylene barrel platers with "herringbone" panels that would prevent the small pieces of wire from falling out. Here's one for sale on eBay. It doesn't say what it's made of or whether herringbone panels are used or not. It also doesn't say what type of contacts are in the barrel. There are 3 types of contacts available - center bar, button contacts, or danglers. In sulfuric, they would have to be made of lead or some harder lead alloy. All might work, but I would probably use danglers or buttons. I'm not saying to buy this one - I only wanted to show you what they looked like. When new, they're much higher priced. I used a Poly pro one in the sulfuric stripper. The plastic surface did degrade over time (became powdery) but I still was able to use it for several years
http://www.ebay.com/itm/SINGLETON-BARREL-PLATER-/271019362918?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3f1a034a66

If you did shred it and used a barrel plater, I would consider using an electrolytic cyanide solution instead of the sulfuric stripper. It would contain about 50g/l sodium cyanide and about 150g/l of sodium hydroxide and run at room temperature at about 4 volts - you'd have to experiment with the voltage and/or current density, though, for best results. The barrel construction is not as critical with the cyanide solution and it's much easier to get the silver out then with the strong sulfuric stripper. The high sodium hydroxide prevents attack on the copper and the silver plates out on 2 (one on each side of the barrel) fairly large 300 series stainless sheet cathodes about 3mm thick. The solution can be used over and over by periodically analyzing the cyanide and the hydroxide and making needed additions. I really haven't worked with this much. I proved it in beakers in the lab. We then set up a 50 gallon solution of it but we didn't have a barrel plater. We just put a bunch of silver plated flatware in a steel basket. It worked, but only on the outside of the mass. The stuff in the middle wasn't touched. A tumbling barrel plater would solve this problem.

A note on the "herringbone" plastic barrel panel. The plastic is quite thick. On one side of the panel, they drill angled holes half way through. They repeat this on the other side and the drilled holes meet in the middle of the plastic. The result is that the holes are v-shaped (like this > but with a much less severe angle). Therefore, small wires won't fall through the holes.

A note on "dangler" contacts. These are 2 flexible insulated cables with a heavy metal slug mounted on the ends. They enter the barrel from holes in the ends of the barrel. When the barrel turns, they flop around and make electrical contact to whatever is in the barrel.

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*Immersion Stripping *

It would be nice to use a solution the would strip the silver by simple immersion. That would allow you to retain all of the copper in a simple manner. From the figures you gave, from 0.5-1% silver, the copper is worth about the same as the silver.

I don't know how this would work but I did find a very interesting 2007 patent application for an immersion stripper. See the attachment. (Note: the rolled gold one is also interesting because they melt rollled gold or, gold-filled, and run it through a copper cell). It uses sodium persulfate as an oxidizer, sodium hydroxide to raise the pH, and ammonia to complex the silver. The problem I see with this is that, under normal circumstances, when you combine an ammoniacal silver solution with NaOH, you can create an explosive compound. Maybe the persulfate eliminates this possibility but I'm not enough of a chemist to know. It would be appreciated if one of the chemists would answer this question. If it's safe, it could be an answer for a lot of people on the forum. To precipitate the silver as AgCl, I would think one could simply acidify with HCl.

You might be able to use the common 95/5, H2SO4/HNO3, by volume, to strip the silver. If you think about it, it is similar to the electrolytic sulfuric stripper, except it uses the nitric as an oxidizer instead of providing oxidation from an anode. It is dangerous, especially when hot, but, since the silver is thin, it might work well at room temperature. As it slows down, you can add a little more nitric. When it is saturated, you could dilute it and drop out the silver as AgCl. Read this thread, especially the posts by henos. He runs it hot (80C+) and then lets it cool. Most of the silver crystallizes out as silver sulfate. He separates out the crystals and then reuses the solution, with some nitric additions, I assume. A good thing about running it hot is that no moisture from the air would be absorbed and dilute the solution, as would happen at room temperature. A problem with running it hot is, what sort of vessel do you heat it in? In the old days, they used white, fine grained cast iron, I believe. Heavy stainless might work but I'm not so sure about that. Titanium might work. Glass would work but you would be severely limited as to size, in order to keep things safe. 
http://www.goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=16166&hilit=sulfuric+nitric+silver

