# Silver chloride and Silver oxide mixed in solution



## Marcel (Aug 21, 2013)

I cleaned out my large AP tank the other day. When I tried to filter the gold particles out, I ran into a lot of silverchloride. Tried to dissolve by using a dilute and hot ammonia, that worked and I put it aside.
Now with this solution, I know how it is dealt with here on GRF, but I hardly ever succeded in a good result.
First I added some NaOH and used the magnetic stirrer overnight.
Added same amount of water.
Let everything settle.
The next day I had a 3 layer solution.
Top is clear with a light blueish tint
Second layer is blueish grey very fluffy stuff
bottom layer is black - I suppose silveroxide - with some gold particles in it.

Now I always run into this configuration, wondering, how to remove that middle fluffy layer, which I think is silverchloride mixed with some silveroxide.
Should I add more NaOH? or Water? Or just decant the fluffy part and tehn add water?
How do I get rid of that stuff or transform it?
I have tried in previous cases to add more NaOH, but it was a lot amd I dont think this was the right way.


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## johnny309 (Aug 21, 2013)

When you filter your AP "leftovers"....leave the AgCl in your filters....along with the gold....
When you dissolve the gold by aqua regia or HCl+clorox...the AgCl will be left behind in the filters...and then can be process later.....
Your AgCl work like a "trap" for fine particle of gold.....so leave the AgCl as the last process...


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## Marcel (Aug 21, 2013)

Does that mean, you would recommend me to add AR on top, let the dissolved Gold etc. pass through the filter and then?
Add ammonia to dissolve the AgCl in the filterpaper?
Does that solve my problem with the silver and AgCl mix ?
Honestly I dont care about the gold at this point. It is very little. I just want to get the silverchloride transformation to work.


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## 4metals (Aug 21, 2013)

Mixing is critical to getting all of the silver chloride to react with the NaOH to form the silver oxide. One approach you could use would be to convert the rest of the silver to the oxide by adding more caustic followed by the reduction with corn syrup to produce an easily meltable silver metal which will have your gold in the alloy. 

The silver can be processed in a silver cell to yield pure silver metal (.999) and the gold will be in the slimes. This works if you are going to continually generate a quantity of silver contaminated with gold making the setup worthwhile. 

Another option would be to part the silver/gold bar (silver has to be at least 75% of the bar) in 50% nitric (actually half deionized water half nitric acid so more like 35% nitric acid) that will leave you with gold on the bottom of the beaker, and silver in the acid as silver nitrate. This can either be reduced by using sodium formate or more simply by dropping it as a chloride and running the NaOH corn syrup process which this time will produce a high quality silver (with good rinsing) but the gold will have been physically separated and processed separately.


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## Geo (Aug 22, 2013)

the first time i tried the conversion, i dont think i let all of the silver chloride convert to oxide or then to metallic silver. when i melted what i thought was silver powder, it turned into the worst slag with, maybe 40% of the weight in metallic silver. its not really a fast process.


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## jonn (Aug 22, 2013)

Hi Marcel, am I missing something here or did I read this incorrectly? You removed the silver by adding ammonia, and then added NAOH? Did you forget to add hcl to drop your silver out as a chloride and then wash and then convert ?


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## Marcel (Aug 22, 2013)

@jonn: The material was from the bottom of my AP tank, so it was AgCl at first. Then I added the ammonia. Then I added some HCl to acify it, because I am afraid of the silver-ammonia-compund (risk of explosion, at least I learned it here). Then NaOH. But you made a point maybe it was not enough HCl added to convert all the compound back to AgCl. I washed the "solution" several times and I now have a very clear top and a grey fluffy layer above a layer with solid black Material. 
I did order Steve´s DVD on silver last year (big thumps, for those who don´t know it, get it!) but I think Steve has worked with quite pure AgCl , not such dirty solutions like I have here, so I never managed to fully convert my stuff into silver, it was always only partial.

@4metals: Thanks for the -as always - excellent tipps. Sounds like a plan to me. I have quite a lot of this dirty AgCl mix here. Now just need to get this stuff in a condition and purity so that I can work with it.

Questiion could be wheter this mix still contains silver ammonia compound.

I enclosed a picture on how the mix looks this morning after another wash and settling.
The PH of the clear solution on top indicates a strong caustic value of 12-13.

Marcel


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## solar_plasma (Aug 22, 2013)

Remember, the silver-ammonium complex is soluble, so you have it in the clear fitrate. First then you precipitate AgCl with HCl. Your description sounds like you think,the silver stays in the filter. If it is washed out of the sediments and if it is acidified,there should not be any silver complex left.

Wash well, and treat only the pure washed AgCl with the NaOH. If first expl. silver compouds are formed, you have a problem.


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## Marcel (Aug 22, 2013)

After washing it several times, the PH now is around 8.
Meanwhile I think that the black sediment is not silver oxide, but precipitated gold and Pd from the AP solution, that formed now and then.
So now I could take a mix of hot water and 10% ammonia, add it to the sludge and dissolve the AG Cl. Then I pour the whole content of teh beaker through a paperfiler, where the goldflakes and the precipitated Pms will stay and the silver ammonia complex pass through. I did that soem times and it worked but I dont like this procedure due to danger and the fumes.


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## Geo (Aug 22, 2013)

if it came from AP, there could be other metal in the mix that does not dissolve in either hcl or copper chloride like lead and antimony as well as a few other heavy metals.


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## solar_plasma (Aug 22, 2013)

Did you remember to incenerate the sediments from stock pot (I think an old ap is quite a bit similar to a stockpot) first? I know you are experienced, but those small details can easily be forgotten. I am just problem shooting.


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