Silver Chloride

[apothecaryjames]

I have some silver chloride at home in a bucket, still wet. It probably has other metals in it including gold/aluminum/steel, but mostly is silver. It came this way by nitric acid and adding tap water. Now my question is what should I do. I have a process that may work but I have never tried it. It says dry the AgCl and then take 1kg dry AgCl and add 2kg NaOH with H2O and add into AgCl, then wait an hour and add 2/3kg of dextrose anhydrate. After 6 hours filter with hot water and I should have cemented silver, which I dont know what that means. I'm guessing I would put all this into a plastic tub cement mixer? Any more ideas on recovering the silver to sell?

 

[4metals]

Don't dry it out, just figure out the volume of silver chloride and follow the instructions you will find by searching the forum for the karo syrup method of converting silver chloride to silver metal.

Welcome to the forum and good luck.

 

[apothecaryjames]

sounds like a good deal, will be doing this very soon, thanks

 

[apothecaryjames]

I've been reading up and understand some of the process, but am new to this. I am doing electronic scrap and am reading that some lead may be in the mix? I am not sure, I figured it was mostly silver, but could anyone tell me how much silver comes from older motherboards? i did about 50, and i have 10lbs of wet (what i think is) silver chloride.

 

[Fournines]

I've been reading up and understand some of the process, but am new to this. I am doing electronic scrap and am reading that some lead may be in the mix? I am not sure, I figured it was mostly silver, but could anyone tell me how much silver comes from older motherboards? i did about 50, and i have 10lbs of wet (what i think is) silver chloride.

You'll need to provide us with a lot more information before anyone can even begin to decipher what you have.

i did about 50

50 what? 50 boards? 50 pounds?

And what did you do to them? What process did you follow?

I'd say it's impossible for you to have 10 lbs of silver chloride, even if you had 500 lbs of motherboards.

Give us an EXACT description of everything you did, in the order you did it, and maybe we can figure out what kind of a mess you might be in. :lol:

 

[goldsilverpro]

Maybe it was 50 tons.

 

[4metals]

If you take a good sample of your suspect silver chloride and boil it in distilled water, any lead chloride will dissolve so you'll know if it is all silver chloride or a mix.

I would suspect if it is only 10 pounds of boards, you've got a lot of lead chloride.

 

[apothecaryjames]

i'll try the boiling deal

 

[samuel-a]

apothecaryjames

A different approace to this test is with ammonia:
sample your powder, 1-2 grams and put in test tube and add ammonia solution (10-15ml).
shake and stirr for cuple of minutes.
1) If everything dissolves, then the sample is only AgCl (unlikely IMHO).
2) If any white powder remains, that's probably PbCl2 + H2SnO3

In any case (1 or 2) siphon only the clear solution to a different test tube and add HCl. A white precipitate (AgCl) will indicate silver presence.

BUT

Reading thought your posting, i'm somewhat dazed.
How would you produce AgCl by dumping Nitric acid + tap water on to whole mother boards (unless your tap water have excessive chloride contaminants) ?
Have you tested the nitric leach for precence of silver and lead ??

I would expect the white remeining powder you have to be mostly metastannic acid rather then AgCl.
That is, if i understand correctly what you have done...

 

[Harold_V]

You're likely on the right path, samuel----but don't overlook the likelihood that much of that material is probably lead nitrate, which precipitates without assistance as the solution cools.
If my hunch is right, there's likely very little silver present, and what little that may be there can be in the form of elemental silver, having been cemented by the iron and other base metals that have been reported to be in the mix. It would be most helpful to have a clear understanding of what has been done, and to what.

It sure would be nice if those that don't have a clue about what they're doing would do enough research to understand what they can expect by their actions. It would save them considerable time spinning their wheels, and limit the numbers that come here looking for solutions to having followed less than acceptable advice.

Harold

 

[butcher]

Considering the dangers you have in this, I feel studying dealing with waste would be first priority, I too doubt much silver at all.

edit to add some thought,

apothecaryjames, you found a great resouce when you joined this forum, please do look at dealing with waste, also Hokes book and get aquanted with metals and reactions, whole circuit boards dissolved in acids are asking for trouble, and there will not be a lot of silver, but much lead, tin, aluminum, and many other base metals, these can not just be discarded when we are done as we have made some very toxic compounds that can contaminate drinking water, and poision many people,.
Tin chloride is soluble in HCl, silver is insoluble in HCL, lead can also precipitate as white powder with silver chloride, lead chloride (white powder) is soluble in boiling hot water, silver chloride is not soluble in hot or cold water, but silver chloride in hot water when stirred up takes time to settle, adding these powders to water and keep them stirred up in solution bring to boil, lower heat to keep solution hot but not boiling give time for powders (silver to settle) decant liquid and put in jar to cool (lead will settle out when cool) add more water to pot and repeat, decanting this solution to another jar, (the first jar's liquid can be returned to pot to collect more lead).

 

[goldenchild]

Let the mystery powder sit in the sun for a few minutes. If it gets a tint of purple there is silver chloride in it. Probably not much though. Not much at all.

 

[apothecaryjames]

these boards were scraped and also the golden pins set in nitric. i havent tried anything but the sun deal and it does have a darker tint to it