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*Copper Cell* 

First of all, it was indicated that some of the wire might be brass. If the wire is used for electrical purposes, I can't see how this is possible due to the reduced electrical conductivity of brass as compared to pure copper. If there is brass, this could cause cathode deposition problems due to the zinc. I did find a patent and and article that seemed to somewhat solve the zinc problem. See attachments (note that the rolled gold one is also interesting for melting gold-filled and running it through a copper cell). In general, since the copper preferentially plates out first, before the zinc, the copper content must be analyzed and kept at a high level in order to prevent the zinc from co-depositing. Also, the zinc content in the solution must be controlled

Small copper wire is notoriously difficult to melt due to the formation of copper oxides on its large surface area. However, since this wire is coated with silver, this problem would seemingly be reduced. Most references I found packed the wire into the crucible and some first compacted the wire into blocks. One shredded the wire first into small pieces so it would better fill the voids. In all cases, they covered the copper with about an inch layer of charcoal chunks. This reduced any copper oxides that formed.

To avoid melting, I thought about packing the wire tightly into bagged titanium anode baskets. An alternative would be to somehow compress the wire into small blocks that would slip into the baskets. This would only work if the silver were thin enough so than the acid would penetrate through the porosity. I think this is worth a try. First, ball some up any try it in a beaker to see in the solution will penetrate and dissolve the copper.
http://www.ebay.com/sch/?_nkw=titanium%20anode%20baskets&clk_rvr_id=416134127402

I just thought of this, but, with shredded wire, a barrel plater might work in the copper cell. Here again, though, the solution would have to be able to get to the copper through the porosity in the silver. I would probably get a barrel with button contacts or danglers and they would probably have to be made of hardened lead to prevent being dissolved or cut up.

Here are some threads on the copper sulfate/sulfuric cell. If you do go this route, I would suggest setting up to analyze the solution constituents so they can be adjusted when needed.
http://www.goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=5396&p=46132&hilit=anaconda#p46132
http://www.goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=6652&p=59443&hilit=copper+sulfate+sulfuric+acid+formula#p59443

---------------------------------

Hope this helps. Unless I think of something else, that's about it for ideas. It took more than 3 hours to write this and I'm worn to a frazzle. *Whatever* you do will require experimentation. What you're trying to do isn't easy.


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## chemguy (Nov 27, 2012)

GOLDSILVERPRO
thank you for your valuable suggestion.
I will try out the things and report it over here.


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## chemguy (Nov 27, 2012)

GOLDSILVERPRO
I highly appreciate your effort.
i am highly obliged to you and will not let your effort go in vain. I will do come out with fruitful results.
Cyanide is darn risky but i will give it a try, moreover cyanide is damn expensive, so its recovery will be an important issue. Here we get potassium cyanide.


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## chemguy (Nov 27, 2012)

@GOLDSILVERPRO
do you think with this type of tumbler design using lead bars as interior or baffles and polypropylene cloth. i will be able to reach the center of all the mass with appropriate current.


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## chemguy (Dec 1, 2012)

@ goldsilverpro

If i use the cyanide bath for deplating silver, then how can i extract the dissolved silver from it?
by electrolysis at 5v and 15 amperes using carbon anode and cathode and rotating disc type stainless steel at their center
or should i use zinc turnings/metal for cementing out silver?


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## goldsilverpro (Dec 1, 2012)

chemguy said:


> @ goldsilverpro
> 
> If i use the cyanide bath for deplating silver, then how can i extract the dissolved silver from it?
> by electrolysis at 5v and 15 amperes using carbon anode and cathode and rotating disc type stainless steel at their center
> or should i use zinc turnings/metal for cementing out silver?



