# Should I just melt this AgCl?



## Dawnsdad (Jul 25, 2016)

I had a batch of AgCl that I had finished washing and set aside in a plastic bucket. Got called away for a few days. Needless to say, sitting in my shipping container workshop and getting up to about 135F every day. I came back to find a flat, round white block. I broke it up into pieces as small as I could, but I'm afraid I will still have problems if I try the lye/sugar method. So the question is: why not just melt it like it is? Other than the obvious off-gassing of chlorine, would it work ok? If I put a layer of lye on top, will that react with the Cl and suppress the gassing? And a related question for the future: Since I am going to melt it anyway, when I use lye and produce silver oxide, why not just melt that and skip the sugar? Won't melting just release o2? Excuse my ignorance, I should have paid better attention to HS chemistry. Never figured I'd need to know any of that stuff.


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## 4metals (Jul 25, 2016)

Try tumbling it in 5 to 10% sulfuric acid with some iron nails. The Iron will reduce the chlorides into silver metal and you can pick up what remains of the iron with a magnet when you're done. 

If you're shy one tumbler, try a cast iron frying pan with the sulfuric in it, just stir the chlorides around to make sure the chlorides are exposed to the iron to reduce the silver. Don't try to sneak the pan back into the kitchen when you're done, once you use the cast iron frying pan for this it becomes refining equipment. 

You will end up with a choking mess if you try to melt the chlorides as is.


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## myfalconry76 (Jul 26, 2016)

4metals said:


> Try tumbling it in 5 to 10% sulfuric acid with some iron nails. The Iron will reduce the chlorides into silver metal and you can pick up what remains of the iron with a magnet when you're done.
> 
> If you're shy one tumbler, try a cast iron frying pan with the sulfuric in it, just stir the chlorides around to make sure the chlorides are exposed to the iron to reduce the silver. Don't try to sneak the pan back into the kitchen when you're done, once you use the cast iron frying pan for this it becomes refining equipment.
> 
> You will end up with a choking mess if you try to melt the chlorides as is.


Note once you use anything from your kitchen it's refining equipment.


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## Dawnsdad (Jul 26, 2016)

Thanks for the response, Any ideas about skipping the sugar and just rinse/dry/melt the silver oxide?


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## FrugalRefiner (Jul 26, 2016)

Dawnsdad said:


> Thanks for the response, Any ideas about skipping the sugar and just rinse/dry/melt the silver oxide?


Assuming you're talking about converting the silver chloride to silver oxide with lye, you'll still experience losses. 

When we switch from HCl to HNO3 or vice versa, there is a reason we incinerate in between. It's because no matter how well we rinse, there will always be some chlorides or nitrates present, which will create some AR and dissolve some gold. With silver chloride, rinsing is particularly difficult, often requiring 10 to 20 rinses with each cycle. 

Dilute sulfuric and nails are your best bet.

Dave


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## goldsilverpro (Jul 26, 2016)

Melting would be a massive mistake. It would be much more difficult to convert after melting than it is now. I would follow 4metals advice.

You might consider a blender and look over these threads.
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/search.php?st=0&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&keywords=silver+chloride+blender&start=30


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## rickbb (Jul 27, 2016)

You can look for videos on LaserSteve's web site, he has several that demonstrate the iron conversion method.


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## Lino1406 (Jul 27, 2016)

AgCl is melted with soda ash. See result on http://www.facebook.com/Everymetalchemistry
(subject photo). The observed holes are caused by the escaping gas, e.g. CO2, O2


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