I tried converting washed and cleaned silver chloride to metallic silver using the sugar and lye method and it clearly didn't go well. Trying to see if anyone can help me fix this issue. After using the sugar and lye method, I washed the precipitate, then tried melting it, in which some parts of the precipitate melted into silver buttons, while other parts were just a crumbled unmelted mess (there was a mixture of both crumbled unmelted pieces and fully melted silver in the crucible). What should I do with the parts that did not convert into metallic silver? Can I recover from this and start over? In the pictures showing the corningware dish, the precipitate pieces on the left are after trying to melt (which resulted in the mixture of both crumbled unmelted pieces and fully melted silver in the crucible), while the precipitate pieces on the right have not been melted yet.
Silver chloride conversion issues
- Thread starter icejj
- Start date
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Do you mean Lye first then Sugar or as you are saying above sugar and lye?
Was the first step after wash Lye additions until the material was almost black like oxide and lots of stirring.
As you are stirring, stir some stuff to the glass side to see if there is a white smear.
If there is a white smear stir and add more lye until no white smear or line appears on glass. Stirring, stirring.
I use a battery drill with stir rod, or lots of hand stirring.
Then add sugar carefully stirring stirring I use KAO syrup carefully because it will react and keep heating up.
It can boil over like crazy. You will see the condensation on the beaker from exothermic reaction
Carefully I get to a near boil, also the color of the material is turning much lighter.
Use a casserole dish under the beaker just in case.
Pay attention to the proper colors.
I have a hard time telling with your pictures if you had enough heat when melting.
Was the first step after wash Lye additions until the material was almost black like oxide and lots of stirring.
As you are stirring, stir some stuff to the glass side to see if there is a white smear.
If there is a white smear stir and add more lye until no white smear or line appears on glass. Stirring, stirring.
I use a battery drill with stir rod, or lots of hand stirring.
Then add sugar carefully stirring stirring I use KAO syrup carefully because it will react and keep heating up.
It can boil over like crazy. You will see the condensation on the beaker from exothermic reaction
Carefully I get to a near boil, also the color of the material is turning much lighter.
Use a casserole dish under the beaker just in case.
Pay attention to the proper colors.
I have a hard time telling with your pictures if you had enough heat when melting.
I added lye first, then sugar. Yes, I added lye until almost black and did the smear test. I believe that I did all of the steps that you mentioned correctly, but based on my results it seems as if I was wrong somewhere. I believe I had enough heat, as some parts were completely melted and flowing while other parts was more of a soft crumbling substance until it hardened after removing the heat. I'll put the torch to it again tomorrow just to make sure though.
You did not convert all rhe Chloride to metal, that would be my guess.
Any idea on how to proceed from here to convert the chloride to metal? Is this process different since now I have dried silver chloride and maybe something else????
I guess smelting is the only option now.
Thank you. I will read more on this and give it a try!!!