It should deposit on the stainless sheet cathodes at the same time it is stripping from the wire.

At one point, I was considering the stripper from the patent. However, it would only work if the wire were open and not compacted. This would require an enormous amount of handling on many batches of wire. Also, a lot of solution would be trapped in the wire and might be difficult to rinse it all out.

The cyanide might work. If the wire were shredded to at least 1/2", it might lay flat enough to increase the bulk density to a point where it wouldn't take too many batches. The tumbler in your drawing wouldn't work. To make this work, I feel you would have to buy a ready made barrel plater with herringbone panels. This would require several rinse tanks. A couple to remove most of the silver cyanide solution and then a couple with bleach to kill any residual cyanide contaminating the copper. The silver could probably be plated out of the first 2 water rinses. 

From the figures you recently gave me (120 micron wire at .3% Ag by weight and 32 micron wire at 1.5%), I calculated the silver to be about 0.2 microns in both cases, or 8 millionths of an inch, thick. That figures out to about $0.0015 per square inch. Therefore, a meter of the 120 micron wire would only be worth about $0.0009 in silver and a meter of the 32 micron wire would be about $0.00024. You would have to run a lot of wire to get a little bit of silver. 

Considering all of this, I've changed my mind and have gone back to square one. I'm now thinking the best, simplest, and most efficient way would be to first bale (compact) the wire, melt into anodes, and use the copper sulfate/sulfuric cell. Most anything else would entail too much bulky handling. This would probably work best with 2 separate cells, one for the copper and one for the brass. The copper cell should run fairly smoothly but the brass cell will require quite a learning curve in order to handle the zinc. Two of the attachments I gave earlier give info on how to work with the zinc.

Please understand that, although I have some experience in most everything I mentioned (except for the patent), I have never processed that fine of low grade wire before and it does present unique problems. Therefore, if I were the one doing it, I would have to do lots of experimentation first. I apologize for being wishy-washy on just how to exactly process the material but, the more info I get, the better I can zero in on a probable solution. However, you are there with the material and I am here with nothing but a photo and a few numbers. Nothing I have said is guaranteed. All I have done is give you all the possibilities I can think of. You'll have to experiment on your own.

In my life, I have run across a number of high volume, low grade items, like this, that are enticing due to the big overall numbers that you see are possible. The big dollar signs crop up in your mind and it's easy to get caught up with this kind of stuff. After spending a lot of time with these (some involved silver plating), I usually concluded that they weren't going to show a profit. This might very well be one of those things. Some people (especially miners) waste years on these things and they won't listen to anyone.


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## chemguy (Dec 3, 2012)

@ goldsilverpro
Sir,
I tried immersion stripping and it worked great. It selectively stripped silver even in compact entangled form at room temperature. After that i rinsed copper and collected the solution.
I am just a bit confused now. Whether to process the solution containing silver H2SO4 and HNO3 by diluting it with water and precipitating Ag using HCl or should i go the electrolysis way. Electrolysis seems promising because in just 1 step i will get the silver in elemental form.
Once again thank you for your help sir.
Regards


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## chemguy (Dec 3, 2012)

@GSP
Sir,
I am going to try the way you suggested in earlier post. 
but if electrowinning is possible can you please suggest me the suitable electrodes and potential difference, ampere values.
Regards


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## chemguy (Dec 12, 2012)

@ GSP
you are absolutely right it is giving unique problems with very fine wires didn't had much problem with coarser wires,
copper wire in the form of small bits stays in the solution along with the silver sulphate formed. so their separation becomes a lot more difficult.
Does immersion stripping strips off copper after silver in any case because my solution turned green (but no nitrous fumes detected).
Now i am thinking of running it in a water bath outside the beaker to absorb the heat emanating out of the exothermic reaction.
will it stop the copper from being attacked ?
Is there any relation between the conc of nitric acid in the solution and the thickness of the metal which it can strip off?
I am thankful to you for your extended help and support, without your support it would not have been possible for me to even reach this stage.
Regards


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## NobleMetalWorks (Dec 12, 2012)

Couldn't a solution of 90 %sulfuric/ 10% nitric strip the silver off? The only cost after the initial acids being mixed would be any additional nitric that was needed to keep the reaction going long enough to strip the silver from the copper. Is that an option?

