Did a demolition in an old doctor's office and took to the shop over 1k lbs of xrays, a summer project and your video is the best put there. Common chemicals while others weRe asking for money for the chemical list, you shared this with us for free, thank you very much, great video.
Well, it's 3 full pallets, now that I moved them again it's more like 2k pounds. Willing to donate one full pallet to you and the channel, if you do a video showing what a 3 lbs plus of silver looks like, but it would take awhile, but worth it maybe for the channel and the cash. It would be cool to get a high school chemistry class to help you or something. Just thought I would offer, love your channel and I've learned a lot, the offer is there if you decide on it, but I'm in Detroit. Best wishes, and keep rockin.
Dave, thank you for the kind offer. Are you certain that the films are silver? Some processes use film that has no silver. I'll bet that a pallet of film weighs a ton.
I have prospected in the past. Now I have to find a new hobby. I went through a huge back surgery to correct my spine from scoliosis which eventually turned into dextroscoliosis . It’s been a quite a while recovering. All is good now. Just wanted to say thank you so much for all the hard work you’ve put into your craft and sharing with us.
My brother I just died in April 2022, he was a chiropractor. He has years worth of x-rays I’m presuming 500 pound anyways, my sister-in-law is giving that to me. Just for this purpose… Thank you so much for the info!
For higher yield buy photographically unprocessed film , Silver halogen that is on the gelatin of the film was already used to create silver oxide ( the dark image on the film) hence creating negative image, Most of silver halogen (silver bromide ) was already regenerated to silver and stripped in fixer bath . Recovered silver remained in the hypo and you bought material that had less than 20 % of original silver content. I checked on Ebay for unprocessed Xray film and for the price you paid you could buy unexposed film and recover 5 times the amount of silver you received, You were correct to assume 2.5 oz of silver from 5,5 lb of film, but because most of the weight was in cellulose and silver had already been extracted before you bought it 1/2 oz is a good yield . I have been working for a large photo company for 20 years and silver recovery was part of my job. Recovery was done by methods other than bleach stripping, and hypo solution would yield 1 oz of purest silver per 1000 sq. ft of combined photographic paper and film processed.
Hello. The conventional film are using developer to develop the image. Now the medical industry mainly use computered radiography which we call it CR film in Malaysia. Is it contain silver too? I have some sample photo of it. Thank you. Khoohmkhoo956@gmail.com Here's my mail. Thank you.
Tip to cut the time removing silver from x-rays. The silver is only on the dull side. Put two sheets together back to back exposing both dull sides while dipping. I've been a photographer for 40 years.
Great information sir. I used to be a radiographer doing weld inspection. Since I'm a pac-rat, I have a lot of old film laying around. Lol I might try your process here and have a steak dinner. Thank you sir.
Refining my own bullion and a retired paramedic. I would have never thought about x-ray film. I have no plans to either but it was a great and educational video. Thank you
have about 700 lbs of plastic film with silver on it after watching this video i think it will stay where it is seems like to much trouble for what is recovered a great project if you have the time keep up the great videos thanks again
Well in case you will repeat this recycling I suggest 2 faster methods like: - Cut the plastic: A paper shradder would be GREAT cheap and effective. A paper cutter as you used for cutting the electronics fingers from those 150++ boards that you got more gold than you expected - Bath the plastic: I suggest using something short and larger so that you can put the plastic all inside without the need of tipping in-out something like OLD PHOTO DEVELOPING but bigger. From what I can spot in the video, the silver would go away from the plastic very nice using a brush. - Settling of the metals: I think that some kind of "VIBRATION" would make the settling A LOT FASTER! I would be nice to make a desk with a drill that is gently beating the undersurface of the desk, in this way all desk would slightly vibrate to facilitate the settling. Hope that would be a nice addendum to your future X-ray silver recovery method ;)
Hi. Thanks for the video. I have actually done the silver chloride/lye/ sugar methods a number of times. I like it. The largest batch I did was 40#'s Xrays from which I got about 2 ozt of silver. I used lye to strip the Xrays, It appears your bleach did it much quicker, so I may try that in the future. When it came to the sugar, Kyro syrup alone or with a little honey and water works great. Much quicker. If you put too much sugar in you'll have brown waste which is the sugar being carmalized. It has caused me not problems. If I can find the picture of the bar I got I'll post it. The yield you got appears consistent. I didn't expect you to get the couple ounces you mentioned in the beginning of the video with the amount of Xray film you had. It of course varies with the quality of the Xrays. Older Xrays (which mine were) have a denser coating on them compared to today's, that is if you can find Xray today with all the places going to digital. Thanks again for the video!
