Accidentally precipitated silver chloride while dissolving silver and nitric acid

[Rreyes097]

So I had a couple pairs of silver earrings that I wasn't for sure if they were pure silver or not so I put them in nitric acid and distilled water. But I think when I added some extra water and nitric acid to it I accidentally may have put regular water in it and I noticed that some precipitation of silver chloride has come out does this ruin everything for me? What do I do in this circumstance?

 

[butcher]

If the majority of the solution is silver nitrate/ copper nitrate, any halogen added such as chlorine or chlorides will form silver halides or silver chlorides in the solution.

Just a little chloride or halide in a silver ionic solution will show up well as a large white cloud and if enough a white fluffy conglomerated clouds of silver salts precipitated from solution, which is very beneficial in testing solutions because it shows up so well with such a small amount of the halide or the silver...


With a limited amount of chlorides added they will be removed from the solution along with their silver bonded ions, either as a milky-looking precipitate or small fluffy white clouds of silver chloride (which can be somewhat reduced by light when free of excess acids) and are hard to settle.

Since you add a very small amount of chlorides (in the water) it will take only a very small amount of your silver out of the solution as the silver halide salt precipitates, which can be allowed time to settle, decanting and filtering the solution to remove any chloride boded to the silver...

The tiny amount of silver chloride is not that much of a problem, although silver chloride's fluffy nature makes it hard to settle and can be somewhat troublesome when filtering in general, you would have much to worry about even if you did not filter that tiny amount out.

Where silver chloride would become more of a problem, is if where you have larger volumes of halogens such as chlorides in with the silver you are planning on melting, where the chlorine or other halide gases formed in the melt will take your silver up into the smoke with them, basically making your silver a volatile gas in the melt, so here the chlorides would have to be either driven off slowly with heat, or the silver salt changed in the form or type of its salt, or the silver salt converted to elemental metal, or flux melted with a reducing agent like sodium carbonate.

With such a low amount of chlorides added here (what was included in some water would not be a problem that I would lose much sleep over, although I would get distilled water, and pay more attention to what I added to what in the lab.

 

[orvi]

So I had a couple pairs of silver earrings that I wasn't for sure if they were pure silver or not so I put them in nitric acid and distilled water. But I think when I added some extra water and nitric acid to it I accidentally may have put regular water in it and I noticed that some precipitation of silver chloride has come out does this ruin everything for me? What do I do in this circumstance?

Don´t be afraid. As butcher said, ammount of chlorides introduced is low. Very little impact on your reaction - in your case with (probably) sterling silver. Some minute ammount of silver could be lost, but you can certainly live with that
Good few years ago, i worked with a bunch kg of silver scrap/contact points. When rinsing vessels from reaction and transfering stuff to another beakers etc., we routinely used tap water. As the ammount of halogens introduced was low and volume very little. Compared to bulk silver nitrate solution. This was just first rough refining step, from 30-70% Ag to 98+%Ag. Altough, we did not used tap water to directly dilute nitric.

Go with distilled water next time think twice, don´t hurry

 

[Rreyes097]

I actually ran out of distilled water for a bit and forgot I was using regular H20. But that will no longer happen because today I came up on a free distilled water make machine! Yeah!!!!

 

[Rreyes097]

This is what my silver chloride turned into silver oxide I suppose. What do I do with it now ? I'm not ready to melt it so how do I get it to storable dried silver? Plus I probably can't melt it with all this liquid.

 

[butcher]

See Hoke's book, page 77.
Silver chloride should be avoided where possible.

Miss Calm Hoke will tell you, do not dry it out, it will only make dealing with silver chloride much more of a difficult problem to convert or smelt.

If you can heat it with iron (nails, or old clean oil-free cast iron skillet...)with stirring in an acidic environment (dilute 10% H2SO4) it will help to convert the silver chloride to elemental silver.
Another option is using HCl and aluminum metal and heating stirring.
Smelting with fluxing the melt with chemical reagents such as carbonate and carbon is also an option ...

See Hoke's she has the answer to this problem and many more you have not got into yet.

If storing keep it wet under the liquid, it is often also advisable to keep silver chloride or other silver compounds out of the light, as the light can give electrons back to a silver salt converting its outer shell of the atomic cluster to elemental form, normally without conversion of the whole of the clump of atoms in the salt cluster, or by the light precipitating elemental silver from a solution of silver such as AgNO3...

 

[orvi]

This is what my silver chloride turned into silver oxide I suppose. What do I do with it now ? I'm not ready to melt it so how do I get it to storable dried silver? Plus I probably can't melt it with all this liquid.

You could reduce silver oxide to silver with sugar. It is a messy process, and not very scientific, to say at least, but it works There are plentiful of threads where it is discussed.
In your situation, i will opt for not drying the powder. It will be pain later on to wet it and properly suspend it into the liquid.

 

[Rreyes097]

Thank you for the extensive response but most of my silver right now is in the form of silver oxide is what I'm told it's black sludgy. How do I get that back in elemental silver is it the same as silver chloride because it's wet? Also I just cemented some other silver out with copper but it came out bluish so I'm redoing that do you know why that might have happened too? Thank you for your help