Silver

[sakosakarian]

hey guys
i bought from a factory the dust containing parts of silver and other metals
i want to refine silver from it without loosing the silver
does the hydrochloric acid have any effect on it or can it clean the dust from the solution?
whats the easier way to refine the silver without loosing it.

thanks

 

[solar_plasma]

Interesting and I'd like to know more.

Could you explain more detailed what is the dust, what are the other metals, what material did you get from the factorv and what solution? I would like to help with, what I know from my extensive processes the last few month and with the information I gathered on and around the forum, - if I can.

Only a first hint, that may help or not: Silver reacts with HCl by getting coated by a layer of AgCl and then passivated against HCl. I observed, that probes of very fine silver powder can be converted for a large part to silver chloride (AgCl). AgCl is a very fine powder and almost undissoluble in H2O. The AgCl may be one of the best methods for a quantitative analysis, but in many posts they advise to avoid it in refining processes, because it may be more work and effort to get it back to metal, than fx. cementation from silver nitrate. Though both are possibilities. Some may see it different. I would decide depending on the material and the chemical ressources. Until now, as far as I understood you post, I can't see a good reason to use it, especially if the Ag is in the form of fine dust. If the silver is in form of some bigger parts, HCl could be a possibility, since the passivating AgCl layer is very thin.

Depending on your knowlegde and skills there is another very effective and fast method to dissolve basemetals and almost no silver, - but this can be extremely dangerous. An alternative could be hot dilluted sulfuric, for my liking a bit slow and while AgCl only dissolves a few ppm, will AgSO4 dissolve 8 g/l, which has to be recovered again.

Now I have thought of metallic Ag powder. If you have more uncommon compouds of silver in solution, it could be difficult or even very dangerous and you would be best advised by one of the experts.

 

[Ian_B]

Click this link http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=54&t=17706 Download the book print it off and read it.

Or if that's too difficult.

use the search button on the top right

Or

You might have better luck looking in this area of the forum marked "silver"
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=50

Or

http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=12899

you can find the answer to your question in any of the 4 options I posted.

 

[solar_plasma]

That's a good point, - have you started reading as they told you before?

 

[pimpneightez]

I believe the first step would be to incinerate the material to get all organic material out. Then you may give it a HCL bath to get rid of some base metals and after that I would use the nitric. Really hard to say if you don't know exactly what you have. I never re-claimed this type of material so I could be off-base. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[niteliteone]

I believe the first step would be to incinerate the material to get all organic material out. Then you may give it a HCL bath to get rid of some base metals and after that I would use the nitric. Really hard to say if you don't know exactly what you have. I never re-claimed this type of material so I could be off-base. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong.

You seem to be on the right track with this plan. I think Harold_V has a thread on how to deal with this type of scrap or Jewelers Sweeps, which this material sounds like it would be considered.
Be sure to incinerate the material every time you change acid types to avoid dissolving gold before you are ready for that part of recovery.
Very important when changing from HCl to Nitric or vice versa, the 2 ingredients of Aqua Regia.

 

[NobleMetalWorks]

hey guys
i bought from a factory the dust containing parts of silver and other metals
i want to refine silver from it without loosing the silver
does the hydrochloric acid have any effect on it or can it clean the dust from the solution?
whats the easier way to refine the silver without loosing it.

thanks

There are many different ways you can go about recovering the silver from this type of material, they are commonly referred to as "sweeps". However, it sounds like you are dealing with a material that has other metals, and whatever foreign debris but you made no mention of any platinum group metals, nor Au, only Ag. So in reading what you have stated I am assuming the only values you are going after is the silver.

Incineration is certainly required when dealing with this type of material, but you are also going to want to remove any ferrous metals, or metals that can be removed by magnet. It's very simple to do, just take a strong magnet and wrap it in a filter so it's easy to remove the magnetic metal from the magnet after you are finished. Run the magnet through the material to remove any base metals.

With a little more information, and perhaps pictures, along with what type of equipment and experience you have, it might be easier to help you with your next steps. This is the most difficult part about giving advice to others on this forum, unless you have been posting, and others have been reading it's hard to know anything about how you work.

In some cases, depending on the amount of material and what processes you use to recover and refine, it might be better to melt whatever is left over, upgrading the silver content as necessary, melting into an anode bar and using a silver cell to recover the silver. Or it might be better to use what of the wet processes, or maybe, depending on the material itself, you might be better off smelting and slagging off material that you were not able to remove during your incineration or magnet processes.

Could you tell us what methods you have used, what equipment you use for refining silver currently, maybe a little about your experience, pictures of the material would be helpful, etc.

Scott

 

[sakosakarian]

hey guys

thanks for your reply but when i m using HCL i must boil them or leave in a normal temperature
and after i will wash it with water than add nitric we will get blue solution and filter it
which method is better to precipitate the silver?

 

[Furqan143]

Hi Friends
i am in some trouble
Basically i want to extract silver from x ray film used fixer.
can you help me how i extract the silver chemically from the solution instantly???
regards.....
Furqan Ahmad
Faisalabad,Punjab,Pakistan

 

[butcher]

sakosakarian,
In your question:
" when i m using HCl i must boil them or leave in a normal temperature
and after i will wash it with water than add nitric we will get blue solution and filter it
which method is better to precipitate the silver?"

If you made silver chloride it would be insoluble in the nitric (copper or nickel will give a blue color nitrate), also forming aqua regia you may have a little silver dissolve as Ag2O, which will precipitate on dilution, but this would not be much silver, most of your silver would be left in the insolubles (we still do not know what these powders are from so the silver chloride could be mixed with what ever other insoluble material as in your powders.
You never did say where these powders came from or what else they contained, not knowing it was hard for any one to give you a good method, incineration, and removing magnetic material was good advice, but I do not know I would have made silver chloride without knowing what else their was to deal with, there may have been better ways to treat your material depending on what you had.

Furqan143,
There are many posts on the forum that will help you learn to recover silver from the fixer.
A simple forum search using key words:
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/search.php?keywords=recover+silver+from+the+fixer.&terms=all&author=&sv=0&sc=1&sf=all&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&st=0&ch=300&t=0&submit=Search

 

[rickbb]

Hi Friends
i am in some trouble
Basically i want to extract silver from x ray film used fixer.
can you help me how i extract the silver chemically from the solution instantly???
regards.....
Furqan Ahmad
Faisalabad,Punjab,Pakistan

Run the spent fixer through a electrolytic recovery unit designed for this. Best method and yields almost pure silver.

PS. no method will work instantly.