I worked in the printing industry (four color pressman) for sixteen years years (1989-2005), and we always operated a darkroom to make film negatives for plate making. A company would come by once a month and collect the discarded film negatives and used developer solutions to recover the silver from. They collected these same materials from printing companies all over the Phoenix metro area, and they got them for free! I imagine that a tidy profit could have been made, since they are getting the silver bearing materials for free. A streamlined operation could be set up, and you could be in the black fairly quickly (I assume). It looks like quite a lot of film negatives and used developer is needed to produce an ounce of pure silver, but once again, if you're getting the materials for free, the bleach, sodium hydroxide, and sugar are very inexpensive. The most significant amount of overhead will be for labor. Unless you are doing this for yourself, you will need to pay someone to work your operation. You'd have to keep them busy, and process enough material to cover your expenses for chemicals and wages. I imagine that they were making money at it, since they were in business for the entire time that I was in the printing industry.
interesting as an educational purpose ! it gives sense on the word "recycling", thanks for all your work, i also enjoy all you videos about gold refining
I think you did great I will look for a lot of videos and couldn’t find a lot to explain specially when somebody’s talking you through it makes it better it was maybe one or two other videos that was silent great job
Great demonstration, I've always wondered how silver recovery from film works. That 0.525oz is a much lower yield than I expected from over 5lbs of material, which is OK, because now I have a realistic idea of what to pay for this type of silver recovery scrap. Thank you so much for taking the time to explore all of these different recovery and refining methods, and sharing your findings with all of us! Do you have a Patreon or some account where I can make a monetary donation to help keep these videos coming?
Great video, thanks. Can I add to the calls for a video on the reclamation of silver in suspension please ! Years ago, when film development was manual, we use to sell the spent Fix solution for the modern equivalent of 20 Dollars/Gallon (with a lot of wheeling and dealing between us and the scrapman) I was told by old heads that the process involved a trickle charge of current and produced 'Black Silver' - I've still got some 'Silver Estimating' papers somewhere... i was also told that silver recovery from film was done by burning the excess away to leave silver behind - I've no idea if this was true, its just what I was told !
Fill a bucket full of steel wool and pour the fixer in stirring ever so often and then letting the silver bind to the steel wool....once all the fixer is gone and drained out rinse the steel wool with water and walla....there's your silver. I have over 5,000 pounds of film in my shop so I believe bringing it straight to the refinery works best for me. BTW.....the steel wool has some sort of chemical electrical reaction to the fixer and silver so the silver binds to the steel wool.
This is a great video..many thanks, having worked in the medical X Ray industry for years, I have a good stock of X Ray film silver halide recovered from electrolysis units, I would say it is around 5kg....however it is like a fine black sand with a sulphur like odour, it is very dense and settles quickly in distilled water, IE it forms a sand like layer, but it is black and not grey like your metallic residue detailed here...do you have any suggestions how to process it to metallic silver ( it is definitely silver as it has come from recovery machines) thanks
In my experience, it may be silver oxide. Silver oxide is black in color, in my experience. If it were me, I would get a small sample, say about 100ml volume, and I'd put it in a crucible and heat it to 1000 degrees C or 1948 degrees F. Silver oxide, when heated, releases the oxygen and leaves behind pure metallic silver metal. Another experiment that I would try is to add a gram of sodium hydroxide to a 100ml sample of the black material, then stir and add some sugar. If it's silver oxide then I would expect to see the black silver oxide turn to pure elemental grey silver powder. This is what I would do, if it were me.
Amazing. I had no idea that was that easy. I worked for a company dealt with recycling xrays, but we shipped them to a refiner. I was doing the math and it was impressive for a 25,000 pound truck load at a time. We did that every couple of months.
The yield was roughly 0.1 troy ounces per pound or 1 troy ounce for every ten pounds. So 25k pounds would produce 2500 troy ounces! It took me six hours to get the silver off of five pounds. 25,000 pounds would take me the rest of my life.
