MacMasterMike
Member
My question is essentially what options are out there for things to do with the waste from the process. Not asking where to dispose of it but rather what other forms of chemistry can you do with the stuff. Like say recycling acids. From what I've been told by the guy helping me out and get me interested in precious metal refining/recycling was that to hold on to the spent nitric acid. I'm assuming with just copper in the solution he told me that recovery of the nitric was possible with distillation glassware. Now I've only ever done silver refining so please keep that in mind.
I was talking to him about some silver refining and basically filled me in on some more info i found pretty interesting. I'll paraphrase the silver refining process some so bare with me. The best way is to dissolve it all(the silver bronze i have) in nitric acid, adding only enough nitric to dissolve it all, then you can precipitate it out with salt, filter off the AgCl, and keep the copper and sodium nitrate and told me to remember that you can get every drop of your nitric acid back. The lab prof I've done my test with is willing to let me give him my waste and have the lab dispose of it. A very nice service of his but I'll have to try this next step
Take that copper sodium nitrate and mix it with sulfuric acid and then distill it at about 80 degrees Celcius. Very pure, red, fuming nitric acid will come over. You are left with copper sulfate (great for plating) and sodium hydrogen sulfate (good for removing stains) Also if I didn't want that stuff you can add a bunch of aluminum shavings or aluminum foil to it and drop out pure copper powder. I wondered how to get the copper sulfate and sodium hydrogen sulfate separate and if distilling acids is a little much for a novice like myself. The response to those questions were crystallization and using the NaHSO4 with the CuSO4 and makes a great plating salt out of it. Also it appears this isn't that hard assuming you have the proper setup which i would figure is a distillation glass setup of some sizable amount. So I ask the veterans here is the processing of the copper on my hobby scale to perhaps get my nitric back and perhaps get into copper platting a worth while endeavor?
I was talking to him about some silver refining and basically filled me in on some more info i found pretty interesting. I'll paraphrase the silver refining process some so bare with me. The best way is to dissolve it all(the silver bronze i have) in nitric acid, adding only enough nitric to dissolve it all, then you can precipitate it out with salt, filter off the AgCl, and keep the copper and sodium nitrate and told me to remember that you can get every drop of your nitric acid back. The lab prof I've done my test with is willing to let me give him my waste and have the lab dispose of it. A very nice service of his but I'll have to try this next step
Take that copper sodium nitrate and mix it with sulfuric acid and then distill it at about 80 degrees Celcius. Very pure, red, fuming nitric acid will come over. You are left with copper sulfate (great for plating) and sodium hydrogen sulfate (good for removing stains) Also if I didn't want that stuff you can add a bunch of aluminum shavings or aluminum foil to it and drop out pure copper powder. I wondered how to get the copper sulfate and sodium hydrogen sulfate separate and if distilling acids is a little much for a novice like myself. The response to those questions were crystallization and using the NaHSO4 with the CuSO4 and makes a great plating salt out of it. Also it appears this isn't that hard assuming you have the proper setup which i would figure is a distillation glass setup of some sizable amount. So I ask the veterans here is the processing of the copper on my hobby scale to perhaps get my nitric back and perhaps get into copper platting a worth while endeavor?