Refining old silverware

[andu]

I do have a bubbler here but cannot use it for some reasons, I became aware of that fact, but the spoons and forks open on a thin line, and i also split each in two, it does take a lot more of time but the base metal eventually dissolves.

I simply wanted to do a small process and see if i can complete it, not serious .

Will be back when i be about to get a serious chain of reactions going! Finally got this out of my hands.

I were more excited about the chromium/nickel oxides than the silver honestly, and 1 kg of nickel/chromium is worth about same than the expected 20g of silver. I haven't touched the knives yet as they full of stainless so i might do this process again and upload it to youtube.
I almost forget, i'm a youtuber wannabe, rather as hobbyist so i can share my stuff. Been watching sreetips these years since i registered, a lot.

 

[Shark]

Read up on the H20 cell. It is amazing what can be done with bad water and a few amps. I run mine in a 1 gallon wide mouth jug and have used a phone charger in the past.

 

[andu]

I don't have a electrolitic cell for the same reason i'm not using a bubbler, I'm surprised, a phone charger, that is quite amazing. I do plan to get a regulable power supply before starting doing this properly. Piling tools as i'm piling materials.

 

[Sunnyket]

The last reply was to this:

Hello sir,
Actually i was not sure about gold powder purity.
One of my old process are contained tin in final product. When tin present in gold powder it doesn't make good alloy so i added copper to soften alloy while melting. And sold as raw gold

 

[Martijn]

As far as i know tin creates problems when filtering as tin together with nitric forms tin paste.
Tin in HCl would form stannous chloride, reacting with any gold in the AR solution.

Powders are very easy to chemically treat, leach or wash clean compared to molten metals where the contaminants are hidden deep within the alloy.
If you are selling dirty gold, then why refine in the first place? Even with tin. Sounds to me like you're masking the fact there is tin in the gold for some strange reason. Gold is malleable by itself and also without copper.

Trying to understand you.

 

[Sunnyket]

There is just pennies worth of Silver in the plating.
And as I say , using Peroxide on the Silver do not do much other than decompose the Peroxide.
HCl alone will be plenty, at least if you bubble air through it.

Hello sir,
Please help me in this..
After silver refining(with nitric) copper solution remains
How to precipitate copper from that solution..
Currently we use adding iron method into the solution.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Hello sir,
Please help me in this..
After silver refining(with nitric) copper solution remains
How to precipitate copper from that solution..
Currently we use adding iron method into the solution.

Cementing Copper on Iron is as far as I know the easiest and most complete method to get the Copper out.
It will be partly contaminated with Iron and maybe some other metals, but almost clean.
If you want it cleaner you probably need to electro refine it, which may cost more than you gain.

 

[Sunnyket]

Cementing Copper on Iron is as far as I know the easiest and most complete method to get the Copper out.
It will be partly contaminated with Iron and maybe some other metals, but almost clean.
If you want it cleaner you probably need to electro refine it, which may cost more than you gain.

Yes.. actually I'm struggling with iron method as it gets lots of impurities into copper and after that I've to wash that copper with sulphuric acid to remove impurities. It takes lots of time and manpower.
I'm searching for easy method.
I've read somewhere alluminium wire does the work. Dont know the exact way

 

[Yggdrasil]

Yes.. actually I'm struggling with iron method as it gets lots of impurities into copper and after that I've to wash that copper with sulphuric acid to remove impurities. It takes lots of time and manpower.
I'm searching for easy method.
I've read somewhere alluminium wire does the work. Dont know the exact way

Listen, you are the one with knowledge of what you need for the process.
The electromotive series are there for you to read, select what you want.
Iron is used because it is close enough to cement Copper and not much more.
If your feedstock is clean enough you can use what ever fits you, but they all have their own issues to deal with.

 

[Martijn]

Second time I'm advertizing @lazersteve's awesome method today!
Thread 'Processing Sterling Silver without nitric acid' Processing Sterling Silver without nitric acid

A true gem it is! I first read it recently after the man pointed it out himself.

 

[cejohnsonsr1]

I’ve seen this subject come up a few times. I feel it’s important to keep a couple of things in mind. Removing copper from the solution is necessary as a part of the waste treatment process. Iron is chosen because scrap iron is very cheap, very efficient and lasts a long time. With Sterling silver you only have about 7.5% copper. Unless you’re processing industrial quantities, what you recover isn’t valuable enough to even justify the expense of melting the impure cement copper into ingots. If you have a refinery that deals in copper and will buy your cement copper, at any price, then that may be a way to reduce your expense in refining your silver. But otherwise you’re better off just throwing it away and buying fresh copper. This just never even breaks even on a home/amateur/small scale operation.
Edit: I’m not criticizing anyone. I’m just pointing out that expenses have to be considered. If you’re just experimenting, I guess that’s one thing. But if profit is any component of your operation then you really have to do everything you can to keep expenses as low as possible. Refining waste copper on a small scale just never pays off compared to purchasing new copper. Hope that cleared up what I was trying to say.

 

[Martijn]

It does pay off when you can clean up and reuse your silver nitrate electrolyte and save on sterling digestions.
I imagine even used nitric from inquarting gold can be cleaned and put to good use this way.
The copper is a bonus. Perfect for the stockpot.

 

[cejohnsonsr1]

It does pay off when you can clean up and reuse your silver nitrate electrolyte and save on sterling digestions.
I imagine even used nitric from inquarting gold can be cleaned and put to good use this way.
The copper is a bonus. Perfect for the stockpot.

