cristals during silver refining

[joeybh]

okay so first off let me state that I am somewhat new to the site and to refining. I have started with silver refinery because it looked like it was the easiest chemical process. I am making my own nitric acid using laserSteve's instructions. after the silver was put into solution I put in copper to precipitate the silver. once all the silver was precipitated from the solution I filtered the silver leaving just the solution. after leaving the solution to sit for a few days these two very large blue Cristals formed within the solution.

 

[4metals]

Is there a question there?

The blue crystals are copper which crystalize out when the water evaporates out.

 

[joeybh]

Sorry. Yea the question was supposed to be what are the cristals. Really now? That is really cool are they safe to handle? Do you know what the exact chemical compound they are made of?

 

[butcher]

You should distill your home made nitric if using it to recover or refine silver, the home made nitric will contain sulfate salts (even after trying to freeze them out), distilling the nitric can give you a more pure nitric free of the sulfate salt, which can form silver or copper sulfates, and can give you problems in these processes.

copper sulfate once it crystallizes is harder to dissolve, but it will dissolve slowly in hot water if enough water is used, copper nitrate salts are much easier to dissolve.

I suspect you had sulfates and formed some silver and copper sulfates in your process, just guessing here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper%28II%29_sulfate

http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9923597

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper%28II%29_nitrate

http://www.ch.ntu.edu.tw/~genchem99/msds/exp11/Cu%28NO3%2923H2O.pdf

 

[joeybh]

Ok thank you.