Jakes.vdv
Member
Dear Everyone.
My name is Jacques. I’m a beginner in recovering precious metals and refining them.
I’m currently only focusing on obtaining pure silver.
I’d like to ask you a question about lead chloride in silver chloride.
I’ve been recovering Silver from plated silver cups and trophies, by giving them a bath in 96% Sulphuric acid in which I’ve added about 5% 55% conc. nitric acid. The total solution is 5 litres.
I bathed each item individually in order to observe how different items responded. The result was quite mixed, with items having brass as base metal stripping beautifully, epns items were also fairly okay, and silver on copper items often plated copper over the silver plating, inhibiting the stripping of silver.
None the less, after processing about 30 cups/ small trophies, I was certain to have a fair amount of silver in the solution.
I let the solution sit for a few days, then I siphoned off the top to separate the sludge for further processing, and kept the rest for future batches.
I processed the sludge by diluting the solution, adding a bit more nitric, and letting it sit on a 90 degree Celsius hot plate under a fume hood for a day.
I decided to let the solution settle, to siphon off the clear liquid to precipitate with chloride.
However I was bit impatient and didn’t wait till everything had completely settled…I waited about 12 hrs then filtered the liquid through two coffee filters.
I got a decent precipitation using sodium chloride.
However, when I did the first hot wash, the precipitate took a very long time to settle…where I normally experience it to happen quite quickly…I also added a little nitric to acidify the water to promote faster settling, but that didn’t even help.
Anyhow, I did a few more washes, noticing that the precipitate kept getting finer…Not like the “cottage cheese” that I’m used to. I suspected that there was lead chloride mixed with the silver chloride, which would be probable because some of the Cup handles contained lead.
However, upon each hot wash, it didn’t dissolve…. So I was a bit confused, because my understanding is that PbCl will dissolve in hot water, making it easy to separate from AgCl.
I placed the precipitate in the sun, and it turned gray for sure, but it still takes very long to settle, even with a hot acidic wash.
So I don’t know if I have silver or lead and silver mixed?
Will lead chloride turn gray in sunlight with Silver chloride?
Please can you guys look at the picture I’ve attached, it’s a sample off the precipitate that was exposed to sunlight. .
Do you think it’s just silver or silver with lead?
I really appreciate any responses.
My name is Jacques. I’m a beginner in recovering precious metals and refining them.
I’m currently only focusing on obtaining pure silver.
I’d like to ask you a question about lead chloride in silver chloride.
I’ve been recovering Silver from plated silver cups and trophies, by giving them a bath in 96% Sulphuric acid in which I’ve added about 5% 55% conc. nitric acid. The total solution is 5 litres.
I bathed each item individually in order to observe how different items responded. The result was quite mixed, with items having brass as base metal stripping beautifully, epns items were also fairly okay, and silver on copper items often plated copper over the silver plating, inhibiting the stripping of silver.
None the less, after processing about 30 cups/ small trophies, I was certain to have a fair amount of silver in the solution.
I let the solution sit for a few days, then I siphoned off the top to separate the sludge for further processing, and kept the rest for future batches.
I processed the sludge by diluting the solution, adding a bit more nitric, and letting it sit on a 90 degree Celsius hot plate under a fume hood for a day.
I decided to let the solution settle, to siphon off the clear liquid to precipitate with chloride.
However I was bit impatient and didn’t wait till everything had completely settled…I waited about 12 hrs then filtered the liquid through two coffee filters.
I got a decent precipitation using sodium chloride.
However, when I did the first hot wash, the precipitate took a very long time to settle…where I normally experience it to happen quite quickly…I also added a little nitric to acidify the water to promote faster settling, but that didn’t even help.
Anyhow, I did a few more washes, noticing that the precipitate kept getting finer…Not like the “cottage cheese” that I’m used to. I suspected that there was lead chloride mixed with the silver chloride, which would be probable because some of the Cup handles contained lead.
However, upon each hot wash, it didn’t dissolve…. So I was a bit confused, because my understanding is that PbCl will dissolve in hot water, making it easy to separate from AgCl.
I placed the precipitate in the sun, and it turned gray for sure, but it still takes very long to settle, even with a hot acidic wash.
So I don’t know if I have silver or lead and silver mixed?
Will lead chloride turn gray in sunlight with Silver chloride?
Please can you guys look at the picture I’ve attached, it’s a sample off the precipitate that was exposed to sunlight. .
Do you think it’s just silver or silver with lead?
I really appreciate any responses.