Hello newbie here Can You Help This Canuck

[Randy22D]

hi names randy, im seeking for knowledge is why i signed up,......what brings me here is i have 2, 5 gallon pails of spent photo mixer (the rotten egg smelling stuff)i recently discovered either my ol man or one my uncles had dropped in a jumbo roll of tin foil into the mix years ago,... so it had about 10+ years of "cementing" where do i go with this now is my question, like i have a fresh box of borax and i stopped myself before melting it i have no clue what to do with it its about a good 5 inches thick on both pails at bottom its like black sludge from central Canada where can i sell this am not going to wpg to sell it the dude was trying to rip me off on it when i know the purity of it already, ect. ect, i was gonna melt then sell, because i think it just not right in my nature to rid of it when its just a mess in a pail really,.... kinda need the guidence n help on what to do or where to go with this predicamint? of mine also am i visual learner im not a chemist but not a silly goose either

 

[Yggdrasil]

hi names randy, im seeking for knowledge is why i signed up,......what brings me here is i have 2, 5 gallon pails of spent photo mixer (the rotten egg smelling stuff)i recently discovered either my ol man or one my uncles had dropped in a jumbo roll of tin foil into the mix years ago,... so it had about 10+ years of "cementing" where do i go with this now is my question, like i have a fresh box of borax and i stopped myself before melting it i have no clue what to do with it its about a good 5 inches thick on both pails at bottom its like black sludge from central Canada where can i sell this am not going to wpg to sell it the dude was trying to rip me off on it when i know the purity of it already, ect. ect, i was gonna melt then sell, because i think it just not right in my nature to rid of it when its just a mess in a pail really,.... kinda need the guidence n help on what to do or where to go with this predicamint? of mine also am i visual learner im not a chemist but not a silly goose either

Welcome.
It is always hard to fix the mess after others, since we do not know exactly what was one to it.
Why do you think it was a roll of Tin? or is it Aluminum foil you mean?
If it was Aluminum there should not be much of value in the liquid.
Care fully siphon off the liquid and check your solids.
Are they heavy or fluffy?

 

[haveagojoe]

Nice! I've never seen or done this but I believe all you need to do is mix it up with water, let it settle and pour the water off the top... do that a few times to wash it, on the last time use distilled water; then spread it out on a plastic tray to dry; when it's fully dried to a powder it's ready to melt.
Hopefully someone will confirm, and also suggest how to treat the waste washwater safely.

 

[Randy22D]

Welcome.
It is always hard to fix the mess after others, since we do not know exactly what was one to it.
Why do you think it was a roll of Tin? or is it Aluminum foil you mean?
If it was Aluminum there should not be much of value in the liquid.
Care fully siphon off the liquid and check your solids.
Are they heavy or fluffy?

Heavy

 

[4metals]

If you are thinking this is Silver from dental or doctors Xray film processing than the metal may be iron not tin. Anyway the iron converts the silver dissolved in thiosulfate into a silver sulfur compound and it needs to be dried and fluxed and melted with steel rebar to recover the Silver. The methods have been covered many times here on the forum.

 

[haveagojoe]

iron not tin.

Im sure he means aluminium. Tin foil is a very common colloquialism for it.

 

[4metals]

Im sure he means aluminium. Tin foil is a very common colloquialism for it.

But iron, as in steel wool is what is used in the flow through canisters to drop the mud as a silver sulfide which is later collected dried and. melted with borax and iron.

It is not easy to speculate having no idea what was done as a form of pretreatment so all we can do is refer to methodology used to produce similar to results described.

 

[haveagojoe]

But iron, as in steel wool is what is used in the flow through canisters to drop the mud as a silver sulfide which is later collected dried and. melted with borax and iron.

It is not easy to speculate having no idea what was done as a form of pretreatment so all we can do is refer to methodology used to produce similar to results described.

http://www.film-and-darkroom-user.org.uk/forum/archive/index.php/t-9318.html

 

[4metals]

This is the form I have seen the recovery process, this uses steel wool. I am sure both methods work, the trick is figuring out which method was used.

 

[haveagojoe]

This is the form I have seen the recovery process, this uses steel wool. I am sure both methods work, the trick is figuring out which method was used.

I hope Randy will be back to clarify and maybe show off a nice big lump of metal! Or better still a big bag of silver shot...
It's kind of a pity photography went digital, I remember messing around with darkroom equipment as a kid, making contact prints, pinhole cameras... I didn't know at the time that the fluids were worth saving- perhaps they weren't back then, with the price of silver being much lower. Real photos seemed so much more special though. I guess there are folks out there still doing it the old way but it must be a real niche market now. Reminds me to go through the old family photo albums over the holidays.

 

[4metals]

With digital images used in most dental offices, the Kodak canister business is a shadow of it's former self.

 

[kurtak]

.what brings me here is i have 2, 5 gallon pails of spent photo mixer

Per the bold print (above quote) It may be a type o but that should read photo fixer & not photo mixer

As pointed out by 4metals these photo fixer solutions are a silver sulfate solution (silver dissolved in thiosulfate)

Also as pointed out by 4metals the way the silver in "normally" recovered from those solutions is by cementing the silver out of the solution with steel wool (the method I have used) I have never heard of doing it with aluminum foil so am not sure if &/or how well that works

In the cementing process the silver sulfate (dissolved silver) is reduced to silver sulfide (a solid "form" of silver)

I say "form" of silver because it is not yet actual silver metal - rather it is a solid complex of silver plus sulfur

So it needs to be further reduced from the silver sulfide to actual silver

That is done (as pointed out by 4metals) by smelting it in a gas furnace with flux & iron

The iron is needed in the smelt as it works as the reducing agent in the smelt by taking away the sulfur atom that is attached to a silver atom thereby reducing the silver sulfide to actual silver

In that high temp smelting process the sulfur actually dissolves the iron creating iron sulfide which is then slagged of by the flux leaving you with you actual silver metal

i recently discovered either my ol man or one my uncles had dropped in a jumbo roll of tin foil into the mix years ago,... so it had about 10+ years of "cementing"

Because they used tin (aluminum) foil to cement the silver (from sulfate to sulfide) & I don't really know if &/or how well aluminum foil works for this there are a couple of tests I would do - with both the sludge in the bottom of the buckets & the solutions

I just don't have time right now to post that (testing)

In the mean time here is another (old) thread about this that may help with understanding this process

https://goldrefiningforum.com/threads/metals-from-picture-fixer-solutions.12404/

Kurt