copper core silver wire

[Harvester3]

Howdy,
I have a pound of silver wire from ultrasonic devices, which has copper as well. I've not ventured into the silver arena as yet. I understand you want to convert silver to a particular property (chloride, nitrate) and my brain is old enough to confuse easily.
Hokes has been a wealth of info, as you all, but this specific situation I'm stuck on.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Merry Christmas
jim

 

[butcher]

Silver and copper will dissolve in dilute solution of nitric acid, about 1,2 ml 70% HNO3 and 1,2 ml H2O per gram of silver (copper takes about 3 times this much per gram).
This is usually best done with high silver and low copper alloys, (the wire may contain too much copper to make this method cost effective).

The easiest way to recover the silver is cementing it onto copper metal, a large thick clean bar of copper often found in electrical panels called buss bars, the copper goes into solution as the silver cements out of solution as powders or crystals of silver metal which can be washed well and melted, the copper stays dissolved in the solution.

Silver chloride can also precipitate the silver from the nitrate solution, using HCl acid or NaCl salt added to the nitrate solution to form silver chloride, but this is a pain to deal with, the silver chloride would need to be converted to metal before you can melt it.

A good test to see if the solution contains silver, take a small portion of the nitrate solution in a small vessel or test tube add HCl or salt, a white milky solution or white curds confirm silver (the white is silver chloride).

When washing your silver a good test for copper in solution is ammonia, copper ions give a bright blue in ammonia solution.

Using your silver to inquarter karat gold with is another option, you can remove the majority of base metals from the silver in the process of parting the silver from the gold with HNO3 and cementing the silver with copper to reclaim the silver less the majority of copper, it will use about the same amount of acids and the process would be similar but your doing two things at once.

 

[Harvester3]

Hey Butcher thanks.
I forgot to mention; I think you said once that home made nitric is not good to use for silver material, and right now that would be the only nitric option here. Best nitric acid price I've found is 167.00/2 liters...

I was wondering if there was a reason why a guy couldn't use Hcl and a bubbler and let it have the copper...
I've been holding off on recovering silver till I was more comfortable with recovering gold. Possibly I need to make a reverse cell for some of these materials.
Thanks again
Jim

 

[butcher]

Jim,
One problem with HCl and silver, is silver can form a passivisation layer of silver chloride, this may prevent the acid peroxide from getting to the copper, if the wire was mostly copper with only a very thin layer of silver it may work if the copper wire was cut to small pieces and heat, or hard stirring was used, if the percentage of silver to copper is higher it will not have much of a chance of working.

The homemade nitric can be distilled and used with no problem, it is actually very easy to distill a liquid or nitric acid, but a few safety issues need to be learned and observed, like changing temperature of the glass rapidly and thermally shocking the glass ware, or how not to lower heat on a boiling flask and suck back cold liquid into the vessel, bursting it, and what type of vessels can be used safely, and how to protect them from thermal shock or breakage, rubber corks are destroyed by nitric but Teflon can handle it with no trouble.

 

[Harvester3]

Ah, I think I understand a few things. So the black covering on a lump of melted wire that I put on Hcl/peroxide is probably silver chloride acting as a bandage, preventing the copper from further dissolution.. And silver chloride is a pain to work with.
When using the silver to inquart gold, I wouldn't need to refine the silver prior, the copper will stay in solution anyway when the silver is finally cemented out.
And in any event I'll need nitric. I can make nitric, I just remember reading home made nitric isn't good to use on silver.
Thanks man! That really helped (that is, if what I said above is true and correct, then I got it)
Much thanks.
So has it dried out up there yet? winter this year for us appears to be unusually mild; at least so far... Record hot in summer and either mild winters or a blizzard the last 3 years. idk
Thanks Butcher

 

[goldsilverpro]

You might get enough silver to weigh, if you have a good scale. Silver plating on copper wire is generally quite thin.

 

[goldsilverpro]

You might get enough silver to weigh, if you have a good scale. It might not be that bad, bur silver plating on copper wire is generally quite thin. Figure an average of about 1% by weight. That's about $5 in silver per pound of wire.

 

[Harvester3]

yeah thats what I thought but the data sheet for this equipment specified a copper core with silver. I did the math and it worked out to something like 80% Ag. It's supposed to transmit signal much cleaner than usual wire.

 

[nickvc]

Melt the wire into a bar and save it for when you process silver and then use it to cement your silver back out of solution, that way you get the silver as a bonus without having to refine it.