In theory yes.
Interesting Idea, I suspect it is slow, but I'd love to get a report on how it went.
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Bullion.Forum
Processing SilverPlate With H2O Cell
- Thread starter modtheworld44
- Start date
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Interesting Idea, I suspect it is slow, but I'd love to get a report on how it went.
MooseMan
Member
Yes slow for sure, but I'm never in a rush with any of my hobbies!
If/when I do it, I'll take some pictures and provide as much info as I can.
Just glad I can have some input that just might give someone else a lightbulb moment.
If/when I do it, I'll take some pictures and provide as much info as I can.
Just glad I can have some input that just might give someone else a lightbulb moment.
Haroldj1956
New member
Hi, first post here. I Hear so much about not using tap water to keep chlorine out of different processes. I have a well and no chlorine, probably a little calcium and iron in my tap water, will this hurt anything?
I have not done anything yet, but want to experiment with e-waste to recover gold and silver. Then run the silver through a silver cell to purify it. ANY tips are appreciated as I would like to have it work minimizing the pitfalls.
I have not done anything yet, but want to experiment with e-waste to recover gold and silver. Then run the silver through a silver cell to purify it. ANY tips are appreciated as I would like to have it work minimizing the pitfalls.
Then you ate talking about another type of cell.
The H2O stripping cell removes silver plating from silver plated items.
To purify it you melt this and run it through a proper cell with Silver anode and Silver Nitrate electrolyte.
The main process you need to keep chlorine away from is in refining silver. The H2O cell described in this thread is meant for recovering silver, not refining it, so chlorinated water is fine.
When refining gold, chlorinated water is fine, as the solution is already chloride based.
It's all kind of confusing when you start, but the more you study, the more it starts to make sense.
Dave
When refining gold, chlorinated water is fine, as the solution is already chloride based.
It's all kind of confusing when you start, but the more you study, the more it starts to make sense.
Dave
Martijn
Well-known member
I've found that adding salt to the water speeds things up considerably. You can tap off the silver after some minutes in stead of waiting some hours for the fork or spoon to finish.
Flattening the spoons helps but i 'see' the current go around to the far end and deplate that side too. It first turns black, creeping and darkening arcoss the surface and then turning white in the same way. Fascinating to watch.
I also don't have to turn the piece around anymore with the salt added.
Some yield numbers i got from this: 3060 grams of knives spoons and forks gave me 114 grams of silver. So 3.72% yield. And a lot if work for that bit of silver. But I'm going to make a necklace and some rings from it.
I recovered the silver from the black sludge by covering in HCl to convert to AgCl. which also cleaned it up, dissolving other base metal oxides.
Then I let it sit in the same cold HCl for a week with an occasional stirr every day. It became almost white with a purple tinge to it.
I used to convert to AgNO3 and cement on copper so I tried to avoid AgCl, but I was pointed to the sulphuric / iron method for silver chloride by some members and that turned out really great. A lot better and less messy than the lye sugar way, for me.. I like pH- better than pH+ anyway for some reason.
Rinsed and dried silver from plated cutlery, ready to melt for the silver cell:
The stripped cutlery:
Martijn.
Flattening the spoons helps but i 'see' the current go around to the far end and deplate that side too. It first turns black, creeping and darkening arcoss the surface and then turning white in the same way. Fascinating to watch.
I also don't have to turn the piece around anymore with the salt added.
Some yield numbers i got from this: 3060 grams of knives spoons and forks gave me 114 grams of silver. So 3.72% yield. And a lot if work for that bit of silver. But I'm going to make a necklace and some rings from it.
I recovered the silver from the black sludge by covering in HCl to convert to AgCl. which also cleaned it up, dissolving other base metal oxides.
Then I let it sit in the same cold HCl for a week with an occasional stirr every day. It became almost white with a purple tinge to it.
I used to convert to AgNO3 and cement on copper so I tried to avoid AgCl, but I was pointed to the sulphuric / iron method for silver chloride by some members and that turned out really great. A lot better and less messy than the lye sugar way, for me.. I like pH- better than pH+ anyway for some reason.
Rinsed and dried silver from plated cutlery, ready to melt for the silver cell:
The stripped cutlery:
Martijn.