When I use this process for developed black and white film ( which is what X-ray film is) I always use a vacuum filter before converting AgCl to AgO. There is always a gross amount of the emulsion and silverhalide carried over with this process. Your yield was better than expected. Better than the same mass of keyboard mylars.
13:37 here you see a man MOVE'N with a purpose,,,,,,,,LOL ka-ching,,,,ka-ching.,,,,,Mrs Sreetips is smile'n.It's look'n alot like Christmas,that happy time of year.
Hello sreetips my name is Yoem Diaz and I tell you that I have learned a lot from you, I saw some of your videos that I would like to know how many grams of silver came out on that occasion with only 150 grams. here is the link of you tube Silver Cell Build Step by Step From Scratch thank you very much for what he does
I learned a lot from this. Mainly, not to buy films from eBay. But I wish I kept the stack of old panoramic dental films I saw a few years ago get tossed. Maybe I can find a free stack again and refine them.
It is a bit tedious but it is a simple process. Break the silver oxide batteries open and use nitric acid. This could be used as the electrolyte for your silver cell.
If I did this again I'd use a 5 gallon bucket instead of the small bucket that I used in the video. If I remember it took me 6 hours to strip five pounds! Good luck with it.
Really like the video but can you explain what the purpose for the Sodium Hydroxide and table sugar? There are other videos show placing the silver sludge in a coffee filter and going straight for the melt. Much thanks
I was thinking that the sludge was a chloride since it came off with chlorine bleach. I used lye to convert the silver chloride to silver oxide - but I do not know if this was even necessary, it didn’t react like I expected, but this whole thing was a big experiment. After converting silver chloride to silver oxide (I think) then I added sugar to convert the silver oxide to pure silver metal. That seemed to work fine. But I may have had silver oxide before adding the lye - I don’t know. Silver oxide will melt into pure silver metal without the lye and sugar. I only did this once. I’ll probably never do it again. It was messy, time consuming, produced much waste that had to be treated before disposal and the yield was low. I couldn’t find a video on it. The videos that existed back then showed bits and pieces, then directed you to a web site and for a fee you could get the rest of the process. This disturbed me so I decided to do a video of the complete process.
@@sreetips I think you gave all of us what we needed and proved your point. The process was interesting and easy to follow and the result was spot on. Thank you...
Thank you so much For doing that.. Yes you demonstrated how to extract the silver and also gave us kinda a formula to go by when doing ut ourselves and wether or not its worth it to follow the project all the way through or not.... That's assuming that all x-rays are generally about the same in their silver content... I would love to invest to get started... But the way things are going right now.. I am building a gravity fed water filtration system.. So we can have clean water.. Things are so different anymore.. The carefree days have vanished.. These are different times.. I think a good water filtration system will be the smartest thing i have ever done... Even better than college.. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Well the smartest thing Next to making colloidal silver.. Have a nice evening
Someone made a comment about settling more with regards to your yield. I didn't expect 2 ounces from the amount of Xray film you had there from my experience, but I do think that making sure every bit is converted to silver chloride and letting the silver chloride settle until liquid is clear before decanting would've increased your yeild. Then at that point lye until dark black (from my experience) and no more reaction, then a liquid sugar like Kyro syrup diluted just a little and add until you start to get it very brown (excess sugar is carmelized) then rinse, let settle, and repeat until clear. Then you can be confident you have converted and recovered ALL the silver present. I would've still been surprised if you'd gotten a whole troy ounce but you might have recovered more. Still, I love your videos. Much respect!!
Scott its a film. It will have no silver chloride which is less sensitive and mainly is is used in contact printing, Film will contain Silver bromide or in rare cases silver fluoride , which will be the emulsion.depending on application. Buying exposed/processed film by pound is like buying a goldfish with 5 gallons of water and paying per pound.
John Abramyan Hi John. you missed the word **converted** the silver based emulsion is converted to silver chloride then converted to silver oxide by the lye, then to metallic silver by the sugar.
John Abramyan. It’s called *yield*. If you know how many goldfish each lb of water yields you could purchase goldfish by water weight. Knowing that older heavier coated X-ray film gave me 2 ounces nearly pure silver from approximately 40lbs of film goes toward estimating “how much to pay by weight for that goldfish containing water”. 😉
I wonder, if having used glucose instead of saccharose you wouldn´t have gotten a better yield, since glucose has a reducing effect, which is also used in the Tollens probe when silver nitrate is instantly conversed to metallic (mirror) silver.
