re-refining .999 silver

[jsargent]

This is sort of "out there" so bear with me... Somewhere deep in the bowels of the Internet I ran across the curious notion that there might be profit to be made in further refining of .999 silver. The idea is that say 1000 grams of .999 silver has about 1 gram of "impurities", in theory gold and PGM's mostly. If this is true and the silver is not actually of higher purity than .999 to start with, what do you guys think of the idea in terms of the practicality of doing this?
If all I had to do what dissolve 22 pounds of silver to recover 10 grams of more valuable metal, it seems like it might pay to do so. Plus, you then end up with .9999 pure silver in addition to the good stuff you have extracted. Crazy idea huh?

 

[Lou]

There is always money to be made in purifying metals---it is finding the right buyer for the metals.

My only concern is whether or not you can do it profitably. This would mean acquiring the 3N fine silver for a bit above spot in bulk (10k t. oz per time) and then selling it for the same or near same price.

Also remember the costs in reagents, time, and of course electricity!


Lou

 

[Harold_V]

I'd question the idea of the silver containing greater values, personally. The contamination you're most likely to find is copper. You may even find a slight hint of palladium, but I can't see anything else finding its way to the cathode unless the operation is sloppy. If you do find traces of greater values, rest assured, you're not going to make a dime on the process.

Harold

 

[Lou]

I too also doubt any profit on the metals removed in the purification step, but I don't doubt the capability of making a few cents on adding a couple nines to it.