May I share the round table of this noble convention with my contribution of my findings:
My journey with the H2O Cell began when I stumbled upon a post from modtheworld44, the original starter of this thread. At first, I was skeptical and dismissed the idea since I had learned that water does not conduct electricity. Looking back, I should have questioned why people are warned against using hairdryers while sitting in a bathtub.
Since then, I have immersed myself in research on this fascinating phenomenon, among other exciting developments in technology and science. While I am not yet ready to provide a full-scale report, I would like to share some of my findings and images with you.
Material Silver-plated cuttlery after processing
My "Cell" One of my prototypes for a H2O cell at the start of the process....
The "Cell" after 2-3 days....
XRF analysis of the raw material that was produced by the "Cell".
Same stock as before but this time this material has been refined by me using ordinary silver cell
And another one from "Marcel´s Lab":
This one here shows a batch of contact pins from electronics after being processed for several days.
At the moment I am quite busy so I cannot compile a comprehensive report, but some of my finding are here to be shared with you:
1. An H2O Cell is an H2O cell because it runs with pure H2O. If you add salt call it a shore system (If I am not mistaken, seasoned users correct me) a method that is almost 100 years old - if not much older.
2. Water, even when distilled and demineralized, is capable of conducting electricity due to a process called autoprotolysis. Autoprotolysis refers to the spontaneous breakdown of water molecules into H+ and OH- ions. The H+ ions will evaporate, while the OH- ions cause the water to become slightly alkaline. This process can be triggered by external factors such as light or room temperature, or it may be a quantum effect. It is fascinating that such a simple substance exhibits such behavior.
My goal is to use only pure water without any additives. Although it may be faster to add acid or table salt, I believe that using pure water is the best way to approach this method. However, this is not an easy task, and I am working on overcoming the limitations to make it feasible.
This is just a glimpse of my project, but since then, I have made significant progress by conducting more tests with various materials, improving workflows, and developing technical devices to increase efficiency. However, using pure water alone is currently inefficient and unstable in the long run due to the caustic environment it creates. When using electricity, an abundance of OH- ions and metal hydroxides, such as copper hydroxide, are formed, which ultimately reverses the electric direction and halts the electrolysis process.
While there are some challenges associated with the pure water method, it also offers unparalleled advantages. In fact, in certain applications, it can even replace the use of Cyanide compounds or Aqua Regia.
For the sake of the health of small-scale refiners, their family members, and bystanders, I am committed to continuing my work. My motivation is not to generate extra income by using the "Cell" by myself on a daily basis but rather to find the best approach and overcome any challenges associated with the process. I have the freedom to pursue this project purely for the sake of scientific curiosity and problem-solving.
Whatever I reacted to the first postings of modtheworld44 - the starter of this thread and the person who tried it out as the first one to my knowledge - was stupid and ignorant. I thought I knew it all, but he did not know much about chemistry, simply tried something out and shared his findings.
That is awesome and taught me a lesson! ;-)
Till then,
Marcel
My journey with the H2O Cell began when I stumbled upon a post from modtheworld44, the original starter of this thread. At first, I was skeptical and dismissed the idea since I had learned that water does not conduct electricity. Looking back, I should have questioned why people are warned against using hairdryers while sitting in a bathtub.
Since then, I have immersed myself in research on this fascinating phenomenon, among other exciting developments in technology and science. While I am not yet ready to provide a full-scale report, I would like to share some of my findings and images with you.
Material Silver-plated cuttlery after processing
My "Cell" One of my prototypes for a H2O cell at the start of the process....
The "Cell" after 2-3 days....
XRF analysis of the raw material that was produced by the "Cell".
Same stock as before but this time this material has been refined by me using ordinary silver cell
And another one from "Marcel´s Lab":
This one here shows a batch of contact pins from electronics after being processed for several days.
At the moment I am quite busy so I cannot compile a comprehensive report, but some of my finding are here to be shared with you:
1. An H2O Cell is an H2O cell because it runs with pure H2O. If you add salt call it a shore system (If I am not mistaken, seasoned users correct me) a method that is almost 100 years old - if not much older.
2. Water, even when distilled and demineralized, is capable of conducting electricity due to a process called autoprotolysis. Autoprotolysis refers to the spontaneous breakdown of water molecules into H+ and OH- ions. The H+ ions will evaporate, while the OH- ions cause the water to become slightly alkaline. This process can be triggered by external factors such as light or room temperature, or it may be a quantum effect. It is fascinating that such a simple substance exhibits such behavior.
