SilverNitrate
Well-known member
If you refine/purify gold and other do other experiments waste chemicals and miscallenous solutions in beakers are just waiting to be discarded.
Good practice: why not put those ions to good use? There is alot on here about dissolving sterling silver and drop out using chlorine ions (HCl or NaCl). Your lab may have waste products that have good useable ions. You may want to avoid ions of transition and heavy metals, but the sulfate SO4--,phosphate PO3--- and others(not hydroxide) can be used to precipitate the silver and keep copper,nickel,zinc in solution. Sure the chloride has the strongest bond (resist dissolving in water) but other ions can go along way. e.g. the phosphate grabs 3 silver ions. The chloride would be used as a clean up to remove remaining silver ions from the solution.
These silver precipitates can be mixed and rinsed off (vacuum filtered) and treated the same as if all silver chloride. The chloride is rather difficult to deal with, but the sulfate is much easier.
I do this quite frequently though pure silver is not my main objective. You have to keep in mind not to add solutions of ammonia or hydroxide. The addition of hydroxide is after the precipiates are rinsed of its copper/zinc etc. and you are ready to convert to pure silver.
Good practice: why not put those ions to good use? There is alot on here about dissolving sterling silver and drop out using chlorine ions (HCl or NaCl). Your lab may have waste products that have good useable ions. You may want to avoid ions of transition and heavy metals, but the sulfate SO4--,phosphate PO3--- and others(not hydroxide) can be used to precipitate the silver and keep copper,nickel,zinc in solution. Sure the chloride has the strongest bond (resist dissolving in water) but other ions can go along way. e.g. the phosphate grabs 3 silver ions. The chloride would be used as a clean up to remove remaining silver ions from the solution.
These silver precipitates can be mixed and rinsed off (vacuum filtered) and treated the same as if all silver chloride. The chloride is rather difficult to deal with, but the sulfate is much easier.
I do this quite frequently though pure silver is not my main objective. You have to keep in mind not to add solutions of ammonia or hydroxide. The addition of hydroxide is after the precipiates are rinsed of its copper/zinc etc. and you are ready to convert to pure silver.
