Electolyte for silver electrowinning cell

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Joined
Jul 8, 2024
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43
Location
WY
I am sure this has been covered. Looked through some old posts. Thought someone used copper sulfate in a cell? Have some scraps of melts and various silver containing sands. Some gold is in it also. And magnetite. Have basic household chemicals. Lye, copper sulphate, sulfuric acid, Hydrochloric acid, potassium nitrate and a few others. Can any of these work as an electrolyte? Not trying to get .999. Just trying to get it out of the junk. Thank you.
 
I'm a noob here but maybe acid washes might be better than electrolysis. HCl --> H2SO4 --> HNO3. I have seen a video where a guy used time rather than heat outside for the nitric. Seemed to work well.
 
I'm a noob here but maybe acid washes might be better than electrolysis. HCl --> H2SO4 --> HNO3. I have seen a video where a guy used time rather than heat outside for the nitric. Seemed to work well.
Silver does not get dissolved in Hcl. Not sure why I listed it unless someone knows a trick I don't. Don't have nitric so was hoping someone knew of a combination. Can make nitric with sulfuric and kno3 but everyone boils it..
 
Silver does not get dissolved in Hcl. Not sure why I listed it unless someone knows a trick I don't. Don't have nitric so was hoping someone knew of a combination. Can make nitric with sulfuric and kno3 but everyone boils it..
Hard to beat Nitric off the shelf. It is so easy to get here in the states. I had copious quantities of Nitric before I got any of my other chems. I found nitric is easier to get than any other chems, with the exception of HCl.
 
Hard to beat Nitric off the shelf. It is so easy to get here in the states. I had copious quantities of Nitric before I got any of my other chems. I found nitric is easier to get than any other chems, with the exception of HCl.
May have to try and get some. Have about 10 Oz to get out of my cons and old melts..and more in the future.
 
If you are mainly looking to remove the silver from your cons then warm concentrated acid should do the trick but be aware that sulphuric is nasty and note so when heated, if you go that route then the gold will not be removed but once rinsed then you could use poormans AR to dissolve that.
All these processes are detailed here on the forum so do some research and see if you feel you can do these processes .
 

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