My goal is to use only pure water without any additives. Although it may be faster to add acid or table salt, I believe that using pure water is the best way to approach this method. However, this is not an easy task, and I am working on overcoming the limitations to make it feasible.
This is just a glimpse of my project, but since then, I have made significant progress by conducting more tests with various materials, improving workflows, and developing technical devices to increase efficiency. However, using pure water alone is currently inefficient and unstable in the long run due to the caustic environment it creates. When using electricity, an abundance of OH- ions and metal hydroxides, such as copper hydroxide, are formed, which ultimately reverses the electric direction and halts the electrolysis process.
While there are some challenges associated with the pure water method, it also offers unparalleled advantages. In fact, in certain applications, it can even replace the use of Cyanide compounds or Aqua Regia.
For the sake of the health of small-scale refiners, their family members, and bystanders, I am committed to continuing my work. My motivation is not to generate extra income by using the "Cell" by myself on a daily basis but rather to find the best approach and overcome any challenges associated with the process. I have the freedom to pursue this project purely for the sake of scientific curiosity and problem-solving.
Whatever I reacted to the first postings of modtheworld44 - the starter of this thread and the person who tried it out as the first one to my knowledge - was stupid and ignorant. I thought I knew it all, but he did not know much about chemistry, simply tried something out and shared his findings.
That is awesome and taught me a lesson! ;-)
Till then,
Marcel
- Joined
- Sep 28, 2021
- Messages
- 77
The H2O is for plated items, and after the plating is gone you remove it from the cell, see his first picture.
- Joined
- Sep 28, 2021
- Messages
- 77
Ah, but a lot of the items I had put through mine were "old", and my thoughts were that some of the other precious metals were not discovered until later and so may be within the items too, if only in the smallest of quantities)? Oh that was my thoughts.
I conducted some measurements and stopped the process when there was "nothing going on" anymore or when I observed that the solution had changed from brownish to greenish. This change indicated to me that a significant amount of the plating had been eaten through and that mainly copper was now present on the surface. I stopped the process at that point to avoid reducing the PM concentration any further. However, upon examining the objects afterward, I noticed that the plating had not been completely removed from some of them. This is why I said that this method (using water only) is still far from being efficient and perfect.
Here is another photo of the remains of such an experiment using pin headers and other electromechanical components.
I've been having a go at this with mixed results. Also with salt (NaCl) and dilute HCl as electrolytes. Sometimes I get nice white smoke boiling off or grey silver sloughing off and sometimes I get a horrible brown foamy mush. I'll admit, my record keeping hasn't been spotless but going back through this thread, I notice quite a few comments on the silver coming off in lumps rather than being dissolved into solution and falling out. Also watching many other videos on youtube with different electrolytes and voltages, I see the silver either dissolving or falling off, which are two different pathways and different reactions.
I have begun to think the base metal (of the item) is important and the electrical potential between the base metal and the silver has an important role to play. When the silver falls off in lumps, it is obvious the join between the silver and base is being attacked rather than the silver itself.
Looking at the standard electrode potentials, silver(+0.8V) and copper(+0.3V) are closer than silver and zinc(-.76V) or iron (-0.44V).
Yesterday I tried a plated brass trophy with salt, ran it at 30V and got the yellow foamy glop. Today I'll try again with tap water and a lower voltage and keep an eye on what the base metal is.
I have begun to think the base metal (of the item) is important and the electrical potential between the base metal and the silver has an important role to play. When the silver falls off in lumps, it is obvious the join between the silver and base is being attacked rather than the silver itself.
Looking at the standard electrode potentials, silver(+0.8V) and copper(+0.3V) are closer than silver and zinc(-.76V) or iron (-0.44V).
Yesterday I tried a plated brass trophy with salt, ran it at 30V and got the yellow foamy glop. Today I'll try again with tap water and a lower voltage and keep an eye on what the base metal is.
Attachments
The variables are
1. Tap water impurities
2. Cathode material
3. Voltage
4. Base metal(s)
5. Silver plate purity
6. Temperature
7. Distance between anode and cathode
1, which will change over time as silver and or/other metals come into solution and perhaps react with chlorides/fluorides, along with 3, 6 and 7 will define the current.
