Hi guys, do any of you know about someone that uses sulfamic acid as electrolyte in a silver cell? Anyone done that?
I am not much into refining I come from a Jewellery background. Due to difficulties in procuring nitric in the EU and my desire to etch silver I use a method that is able to electrochemically dissolve silver with 99 pure sulfamic acid in aqua dest as electrolyte. This works very well for my purpose (etching)and I also noticed that the dissolved silver collects as a greyish sponge at the cathode where it can be filtered off and reclaimed.
The next jump was - why not use that method for refining silver? At least on a small scale. I dont think that this will be useful for commercial rigs or large scale operations - the solubility of silversulfamate is - compared to silvernitrate- relatively low, but still an order of magnitude above other silver salts. (Solubility of silversulfamate 100g/l at 25°C. ) Sulfamic is easy to get, cost here is about 3,5€-5€ per kg depending on how much per order. Nitric is probably cheaper if you get it by the barrel but if you can get no nitric nor nitrates to make some at all - its a viable alternative at least.
In a silvernitrate based cell silver will collect at the cathode as fine silver up to a copper content of about 60g/L or such AFAIK- Does anyone know if thats true for a sulfamic acid electrolyte too?
The other idea I have, if copper is codeposited even at low overall content at the cathode would be the use of a divided cell with a conductive agar bridge or a membrane and then just dropping the silver as silverchloride from the anolyte and go from there. but that would be more hassle overall.
Yes I did use the search function, but all it came up with was the use of sulfamic as a denoxxing agent.
So far I use a sulfamic acid electrolyte only to etch silver and filter off the stuff that collects at the cathode. I am not doing large batcheslots of pieces but rather make a new electrolyte fresh when needed. so even while the anode is sterling there isnt much time for copper to go into solution in large quantities. from other posts and vids on silver cells I noticed that to get some nice and shiny silver crystals forming at least a noticeable amount of copper needs to go into solution at first- thats right? So I (maybe wrongly) assume that the silver at the cathode is more like a greyish spongy mass instead of solid silver crystals because there is no decent copper build up in the solution ?
Well, all these questions probably can be easily solved by more experiments and sending the reclaimed silver out for assaying - but before doing that I simply wanted your opinion on that topic - as said I am no refiner. All I see is I can dissolve silver fairly easily at the anode and then collect some at the cathode and that without nitric or nitrates needed.- my focus is more on my etched pieces - but the possibility of small scale refining just came to mind for processing small quantities of scrap thats always present in a jewellers studio.
I am not much into refining I come from a Jewellery background. Due to difficulties in procuring nitric in the EU and my desire to etch silver I use a method that is able to electrochemically dissolve silver with 99 pure sulfamic acid in aqua dest as electrolyte. This works very well for my purpose (etching)and I also noticed that the dissolved silver collects as a greyish sponge at the cathode where it can be filtered off and reclaimed.
The next jump was - why not use that method for refining silver? At least on a small scale. I dont think that this will be useful for commercial rigs or large scale operations - the solubility of silversulfamate is - compared to silvernitrate- relatively low, but still an order of magnitude above other silver salts. (Solubility of silversulfamate 100g/l at 25°C. ) Sulfamic is easy to get, cost here is about 3,5€-5€ per kg depending on how much per order. Nitric is probably cheaper if you get it by the barrel but if you can get no nitric nor nitrates to make some at all - its a viable alternative at least.
In a silvernitrate based cell silver will collect at the cathode as fine silver up to a copper content of about 60g/L or such AFAIK- Does anyone know if thats true for a sulfamic acid electrolyte too?
The other idea I have, if copper is codeposited even at low overall content at the cathode would be the use of a divided cell with a conductive agar bridge or a membrane and then just dropping the silver as silverchloride from the anolyte and go from there. but that would be more hassle overall.
Yes I did use the search function, but all it came up with was the use of sulfamic as a denoxxing agent.
So far I use a sulfamic acid electrolyte only to etch silver and filter off the stuff that collects at the cathode. I am not doing large batcheslots of pieces but rather make a new electrolyte fresh when needed. so even while the anode is sterling there isnt much time for copper to go into solution in large quantities. from other posts and vids on silver cells I noticed that to get some nice and shiny silver crystals forming at least a noticeable amount of copper needs to go into solution at first- thats right? So I (maybe wrongly) assume that the silver at the cathode is more like a greyish spongy mass instead of solid silver crystals because there is no decent copper build up in the solution ?
Well, all these questions probably can be easily solved by more experiments and sending the reclaimed silver out for assaying - but before doing that I simply wanted your opinion on that topic - as said I am no refiner. All I see is I can dissolve silver fairly easily at the anode and then collect some at the cathode and that without nitric or nitrates needed.- my focus is more on my etched pieces - but the possibility of small scale refining just came to mind for processing small quantities of scrap thats always present in a jewellers studio.
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