By the way, if anyway actually does attempt to use this method for the first time, read up prior to doing so. I would hate to suggest something like this and someone try to use it without reading and understanding it, and end up hurting themselves or worse.

Scott


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## chemguy (Dec 12, 2012)

95/5 vol% sulfuric/nitric stripped the silver off but it also attacked copper and dissolved it


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## Geo (Dec 12, 2012)

chemguy said:


> 95/5 vol% sulfuric/nitric stripped the silver off but it also attacked copper and dissolved it



how long did you leave it in the solution? it only takes about a minute or less.


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## goldsilverpro (Dec 12, 2012)

Do you live in a humid area? If so, concentrated sulfuric will soak up water from the air like a sponge. In fact, it is commonly used in the bottom of desiccators to remove moisture from gravimetric analysis samples. The sulfuric wouldn't need much dilution before it started attacking the copper. I think that is what has happened. At first, you said it worked well and, then, it started dissolving copper. Unless you live in a desert, this may not work for you at room temperature. Running it hot (82C) would possibly keep it from absorbing much, or any, water but I would strongly advise against that due to the great inherent dangers of working with hot concentrated sulfuric.

I discussed this with a knowledgeable colleague of mine and he thinks the only way to do this with any success at all is to compact the wire, melt it into anodes, and run it through a copper cell. The more I think about it, the more I agree with him. When we first started this discussion, that was one of the options. I gave you a link that gave the parameters of the cell, as I see them. You say that the brass scrap is kept separate from the copper scrap. I would definitely keep it separated and run 2 different cells. The copper one will probably work fine. The brass one will have its problems due to the zinc. I gave you 2 links or attachments that give hints on dealing with the brass in a cell. Experimentation will be required.

I'm still not at all convinced that, whatever you do, this whole thing can be made profitable. It's low grade and the copper has about the same value as the silver. On the smallest wire, it would take 4.3 km (2.6 miles) of wire to get $1 in silver. If you got 350 kg per day, that would be from 400 to 6000 miles of wire, depending on the diameter. Setting up and running a cell will not be cheap. You'll need a baler (compactor), a fairly large furnace with all the associated equipment, molds, tanks, power supplies, chemicals, etc., etc., etc. There will probably be copper losses in the melting. After collecting the silver anode sludge, it will have to be refined. To get top dollar for the silver, you'll probably have to have a silver cell and everything that goes with it. There would be a fairly lengthy learning curve in doing all of this. And, I assume the wire is not free.


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## chemguy (Dec 13, 2012)

@ Geo 
i didnt kep it for long.
I was immersing it and taking it out in order to check whether the silver is stripped or not. So i didn't kept it for long
@ GSP 
I completely agree with your point as one of the refiner here is doing by that way.
I am going to take a try with the sulfuric cell and i am quite positive about it and i think even if i try immersion stripping i will control using lesser nitric. Lets hope for the post. 
With the quantity i need to process if i go with the copper cell i will need to have a very large setup including compactor, Furnace, cell two types for brass and copper and again the problem with zinc and then anode slime refining. It will become a damn costly affair for me. I have a gut feeling that sulfuric cell should work for me, even if there is a minute impurity of copper in silver (say about 5 to 10%) then we can refine it further, that would be easier with lesser equipment's required. Yup i live in a humid area (it on the banks of a river).


