Method for Recovering Silver From Silver Plated Scrap - VIDEO

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speed said:
I don't see why on a 'medium scale' electro-deplating wouldnt be viable.. you would have to have a plating 'tumbler' ofcourse as connecting each item up to a busbar individually would be more time than its worth but if you could just chuck a few kg of cutlery or shredded plate items into a basket at a time and just let it tumble until its done it seems like very little effot other than the inital investment. Its maybe not something for a large scale refiner but for a hobbyist looking to make a few $ in thier spare time I think it could be a good project. I know the material is out there and essentially pretty worthless other than its scrap value.

Correct me if I'm wrong but a solution of tap water and plain old sodium chloride salt would be a sutible electrolyte. Does it need to be sodium sulfite?

Here is a process with sodium sulfite, takes little time, for 8 hours in a 50 gram Ag cell.the Basket is made of titanium mesh, the cathode is titanium plate. (Thank you, President Gorbachev, military missiles are not being built in Russia now, and we can make electrolysis cells out of titanium with our own hands).
 

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The basket can be made of chemically resistant stainless steel.
 

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Photos are not mine, but I worked, and guarantee success! silver in dry sediment is obtained 90-95%
 
ION 47 said:
Photos are not mine, but I worked, and guarantee success! silver in dry sediment is obtained 90-95%

Looks good, ION, any information on making the electrolyte?
 
Shark said:
ION 47 said:
Photos are not mine, but I worked, and guarantee success! silver in dry sediment is obtained 90-95%

Looks good, ION, any information on making the electrolyte?

Link to the patent: http://www.findpatent.ru/patent/246/2467082.html there is a description of the process. Electrolyte: 50-80 g of sodium sulfite per 1 liter of distilled water. The voltage on the cell is 1-3 Volts, the Amperes drop as the Ag is removed from the base.
"...A method for electrochemical extraction of silver from silver-containing conductive waste comprising anodic dissolution of silver in an aqueous solution of the complexing agent in potentiostatic mode with an anode from the feedstock and an insoluble cathode, characterized in that as a complexing agent using sodium sulfite with a concentration of 12-370 g / l, anodic dissolution is carried out at 18-50°C at an anode potential of 0.40÷0.74 V relative to the normal hydrogen electrode, the process is carried out in a closed volume in a non-aggressive slightly alkaline medium

http://www.findpatent.ru/patent/246/2467082.html
FindPatent.ru -patent search, 2012-2019"
 
nickvc said:
archeonist said:
Silver can be separated from sand by extraction with nitric.

You could end up with huge volumes of waste doing this simply because to filter the silver solution from the sand will require a lot of rinses with distilled water to avoid converting the silver to chlorides and thus trapping it in the sand.

Filtering the silver nitrate out of the sand is not the only problem (which is going to take "A LOT" of distilled water - like 2 if not 3 or 4 times the water of the starting leach solution)

The other problem is going to be making up the leach to be effective & at the same time not wasting nitric - in other words figuring out how much metal the sand is loaded with in order to determine the amount of nitric needed to leach the metal without wasting nitric


Sand blasting is not only going to take off the silver plating - but base metal as well - it takes "about" 4 times more acid to dissolve base metal then it takes to dissolve silver


So how do you determine (1) how much metal is loaded in the sand - then (2) what is the ratio of silver/base metal in order to (3) determine nitric need to leach out "all" the metal - without wasting nitric


Keep in mind - that as the nitric dissolves metal it becomes less effective in dissolving the metal - to the point it will near stop dissolving metal (before the acid is used up) without heat

How are you going to heat the leach in a "bunch" of sand

With heat - you are going to have to use "extra" nitric just to make sure all the metal is leached

Without heat - your going to have to use even more acid so the acid can even work at dissolving the metal

Bottom line - your going to have to "waste" nitric to insure you get all the metal leached out

And then you still need to get "all" the silver (& base metal) nitrate washed/filtered out - "after" the sand blasting process

maybe I am wrong - but seems like a loooong way around for little return

Kurt
 
kurtak said:
nickvc said:
archeonist said:
Silver can be separated from sand by extraction with nitric.

You could end up with huge volumes of waste doing this simply because to filter the silver solution from the sand will require a lot of rinses with distilled water to avoid converting the silver to chlorides and thus trapping it in the sand.

Filtering the silver nitrate out of the sand is not the only problem (which is going to take "A LOT" of distilled water - like 2 if not 3 or 4 times the water of the starting leach solution)

The other problem is going to be making up the leach to be effective & at the same time not wasting nitric - in other words figuring out how much metal the sand is loaded with in order to determine the amount of nitric needed to leach the metal without wasting nitric


Sand blasting is not only going to take off the silver plating - but base metal as well - it takes "about" 4 times more acid to dissolve base metal then it takes to dissolve silver


So how do you determine (1) how much metal is loaded in the sand - then (2) what is the ratio of silver/base metal in order to (3) determine nitric need to leach out "all" the metal - without wasting nitric


Keep in mind - that as the nitric dissolves metal it becomes less effective in dissolving the metal - to the point it will near stop dissolving metal (before the acid is used up) without heat