Today I ran a teaspoon in tap water at 31V. All was well until the base metal of the spoon, which was copper, was exposed, and then began dissolving with the silver and the cloud around the spoon went from white to green. I had the spoon and my cathode, a stainless steel fork, side by side about 1cm apart at the closest point. I also didn't notice the silver dissolving from the closest point any faster than from the furthest point. I didn't notice any softening/sloughing of the silver plate.
The green colour is quite distinctive. It's a similar colour to the green found on copper roofs or copper boat hulls. That, however, is Cu2CO3(OH)2 and I can't think where any carbon might have come from. Copper hydroxide is most likely, then copper fluoride as I'm in the UK and they say they put fluoride in the water. I reckon they put chlorine in the water instead, but what do I know? When I fix my TDS meter, I'll update on how ionised the water is.
1. Tap water impurities
2. Cathode material
3. Voltage
4. Base metal(s)
5. Silver plate purity
6. Temperature
7. Distance between anode and cathode
1, which will change over time as silver and or/other metals come into solution and perhaps react with chlorides/fluorides, along with 3, 6 and 7 will define the current.
Today I ran a teaspoon in tap water at 31V. All was well until the base metal of the spoon, which was copper, was exposed, and then began dissolving with the silver and the cloud around the spoon went from white to green. I had the spoon and my cathode, a stainless steel fork, side by side about 1cm apart at the closest point. I also didn't notice the silver dissolving from the closest point any faster than from the furthest point. I didn't notice any softening/sloughing of the silver plate.
The green colour is quite distinctive. It's a similar colour to the green found on copper roofs or copper boat hulls. That, however, is Cu2CO3(OH)2 and I can't think where any carbon might have come from. Copper hydroxide is most likely, then copper fluoride as I'm in the UK and they say they put fluoride in the water. I reckon they put chlorine in the water instead, but what do I know? When I fix my TDS meter, I'll update on how ionised the water is.
Attachments
Last edited:
silvergoblin
Member
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2012
- Messages
- 10
Hi all. I have been sneaking around here for years and I think this is my first post....
Anyway, I'm running an h2o cell with the added NaCl. Deplating is quite fast. I'm running about 20v at 9.5 amps and keep having the brown mushy problem.....
At first I thought it might be copper chloride but today I tried adding hot dilute sulphuric to see if it would dissolve. The coppery brown turned dark, almost black and within a few seconds.
I have searched here quite a bit and cannot find what this brown spongy mud is.
Thanks for any help
Anyway, I'm running an h2o cell with the added NaCl. Deplating is quite fast. I'm running about 20v at 9.5 amps and keep having the brown mushy problem.....
At first I thought it might be copper chloride but today I tried adding hot dilute sulphuric to see if it would dissolve. The coppery brown turned dark, almost black and within a few seconds.
I have searched here quite a bit and cannot find what this brown spongy mud is.
Thanks for any help
- Joined
- Jun 9, 2019
- Messages
- 67
When I used to deplate silverware and flatware, I used to get a brownish sediment buildup after a while. Additions of HCl dissolved this mush for me though.
Edited as I turned off autocorrect, and type like i have all thumbs!
Edited as I turned off autocorrect, and type like i have all thumbs!
No need to add HCl, ut will create Silver Chloride and create issues.
- Joined
- Jun 9, 2019
- Messages
- 67
Its interesting to read that silver plating can dissolve in water (under current)... i didn't think this could happen. In my silver de-plating experience, the Ag almost always came off in pieces/flakes. Never had any AgCl formation in my little de-plating cell from additions of HCl. Again though... my operation is small and i dont have a vast amount of experience with Ag plate recovery.
There are whole threads dealing with this in here.
Search for H2O cell
Have you tried using KNO3 and water ?
I found it work well .
- Joined
- Jun 9, 2019
- Messages
- 67
No, I haven't. This also sounds interesting.
I used salt water at first, then plain tap water after a while. I ended up stopping deplating silver after a couple months though, as I needed a good paying side-hustle with the limited time I had back then. De-plating silver was just not profitable enough... nowhere near as profitable as refining karat gold scrap.
For context, we are talking 2018/2019 for my last deplating experiments. I still have 30 lb or more of silver plated bowls and flatware I never got around to deplating - just taking up space in my basement now.
Since then, I've accepted a couple promotions at my day job and dont need to depend on a side hustle anymore. Now I tinker with chemistry and gold refining at my leisure.
