Hey! Long time lurker, first time poster.
I recently tried some silver refining with some scrap 925. I have roughly about 10-15oz I'd like to bring to 999 (or as close to as possible) to be cleaned up and re-alloyed or just stacked and polished.
I had my silver cell running ok, but I was a little rushed. In hindsight I should've taken my time but I was too excited. I don't want to mess with nitric acid and try make my own - I don't have the equipment on hand in case anything spills or goes wrong, so I just purchased about 50g of silver nitrate online for about $90aud.
All was well, but was too slow for my liking. My cathode is a small piece of approx 20 grams 999 as it's all I had on hand.
I asked ChatGPT for some thoughts on this process and it recommended that I switch it out for a sheet of copper. Not thinking, I threw in some copper as the cathode and it worked really good, instantly, as there was much more surface area. I switched the cell off for an hour as I had to leave but when I came home, there was a heap of silver that had accumulated on the copper. That's when I remembered that copper precipitates silver from nitric acid/silver solution, and I'm pretty sure it's just precipitated the silver out of my silver nitrate solution. It also went a sort of strong aqua blue colour as well.
When I ran it again, it wasn't near as productive as when I had it first running.
So I separated my silver and melted a couple of nice small bars and bottled up my solution. I haven't had a chance to XRF test those bars yet.
My question is, is this silver nitrate solution ruined now? Or would I be ok to simply add another 50 grams of silver nitrate and continue using it? I'm worried that it's gone blue because copper has come out of my cathode and in to the solution and this might in turn start taking copper out of my scrap 925 as well as the 999 silver and precipitate it all together. A pointless task, lol.
If I can't reuse it as it is, can I rescue it somehow? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks!
I recently tried some silver refining with some scrap 925. I have roughly about 10-15oz I'd like to bring to 999 (or as close to as possible) to be cleaned up and re-alloyed or just stacked and polished.
I had my silver cell running ok, but I was a little rushed. In hindsight I should've taken my time but I was too excited. I don't want to mess with nitric acid and try make my own - I don't have the equipment on hand in case anything spills or goes wrong, so I just purchased about 50g of silver nitrate online for about $90aud.
All was well, but was too slow for my liking. My cathode is a small piece of approx 20 grams 999 as it's all I had on hand.
I asked ChatGPT for some thoughts on this process and it recommended that I switch it out for a sheet of copper. Not thinking, I threw in some copper as the cathode and it worked really good, instantly, as there was much more surface area. I switched the cell off for an hour as I had to leave but when I came home, there was a heap of silver that had accumulated on the copper. That's when I remembered that copper precipitates silver from nitric acid/silver solution, and I'm pretty sure it's just precipitated the silver out of my silver nitrate solution. It also went a sort of strong aqua blue colour as well.
When I ran it again, it wasn't near as productive as when I had it first running.
So I separated my silver and melted a couple of nice small bars and bottled up my solution. I haven't had a chance to XRF test those bars yet.
My question is, is this silver nitrate solution ruined now? Or would I be ok to simply add another 50 grams of silver nitrate and continue using it? I'm worried that it's gone blue because copper has come out of my cathode and in to the solution and this might in turn start taking copper out of my scrap 925 as well as the 999 silver and precipitate it all together. A pointless task, lol.
If I can't reuse it as it is, can I rescue it somehow? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks!
