MysticColby
Well-known member
- Joined
- Aug 17, 2011
- Messages
- 425
it might/could work best to have the cathode be a stainless steel bowl, then you suspend the anode (silver-plated item) in the middle, turning it on it's side occasionally and such. I have a pretty good container I'll probably do when I get enough silver to do this. It's about 30 cm tall, 20 cm wide, and made out of some sort of stainless steel (it's an air-tight container for storing sugar or flour on your counter top - I'll research which alloy of stainless it is first). You would not get concave areas (like inside a cup), but you wouldn't have to rotate the piece half way through.
ah, so you're running 24v but reading 0 amps. that sounds more expected. water has such a high resistance that you won't get much current flow at this range of voltages. It also means there isn't a high amount of ions in the water.
the borax will have /some/ silver trapped in it. usually as small spheres. Two ways I know of to get them out:
-add the borax to the next batch. They will still be stuck in there, but not many new ones will be.
-dissolve the borax in dilute nitric acid. takes a long long time and is not worth the acid expense
I usually use the borax until it fills with oxides (gets gunky), then save it in a ziplock. When you get a lot of it, add some fresh borax and some fluorspar then heat all of it in a crucible to very high heat (maybe 1200ºC), stir with graphite rod, then pour it all into a cone mold. the fluorspar makes the borax more liquidy and there will be a button of silver at the bottom of the mold. I keep the button and toss the borax, accepting the small amount of silver lost (should be less than a gram)
getting back to the black: it's metal oxides trapped in the borax that turn it black.
Before adding NaOH to the liquid before harvesting, I recommend this test:
decant the liquid on top of the recovered silver through a filter, save the liquid.
to the liquid, add about a gram of NaOH, stir.
let it settle and observer for any precipitate (silver oxide should be a very visible black). If there is a significant amount, adding NaOH would be a worth-while thing to do. otherwise, it's not needed.
silver oxide can be melted just like other silver powders. it releases the oxygen as it heats up, giving you metallic silver
I'm guessing a major reason for your high loss is because of water. Also, if the is silver oxide being formed, the oxide part will add some weight. And blowing it away with a torch doesn't help either
ah, so you're running 24v but reading 0 amps. that sounds more expected. water has such a high resistance that you won't get much current flow at this range of voltages. It also means there isn't a high amount of ions in the water.
the borax will have /some/ silver trapped in it. usually as small spheres. Two ways I know of to get them out:
-add the borax to the next batch. They will still be stuck in there, but not many new ones will be.
-dissolve the borax in dilute nitric acid. takes a long long time and is not worth the acid expense
I usually use the borax until it fills with oxides (gets gunky), then save it in a ziplock. When you get a lot of it, add some fresh borax and some fluorspar then heat all of it in a crucible to very high heat (maybe 1200ºC), stir with graphite rod, then pour it all into a cone mold. the fluorspar makes the borax more liquidy and there will be a button of silver at the bottom of the mold. I keep the button and toss the borax, accepting the small amount of silver lost (should be less than a gram)
getting back to the black: it's metal oxides trapped in the borax that turn it black.
Before adding NaOH to the liquid before harvesting, I recommend this test:
decant the liquid on top of the recovered silver through a filter, save the liquid.
to the liquid, add about a gram of NaOH, stir.
let it settle and observer for any precipitate (silver oxide should be a very visible black). If there is a significant amount, adding NaOH would be a worth-while thing to do. otherwise, it's not needed.
silver oxide can be melted just like other silver powders. it releases the oxygen as it heats up, giving you metallic silver
I'm guessing a major reason for your high loss is because of water. Also, if the is silver oxide being formed, the oxide part will add some weight. And blowing it away with a torch doesn't help either