Recovery of Silver from Spent Plasma TV Monitors

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This is ashes from the internal glass that is stuck on the steel / aluminium sheet.
When i burn this i only try to take away all the thick glue backside the glass.




http://www.casimages.com/img.php?i=140609042039491789.jpg

After this, we reduce it to some 200 microns powder and try to smelt it, but nothing come down...

After this try to assay this powder and find 26 gramms of Ag for one screen...

That s why i need to try the thiourea leaching on this ashes....I keep here 10000 plasma panels, if it really have 26 gramms for 1 screen and i can transform these ugly screens in beautiful 260 little 1kg ingots...I will not use so much space in my warehouse :lol: :lol: :lol: .....
 
Following along intently. Have either one of you tried dissolving some in nitric acid and seeing if any silver drops using copper?
This would help confirm silver.
Grinding glass to a powder will be difficult for most as shards of glass are as dangerous as acids we use. So before diving into the deep end and make a grinding/ processing station for glass; it would be nice to find out if it is worth the effort.

Keep us informed please.

B.S.
 
Pantherlikher said:
Following along intently. Have either one of you tried dissolving some in nitric acid and seeing if any silver drops using copper?
This would help confirm silver.
Grinding glass to a powder will be difficult for most as shards of glass are as dangerous as acids we use. So before diving into the deep end and make a grinding/ processing station for glass; it would be nice to find out if it is worth the effort.

Keep us informed please.

B.S.


Pantherlikher

Watch this video from the three minute mark and see if this is enough confirmation.
http://www.kitco.com/news/video/show/Kitco-News/685/2014-06-09/A-Compelling-Story-For-Silver-IPMI-Speaker



modtheworld44
 
I took one apart this weekend. The model I have looks like it not only has silver but gold as well.

There is a huge Al board that the plasma panel is glued to with a thick foam backing. Like a 1/8" thick foam double sided tape, hard to remove.

The bottom glass in this sandwich appears to have tiny gold wires, like bonding wires, running the horizontal direction. The problem is, these gold "looking" wires are under a coating similar to a white ceramic like coating that forms the tiny cells of the plasma gas and/or the phosphorus that illuminates the cell.

The top layer glass, on the side facing into this white coating of cells has what appear to be lines of silver and a black material running along the vertical. Each row of black line has 2 rows of smaller silver wires. This is also under a coating of some sort, but it's clear. Like a lacquer or such.

I have a sample of each soaking in HCL, the clear coating seemed to dissolve in a few hours, the white does not look affected. I've left them in overnight and will check them after work today.

I tried various solvents to attack these coatings, nothing seemed to touch it. I did try a propane torch and the clear melted back with the silver "looking" wires melting and beading up nicely. The torch did nothing to the white coating over the gold "looking" wires.

I say gold and silver "looking" because I have not been able to test any of it to see if it really is gold or silver yet. Although it does look very promising.

I am also taking pictures of the whole process and will post them as I get further along.
 
Oh and when I was looking up ways to pulverize glass, I found out that glass dust is known to cause lung cancer.

Be careful!
 
I tried already with hot nitric, boiling for 1 hour up, and let cool down all the night, the day after i filter it and put inside some drops of HCl, i can see a light white color appear, and after 1 more day i have a white/ light purple precipitate who become black with NaOH, then add some aldehyde as dextrose, glucose, (not fructose that is a cetone)... The only problem is that this method precipitate differente compounds and i don t really know what ??? because it s not really similar with the silver i have when i process keyboards mylars... :|

I try also cyanidation but i think i take a too little sample that s why nothing can be observed...

Will try to prepare for this week two solutions of 0.5 M of SC(NH2)2 and H2SO4
and precipitate with Na2S


I just add piture of the 2 kinds of powder I have :




On the left, powder of the first glass, the external one ( no calcination )
On the right, powder of the internal glass after calcination (the white one), and inside the little bag some aluminium from the sticker they put for disperse the heat....
 
I never think we can find silver inside the external glass, i always believe the silver stay inside the thin white film on the internal glass but.... :

HNO3

AgNO3 / AgCl

AgNO3

AgCl

AgCl

Ag2O

Ag
 
I have not had the chance to complete my extraction attempts but on the model of plasma I have the silver appears to be printed in thin lines or other wise bonded to the inside of the outer glass of the plasma screen. Over these lines of apparent silver is a clear coating.
 
Hi Evan,

thank you for this good video from Nurd Rage.

This method should be very effective if you have a few amount of glass and if the PM stay inside the glass.

For the plasma, as rickbb say : the silver looks like to stay top of the glass, not trap inside...

Then, only for my opinion and my case, it will be very difficult to find a big " bucket" that i can heat and process a batch of 100 or 200 kilos of broken glass :(

Moreover, the silver is not so expensive so maybe a problem with the cost of the treatment but i m not a professional about this and better i let the true refinner to explain more about this method.

In all the case, thank you for your help and to participate to this thread.

Good luck for you.

Best regards
 
Hey guys, any one knows anything about this process?

"The method of extraction of silver from scrap of plasma TV monitors using noncyanide reagents – sodium thiosulfate and acidothiourea – was investigated, which was followed by silver recovery from acidothiourea leach solutions. It was found that acidothiourea solution gave almost complete extraction of silver while thiosulfate provided only 40% extraction. The rate of silver extraction using acidothiourea solution was found to be extremely fast. An increased dissolution rate was also found at elevated temperature. The recovery of silver through coagulation-precipitation from acidothiourea leach solutions was carried out with a natural biodegradable material, persimmon tannin extract. It was proved to be a promising material for complete silver recovery. Besides, precipitative recovery of silver by means of cementation with zinc powder was conducted. It was found that simple cementation with zinc powder exhibits a very good precipitative property for which it could be used in hydrometallurgical processing."
 
Hi John!
Welcome to us.
Please do not present your questions inside quotes like this.
As you see it will not follow the replies.

As for the actual question, if you are going to use chemicals we want you to study this first:

We ask our new members to do 3 things.
1. Read C.M. Hokes book on refining jewelers scrap, it gives an easy introduction to the most important chemistry regarding refining.
It is free here on the forum: Screen Readable Copy of Hoke's Book
2. Then read the safety section of the forum: Safety
3. And then read about "Dealing with waste" in the forum: Dealing with Waste

Suggested reading: The Library

Forum rules : https://goldrefiningforum.com/threads/gold-refining-forum-rules.31182/post-327766
 
Dismanteled Plama TVs some years ago to check on that paper as well.
The Silver was supposed to be in that second panel or second chamber of the main panel. To make it short: It was a mess with that nasty clue they used (Maybe to seal that gas that creates the plasma layer/chamber) and the numbers given may apply to the whole system, since the silver is only coated on that glass screen and therefore minimal. Plamas TVs are bulky and heavy and they are getting rare. They have some interesting electronics, which you can find inside any PC as well. Scrapping creates a lot of broken glass. The Gold wass only very thinly plated. So for me: Never again.
 
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