How are you going to heat the leach in a "bunch" of sand

With heat - you are going to have to use "extra" nitric just to make sure all the metal is leached

Without heat - your going to have to use even more acid so the acid can even work at dissolving the metal

Bottom line - your going to have to "waste" nitric to insure you get all the metal leached out

And then you still need to get "all" the silver (& base metal) nitrate washed/filtered out - "after" the sand blasting process

maybe I am wrong - but seems like a loooong way around for little return

Kurt

You can take up peskostruy, or file, or chisel, they cut Ag. :lol: But to mechanically remove only Ag, without affecting the basics, you need to be blind, since blind people have a more developed sense of touch, and they feel the difference in the units of micron with their fingers. I don't think we should discuss this medieval technology :D .
 
Ya'll crazy.

When you sand blast you generate dust. This dust is partially the breakdown of the media, but also the media that's being removed.

The reality of this is that you are going to have a fine, difficult to filter SiO2 particle and a particle of silver and a particle of copper and zinc and nickel...and all over, some lead, probably cadmium and lead as well.

It's all going to end up in your shopvac.

That material can then be directly melted and collected in a cone.

Yes, your coarse sand will still have silver too...so just melt it when you are done.
 
I would add...given how much silver plate weighs in comparison to it's surface area...I think you'll have a hard time doing this profitably with an air compressor.

I know what it cost just to run the compressor /dry and filter the air / and pay for a guy to blast.

It's an expensive process.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udTfxnh90Os

96% Sulfuric acid and nitric acid very good silver stripping.
 
Elektrikis said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udTfxnh90Os

96% Sulfuric acid and nitric acid very good silver stripping.

The method works. There are several difficulties: 1. You can ruin the pants, 2. Protect your respiratory system, 3. Careful, hands, face, 4. The filter only through a Mineral filter, 5. It is necessary to restore the silver sulfate to the metal, it is an additional hemorrhoids.
 
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.
I use to clean injection molds for plastic with dry ice. The nice part about dry ice is the blast media (rice sized particles of dry ice) simply sublimates leaving nothing but the particles as residual. In this case silver and a small amount of substrate.

Not sure if it would work with silver and perhaps gold plated items. Might be worth a try.

Sent from my LG-H872 using Tapatalk

 
kad,

In the video you estimated that the silver was probably 99% fine. It was most likely at least three nines. You must take into account that any copper in the water will be burned off during the melt since it's not a slow burn. Similar to how you can create crystals from concentrated solutions (gold, silver, copper etc) with a slow controlled boil but if you do it to quickly you can suffer massive loses. Since the amount of copper is already miniscule there is almost none left after the melt. I used this method and consistently achieved 4 nines. The key is to get the water crystal clear before adding the lye and sugar.

Also, if you ever use this method again simple stirring will get all of the material converted. The exothermic reaction will boil the lye and sugar throughout the material. Just make sure whatever you stir with is glass.

Here is me using this method what seems like ages ago 8)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM-YsiFnJ1I&t=2s
 
goldenchild said:
kad,

In the video you estimated that the silver was probably 99% fine. It was most likely at least three nines. You must take into account that any copper in the water will be burned off during the melt since it's not a slow burn. Similar to how you can create crystals from concentrated solutions (gold, silver, copper etc) with a slow controlled boil but if you do it to quickly you can suffer massive loses. Since the amount of copper is already miniscule there is almost none left after the melt. I used this method and consistently achieved 4 nines. The key is to get the water crystal clear before adding the lye and sugar.

Also, if you ever use this method again simple stirring will get all of the material converted. The exothermic reaction will boil the lye and sugar throughout the material. Just make sure whatever you stir with is glass.

Here is me using this method what seems like ages ago 8)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM-YsiFnJ1I&t=2s

Trying to view the video I get this message:

Video unavailable
This video contains content from WMG, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.
 
Shark said:
Trying to view the video I get this message:

Video unavailable
This video contains content from WMG, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.

Heh. Probably the music in it. Let me see if I can repost it.

ETA: The video is being "processed" and will be back up when the youtube overlords remove the music.
 
Yeah the first video I've ever seen on silver chloride conversion using lye and sugar! 10x!
 
Shark said:
goldenchild said:
kad,

In the video you estimated that the silver was probably 99% fine. It was most likely at least three nines. You must take into account that any copper in the water will be burned off during the melt since it's not a slow burn. Similar to how you can create crystals from concentrated solutions (gold, silver, copper etc) with a slow controlled boil but if you do it to quickly you can suffer massive loses. Since the amount of copper is already miniscule there is almost none left after the melt. I used this method and consistently achieved 4 nines. The key is to get the water crystal clear before adding the lye and sugar.

Also, if you ever use this method again simple stirring will get all of the material converted. The exothermic reaction will boil the lye and sugar throughout the material. Just make sure whatever you stir with is glass.

Here is me using this method what seems like ages ago 8)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM-YsiFnJ1I&t=2s

Trying to view the video I get this message:

Video unavailable
This video contains content from WMG, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.

Try here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0HNDxWi2IM
 
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