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## chemguy (Dec 13, 2012)

This is what i ended up with after diluting the solution and dropping it out with NaCl


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## chemguy (Dec 13, 2012)

can anyone say what is it?
some bits of copper also dropped from the material which i was processing
the thing is difficult to collect


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## butcher (Dec 13, 2012)

It looks like copper sulfate soution (which could now also contain some copper chloride), and white silver chloride powder.


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## goldsilverpro (Dec 13, 2012)

chemguy said:


> @ Geo
> i didnt kep it for long.
> I was immersing it and taking it out in order to check whether the silver is stripped or not. So i didn't kept it for long
> @ GSP
> ...



When putting the material in and out of the solution to look at it, you have oxidized the copper while it was in the air. You probably noticed it changed color (sort of a flash?) when it hit the air. The copper oxides formed would dissolve much faster than copper metal. Also, the rinse water will build up in weak sulfuric and nitric and can readily dissolve these oxides. I think you'll have very similar problems with the sulfuric cell solution. In essence, the sulfuric stripping cell is nearly the same as the H2SO4/HNO3 stripper. They both are concentrated sulfuric. The main difference is, in one, oxidation is from the anodic activity and, in the other, oxidation comes from nitric acid.

That wire is smaller than (or about the same as) human hair. A bundle of it has tremendous surface area and I think it will be like sponge retaining a lot of any solution you use. Here again, this particular problem would be eliminated with a copper cell. Of course, other problems would occur with a copper cell.

Have you thought about trying to find a buyer for this stuff, so you could make a little profit buying and selling it? I really think you would be money ahead. Processing this stuff and processing it profitably are two different things.


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## chemguy (Dec 14, 2012)

there is already a refiner at our place who already buys this stuff and refines it using copper sulfate cell, 
its a costly affair as one needs to have a pretty large setup.
I have a gut feeling that if i process with some control over temperature and moisture parameters i can extract the silver itself
I will let you know the results after i have processed it.


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## modtheworld44 (Dec 24, 2012)

chemguy said:


> there is already a refiner at our place who already buys this stuff and refines it using copper sulfate cell,
> its a costly affair as one needs to have a pretty large setup.
> I have a gut feeling that if i process with some control over temperature and moisture parameters i can extract the silver itself
> I will let you know the results after i have processed it.



chemguy

This may help solve your problem.
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=16591

If you increase cell size to say 55 gallon drum and increase volts and amps to 24 and 9-15.Then if the wire is stiff ,make 2 and a half foot by 6-8 inch coils.Then make suspension racks for Anode and Cathode and test to see how long it takes to strip off silver on this scale.Then you'll know if its worth it.Oh and you'll need a second 55 gallon drum to pour filtered solution back into.Hope this helps its just a theory.



modtheworld44


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## goldsilverpro (Dec 24, 2012)

modtheworld44 said:


> chemguy said:
> 
> 
> > there is already a refiner at our place who already buys this stuff and refines it using copper sulfate cell,
> ...


I don't think so. This wire is about the size of a human hair and he can get about 600-700 pounds/day. I can't see the current throwing on the inside of a bundle of this wire.


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## modtheworld44 (Dec 24, 2012)

goldsilverpro said:


> modtheworld44 said:
> 
> 
> > chemguy said:
> ...



GSP

I wish I had some of that wire,so I could do it to prove that its better than the other options at this point. Heres my thoughts on why its a win win situation.

!.No big lots of acid Only water.This in its self cuts cost to the point where you can pretty much pay for the cell.
2.If for instance hes getting the wire for 10 cents a pound because its not clean copper wire,That would mean $60-$70 for 600-700 pounds .
3.Say hes only recovering 85-90% of the silver due to the current throwing problem,most scrap yards that I go to give 5-10 cents a pound for this type wire unclean.So he makes half to all his money back just off the unclean wire.
4.With that much weight , I figure he could probably pull no less than 6toz of silver or more.
So if hes able to get the wire for scrap price or less the profits in the bag.
Hope this paints a better picture of my thoughts for why it would work and thanks for your thoughts on my response .



modtheworld44


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## goldsilverpro (Dec 24, 2012)

modtheworld44 said:


> goldsilverpro said:
> 
> 
> > modtheworld44 said:
> ...


