Need some help with Generator Brushes

[rickbb]

If it's already been leached in nitric it won't have much silver left in it. Which is what that analysis shows. Their leach was successful.

 

[g_axelsson]

When doing an analyze on a sample, it is first put into an oven. It is heated to above the boiling point of water and the weight is compared to the original sample. That way they find out the moisture content. Next step is to heat it up to glowing in an oxygen atmosphere until it doesn't loose any more weight. This burns off any organic matter and carbon. Then the weight is compared with the original, so the water content is included in the ignition loss. Anything remaining then goes for analyze. The first list of elements was detected but in very small amounts, the larger list is elements that are below detecting limits.

The sample analyzed was wet, it contained 28.75% of moisture, most of it was carbon and other volatile substances and it burned, 95.65% of the sample went up in smoke, so 95.65-28.75 = 66.9% was probably carbon.
Left after ignition is 4.35% and 1.59% of the original mass was silver. That leaves 2.76% of unknown components. The elements I'm missing from their list is silicon, calcium and oxygen so I guess most of the unspecified mass is calcium or silicon oxides from contaminants in the graphite.

As Rickbb said, the leach with nitric was quite successful.

For each kilo of leached carbon brushes you still got 16g of silver. If you want to extract that last part too you can burn them and leach the ash. A kilo of leached brushes would give 43g of ash and it would contain 16g of silver.
So from 200 pounds of carbon brushes you can extract 110 pounds of silver by straight leaching in nitric. Of the remaining 90 pounds of carbon you would get 3.9 pounds of ash with 1.44 pounds of silver.

Göran

 

[Justincase]

Yes I understand the content.
What surprised me was how effective such a primitive method has been.
I have been going all around the houses and have even started the construction of a rotary calciner/incinerator.
I did not take the contract because I was not certain about the effectiveness of my recovery.
Turns out I needent have worried.
I have been asked to clean up now but the cream of the easaly recovered metal has been had.
I think it is much like the case of VHS and Beta-max.
It is not about having the best system that our economical system rewards,It is about having the technology that is just good enough to do the job that makes the money.
Over engineer and die.It is a luxury I have only every known through governmental contract.
Which is a pity.I love over engineering!!
Exerting an obscene amount of force upon a problem.Yumm EEEE :lol:

 

[Aaronfv]

Good afternoon,

I have about 200 lb's worth of silver carbon generator brushes. I know I can recycle them for a profit, but thought I would look into if it would be better to refine the silver myself. Even though I have read countless posts and watch numerous videos on silver refining, I just can't seem to find anything on silver carbon brushes and silver removal.

So first question, would it be worth it?

Second question is if it is worth it, how would I go about doing it? would it be by crushing them up into a powered or could I do chunks? Then add in the nitric acid and distilled water to get silver nitrate and then use copper to pull out the silver from the nitrate?

I have never tried anything like this before so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

I find myself in a similar situation and really enjoyed reading this thread. I found a video on YouTube that might be really helpful.