That doesn’t make good sense. Silver nitrate electrolyte doesn’t have any copper in it until it becomes contaminated during the process of silver cell. At that point it’s part of the waste cycle and subject to the disadvantages previously mentioned. There shouldn’t be any used nitric left over from parting the silver and base metals from the gold after inquarting. During the parting any excess nitric can be consumed by pouring in with sterling. The very end of the parting is barely used and saved for use in the beginning of the next parting. There should be very little to no excess nitric from dissolving the gold. So it still comes down to treating your waste and cementing a relatively small amount of very impure copper that isn’t worth even melting into a bar when you compare the expense to just buying fresh copper.

 

[billgold]

I think one of the reasons for using iron to cement out the copper is that any resulting iron compounds are essentially non-toxic.

 

[Yggdrasil]

That doesn’t make good sense. Silver nitrate electrolyte doesn’t have any copper in it until it becomes contaminated during the process of silver cell. At that point it’s part of the waste cycle and subject to the disadvantages previously mentioned. There shouldn’t be any used nitric left over from parting the silver and base metals from the gold after inquarting. During the parting any excess nitric can be consumed by pouring in with sterling. The very end of the parting is barely used and saved for use in the beginning of the next parting. There should be very little to no excess nitric from dissolving the gold. So it still comes down to treating your waste and cementing a relatively small amount of very impure copper that isn’t worth even melting into a bar when you compare the expense to just buying fresh copper.

When the electrolyte is too contaminated by Copper, you have to cement out the Silver to make new electrolyte.
At this point the Copper content may be substantial, and anyway cementing on Iron is a part of the waste treatment cycle.
The Copper from this, should completely fine for cementing the stockpot and such after a thorough cleaning/washing.
If one select to use the Chloride route then the Copper content may not be of much concern,
but one will have a Nitrate rich solution that might be interesting to reclaim the Nitric from, at least in areas that have strong restrictions on Nitric.

 

[Yggdrasil]

I think one of the reasons for using iron to cement out the copper is that any resulting iron compounds are essentially non-toxic.

Yes, when one has arrived at a Copper free solution, most compounds are relatively "benign" but better, they are realetively easy to drop as Hydroxides.

 

[Martijn]

When the electrolyte is too contaminated by Copper, you have to cement out the Silver to make new electrolyte.
At this point the Copper content may be substantial, and anyway cementing on Iron is a part of the waste treatment cycle.
The Copper from this, should completely fine for cementing the stockpot and such after a thorough cleaning/washing.
If one select to use the Chloride route then the Copper content may not be of much concern,
but one will have a Nitrate rich solution that might be interesting to reclaim the Nitric from, at least in areas that have strong restrictions on Nitric.

That's the thing he discovered. He was making nitric from copper nitrate, taking the copper contamination out of the electrolyte.
Read the post.
The contaminated electrolyte can be cleaned and reused.
It is not waste.
So sterling can go in the cell and you can electrowin the copper back out.
No need to waste nitric on dissolving sterling.

 

[Yggdrasil]

That's the thing he discovered. He was making nitric from copper nitrate, taking the copper contamination out of the electrolyte.
Read the post.
The contaminated electrolyte can be cleaned and reused.
It is not waste.
So sterling can go in the cell and you can electrowin the copper back out.
No need to waste nitric on dissolving sterling.

I was replying to cejonsonsr1 not the OP.
Yes there are many good methods inside and outside the box.
You have to read the replies in context

 

[lazersteve]

That doesn’t make good sense. Silver nitrate electrolyte doesn’t have any copper in it until it becomes contaminated during the process of silver cell. At that point it’s part of the waste cycle and subject to the disadvantages previously mentioned. There shouldn’t be any used nitric left over from parting the silver and base metals from the gold after...

Free or left over nitric acid is not the key concept to this process, dissolved Nitrates and their recyclable nature is the big picture. Copper nitrate/sulfate cycling is a money saver in terms of both nitric and sulfuric acid costs. In the copper nitrate cell the silver (and copper for that matter) are catalyst/byproducts that are free aside from initial cell setup, labor, and electricity. The copper nitrate cell is a long term regenerative process that pays dividends over time as long as you have a source of scrap silver and a nitrate salt to keep the molar requirements in the correct region within the cell.

In short with a given silver feedstock the silver is the catalyst, the copper is the byproduct and the nitrate ion is the exchange mechanism, and electrons are the workhorse of the system.

Martin is correct in saying the thread he is referring to has many insights to the copper/silver/nitrate cycle and its continous nature.

Steve

 

[cejohnsonsr1]

Free or left over nitric acid is not the key concept to this process, dissolved Nitrates and their recyclable nature is the big picture. Copper nitrate/sulfate cycling is a money saver in terms of both nitric and sulfuric acid costs. In the copper nitrate cell the silver (and copper for that matter) are catalyst/byproducts that are free aside from initial cell setup, labor, and electricity. The copper nitrate cell is a long term regenerative process that pays dividends over time as long as you have a source of scrap silver and a nitrate salt to keep the molar requirements in the correct region within the cell.

In short with a given silver feedstock the silver is the catalyst, the copper is the byproduct and the nitrate ion is the exchange mechanism, and electrons are the workhorse of the system.

Martin is correct in saying the thread he is referring to has many insights to the copper/silver/nitrate cycle and its continous nature.

Steve

Maybe I misunderstood, but I’m pretty sure the OP was asking about recovering copper. With no offense intended toward anyone, if he has to ask a question about cementing copper on iron, is he really prepared to undertake the processes of regeneration of Nitric and using Sterling as a direct feedstock? And the copper recovered still won’t be worth the expense of recovering it when compared to just buying new copper. Again, no offense intended, but unless I really missed something, this conversation has gotten way off topic.