(1) I've stuck by you on this water process but, so far, you don't seem to have anything that is truly workable. Your yields on those spoons have not been that good, it seems. It's very slow. There's the matter of that sludge forming on the anode. You have this interesting process that uses water instead of acid and that's about it. If I had a choice of getting twice as much silver with acid than with water, in 1/4 the time, I'd go with the acid every time. It seems to me that you're too much in love with this process. You've got to stand back and look at it objectively. You have to improve it. Until you can strip essentially 100% of the silver in just a few minutes, and recover it, you don't really have a process.

(2) He's paying about $2 per pound for that wire, not $0.10.
(3) He must get nearly 100% of the silver, quickly, to make a profit. With this wire all balled up, with your process, as it now stands, he would be lucky to recover 20% of the silver. If it won't throw into crevices or the bowl of a spoon, it's not going to throw into the center of a bundle of wire. This holds true for any electrolytic stripping process, not just yours.
(4) Depending on the size wire he gets, he must recover from about 35-102 oz.day from 700 pounds.


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## chemguy (Dec 27, 2012)

hello
merry christmas and happy new year in advance to everyone 

When i tried the process using nitric it selectively stripped silver from inside the spool too. 
i hope same should happen when i pass current through it, will report the results soon. 
During the nitric process i made some mistakes which i wanna prevent when i try it with sulfuric cell.

I am thankful to everyone for their valuable help
Regards


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## chemguy (Dec 27, 2012)

@ GSP
I wish to know one thing about sulfuric cell
When i am using sulfuric cell how to retrieve silver from Cathode (lead)?
will the silver be deposited in the same way like it does in the cementation process ? if yes in order to recover it i should just spray water over the cathode?
Because i read somewhere that silver is deposited like acid paste on cathode if it is so how to recover silver after it has been stripped of?

regards


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## chemguy (Dec 27, 2012)

@ GSP

If the nitric acid added to sulphuric is stripping it properly around 90-95%,
I had difficulty stripping when the stuff was compressed.
So will i get the same results with the sulfuric cell?


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## chemguy (Dec 27, 2012)

@ Modtheworld 44

Thank you for your suggestion, 
i read your complete post and i am not able to understand why it is not attacking the base metal?
I will try your process too after i have tried with the sulphuric cell.
Your methods also seems to be quite impressive.
Just have a small doubt after u get a milky solution what should be done.
Let me make the initial steps and i will report the result.

Regards


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## goldsilverpro (Dec 27, 2012)

chemguy said:


> @ GSP
> 
> If the nitric acid added to sulphuric is stripping it properly around 90-95%,
> I had difficulty stripping when the stuff was compressed.
> So will i get the same results with the sulfuric cell?


I think it will be worse for any electrolytic stripper, since the current will be mainly concentrated on the outside surface of the bundle. It is sort of like a Faraday Cage. Not exactly but with similar results.
https://www.google.com/search?q=faraday+cage&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-USfficial&client=firefox-a


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## chemguy (Dec 27, 2012)

I ran out of my supply of sulphuric acid
so i decided to give a try with the H2O cell as suggested by mod the world 44.
@ modtheworld44
Reaction was going damn slow, so i decided to add small amount of NaCl to it.
Green sludge was formed which remained floating on top of the bowl.
Can you please provide me with your design for power supply.
@ GSP i didnt observe much of faraday cage effect when i added salt to it
Your suggestion will be highly appreciated
Regards


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## goldsilverpro (Dec 27, 2012)

The green is likely hydrated copper chloride - CuCl2.2H2O. The addition of salt is dissolving the copper at the anode. It floats because there are gas bubbles attached to it from some O2 (probably) or Cl2 gas generated at the anode.


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