Electrolytic cell ?

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MetalMan76 said:
Does the Electrolytic Cell work with silver plated items as well as gold plated items?
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The concentrated sulfuric acid electrolytic cell will strip silver, gold, or palladium. However, I don't remember anyone ever coming up with a decent method to recover the silver from the solution.
 
MetalMan76 said:
So I’m assuming I just can’t filter off the silver from the sulfuric acid?
Would nitric acid be the better option?
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Silver is soluble in concentrated sulfuric. Depending on the strength of the sulfuric, silver could be both in solution and as a silver sulfate solid. If you're using paper filters, you couldn't directly filter the sulfuric anyhow.

I know of several ways to strip silver from copper base, but none of them are practical.

Using nitric to dissolve both copper and silver would result in a loss of money.

The best option would be to forget about silver plated copper or copper alloys.
 
There was a thread earlier about removing the silver in a ball mill with an abrasive media which seemed to be heading in the right direction, if I remember correctly he was using zirconium as the media. I haven't seen any results from his method but it looked like the way to go in regards to costs. There also been a few members trying an iodine leach to strip the silver off the base metals, both might be worth checking out.
 
I had read a few posts on the Iodine leach method, and it seems like it’s worth a shot. I have A LOT of silver plated scrap, and I really want to recover the silver if I can. I will run a couple of tests before I do anything on a large scale.

Thanks for the suggestion nick.
 
My memory is about the shortest thing I have, but didn't we discuss this issue not too long ago? Seems like someone said you can effect a recovery of silver from sulfuric acid using copper. Am I nuts?

Ok, maybe that's not a good question. I probably am.

But---am I right? Does copper work, or does the silver not stay in solution? If it doesn't, if it self precipitates, there's no reason why it can't be recovered and processed.

This one is going to drive me crazy (or should I say crazier?)

Harold
 
Well then I am as nuts as you Harold. I saw a comment like this several years ago and it drove me nuts. So since I was aware of the possibility based on old US mint procedures using concentrated sulfuric in iron kettles for silver, I put some 4N silver into sulfuric acid (I do not remember the sulfuric concentration) and tried cementing it on copper. It does indeed cement on copper as brighter crystals (based on this one experiment) than is usually seen in the typical nitric cementation of silver on copper.
 
It is clearly stated in one of the books (damned if I can remember which one) that slimes from a silver cell are boiled in concentrated sulfuric, in iron kettles, to remove the included silver. Unfortunately, I do not recall any discussion of recovering the silver, but I can attest, thanks to numerous experiences, that the silver content is the major element that is present, so there must be an easy way to make a recovery. Copper has to be the solution.

Harold
 
To those that missed the finer details, we are talking about sulfuric acid in an iron vessel. Everyone knows that sulfuric digests iron, many do not know it also digests silver. It all depends on the concentration of the sulfuric as it is very safe with iron in a concentrated state. Beware however that even exposure to air will allow sulfuric acid to take on enough water from the atmosphere to start digesting iron. The key to this is that sulfuric is almost like 2 different acids depending on its concentration. Another point to remember is that sulfuric will digest copper as most of us know, however if sulfuric is in a concentrated solution, even under an electrical “push” as an anode it barely goes into solution. This is why the sulfuric gold stripping cell works.
 
I was reading this yesterday. It's pretty interesting.
 

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  • Morphology and Roughness of Silver Deposit Formed by Cementation at.pdf
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Harold_V said:
It is clearly stated in one of the books (damned if I can remember which one) that slimes from a silver cell are boiled in concentrated sulfuric, in iron kettles, to remove the included silver. Unfortunately, I do not recall any discussion of recovering the silver, but I can attest, thanks to numerous experiences, that the silver content is the major element that is present, so there must be an easy way to make a recovery. Copper has to be the solution.

Harold
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I bet cementing silver out of sulphuric acid with copper is similar to dropping palladium out of HCL. I will easily cement out but if left to sit too long will go back into solution.
 

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