First off I need to say I have never tried to recover silver from silver plated items "other then" silver plated buss bars in which case the silver plating is recovered when using the bus bars to cement silver from silver nitrate solutions - the bus bars are first tested with a drop of HCl to make sure the plating is in fact silver plating & not tin plating
The reason I have never tried to mess with recovering silver plating from items other then bus bars is (1) when I lived in Wisconsin there was a company that would buy my silver plated for 20 - 25 cents a pound over what scrap yards paid for bass (if the plating was on brass) or 20 - 25 cents a pound (over) for number 1 copper (if the plating was on copper) --- &/or (2) as Hokes says in her book - " the silver -
if worth while" - & I just don't see chasing silver plating as being worth while out side of "maybe" one exception (which will be at the end of this post)
archeonist said:
The only way I can think of is mechanically removing the silver plate. The experiment that I am going to do is sand blasting silverplate items. You'll end up with a mixture of dust that contains sand and metal particles wich are easy to seperate. I think this method would be fairly quick and low in costs as you don't need a lot of nitric. Still haven't got time to work this out but soon I will.
Per the under lined - how do you intend to recover the silver from sand ?
Electrolysis in a solution of sodium sulfite is absolutely safe for health, the silver is deposited as a porridge at the cathode of stainless steel. Аnd brass or copper base remains intact. I tried to shoot silver with silver-plated coaxial radio frequency cable and plates from radio equipment. It's good. I don't know any other safe way.
You don't need "any" chemicals for an electrolytic cell - just "
tap" water - it doesn't get any safer then that
:arrow: http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=16591
The problem being that you still can't run it in any "volume" that would make the recovery "worth while" in my opinion
On the other hand - IF (big IF) I where ever to chase after the recovery of silver plating it would be cyanide leaching & that is because you could actually set up to run it in volume
Cyanide will leach/dissolve silver plating just as it does gold plating
The silver can then be recovered from the solution by cementing with zinc powder (it takes about 1/2 oz of zinc to recover 1 ozt silver) or recovered with activated carbon - or with an electrolytic winning cell - & if it where me I would use the winning cell & that's because after winning the silver back from the leach the leach can be reused again (to a point & with some adjustment made to the starting leach) & when the leach reaches a point of not reusing it - it (the cyanide) can be destroyed for safe disposal by reversing the polarity of the cell & running it through the cell
For more details read what Deano & Jon have posted here on the forum about cyanide leach for gold plating - recovering the gold with the winning cell & then destroying the cyanide (in the same cell) when the leach is spent
The process is &/or will work the same with silver plating
The one thing I am not sure of is that there "may" be a time difference in the leaching of silver compared to that of gold - silver "might" take a little more time --- maybe Deano or Jon could chime in on that (or for that mater other members like 4metals, GSP, Lou, etc.)
What I do know - is that if I where ever to chase after the recovery of silver plating - cyanide leaching would be the "only" way I would try - & that is because it is about the only way I can see to do it in any kind of volume - which from what I can see - volume is the only way to chase silver plating & have it be "
worth while"
Kurt