Bluebloomer
Well-known member
As the title implies; I still have around 11 pounds of keyboard mylars to process but I'm not sure what the best method is to recover the silver, and why.
From what I have read so far there are 3 processess;
- Melting the mylars
- Recover the silver with lye and H2O2
- Dillute HNO3
As there isn't that much silver in those mylars anyway, I guess one would choose for the method with the least amount of losses. Just curious if people would share their experience with all 3 methods and perhaps bring up the discussion what method to choose and why.
If I'm correct, melting would give some loss if the heat is too high. With dillute HNO3 you would need a lot of patience to handle the mylars one by one, and with the lye one would have to be very cautious not to get burned by splashing drops of lye and hydrogen peroxide. The waste would be relatively harmles, and could be used to neutralize waste acids perhaps ?
Still doesn't bring me to choose either of 3 methods as they have all pros and cons
From what I have read so far there are 3 processess;
- Melting the mylars
- Recover the silver with lye and H2O2
- Dillute HNO3
As there isn't that much silver in those mylars anyway, I guess one would choose for the method with the least amount of losses. Just curious if people would share their experience with all 3 methods and perhaps bring up the discussion what method to choose and why.
If I'm correct, melting would give some loss if the heat is too high. With dillute HNO3 you would need a lot of patience to handle the mylars one by one, and with the lye one would have to be very cautious not to get burned by splashing drops of lye and hydrogen peroxide. The waste would be relatively harmles, and could be used to neutralize waste acids perhaps ?
Still doesn't bring me to choose either of 3 methods as they have all pros and cons