We used to recover silver from the fixing bath of black and white film development. We used powdered zinc to precipitate the silver out of the solution. Allowing the zinc silver mix to settle out we would recycle the fixing bath and allow the mud to dry. This mud can be smelted to separate the zinc from the silver.
Smelting is a term used to describe extracting metal from ore. To seperate the zinc and silver, both are dissolved in hot dilute nitric acid. Then copper metal is introduced into the acidic zinc/silver solution. Zinc, being above copper in the reactivity series of metals, will stay in solution. Silver being located below copper in the reactivity series of metals, will cement (precipitate) out as nearly pure silver metal as a grey powder that looks like wet cement. This is where the term "cement" comes from. (Edited once for spelling).
Great video, I'm just wondering if shredding the xrays then dropping in a bucket of bleach and stirring would not maybe save a bit of bleach or cutting into smaller squares so that they can all get dropped into the bucket at once?
Shredding will be a wasted effort, because the coating on the sheet contains silver. That needs to be submerged to dissolve it in bleach or Nitric acid...
some other person tried bu using hno3 likeSilver recovery by chemical leaching depends on the heating of the film in the solution of oxalic acid (H2C2O4), nitric acid (HNO3), sodium hydroxide (NaOH), at boiling temperature for the separation of the inorganic component from the polymer layer. The development of X-ray film leads to waste from the fixer and from the aqueous solutions containing from 1000 to 10,000 mg Ag/L and respectively 50-200 mg Ag/L silver in form of thiosulfate complex how do u seen ?
Tem, you're way over my head here. I got this to work because I'm familiar with these reactions from my years of refining experience. I used bleach to get the silver off the films. I duducted that there was silver chloride in the material that came off the films. So I added NaOH to convert any silver chloride to silver oxide. Then I added sugar, just like we use to sweeten our breakfast cereal, to convent the silver oxide to pure elemental silver metal. Rinsed off all the sugar and lye, then melted the silver into a button. I bought those films for $100 on eBay because they were guaranteed to have silver on them. I needed them to make the video. Some films do not have silver. I don't know how to tell which do and which don't have silver. All I really needed to know is what solution was used to get the silver off the films. Turns out it's just regular household bleach. The rest is history as documented in my video. Good luck!
Would you do a video of a complete process of recovering silver from the keyboard mylars? I've seen a couple on TH-cam but I think your methodological way of doing things will greatly benefit such a video.
I had to do some wastewater testing for an industrial permit at a college and one part was for the building for dental hygienists and nurses. Figure chemical treatment system along with silver recovery systems for the Xray and dental areas. Even in the wastewater pipes leaving the building I could detect silver. The worst part, the copper pipes for the drains from all the HVAC units. The pipes from the labs were glass and no problems with the chemical system.
I wonder how much is in your waste buckets , and how much reaction did not finish ? Is there a test for silver in , during these processes - to see if the drop reaction is finished ? Thanks again
ooof i am kicking myself watching this, about 6 months ago i threw out 15+ kg of old x-rays I'd hoarded. this looks like a fun process, and damn, had no idea there was silver on them!
Excellent video. I wonder what one would get as yield from soldered copper pipe ends, since that type of solder contains silver. Not to mention solder that is sucked off of old print circuits. I gather quite a bit of it working on electronics, especially vintage electronics where parts are soldered to contact bridges. Thanks for your sharing your knowledge and video. It was entertaining and interesting
I bought some silver solder from the welding supply store. I've had it for about two years now. A whole tube of it for about $50 bucks. I had forgotten all about it. It would make a great video. Thank you.
I think you lost a lot of material with the rinses. The silver was so fine to start with is there any chemical that would help condense it, like an gold amalgamate?
I have an old full-length b&w feature film from the 1940's-1950's that went bad (smells like vinegar). I've been toying with ideas how to strip the silver off it. I could cut the reel and drop the whole film intact into a 5 gallon bucket and add bleach. This would allow me to hand squeegee the emulsion off it in a plastic tub. I could cut the reel half-way thru which would give me hundreds of little strips of film which would allow for better soaking but would be difficult clean them off unless I put them into another 5 gallon bucket with a lid and shook them or used a drill with a cement paddle. Any ideas?
I had to hand-dip each piece. If I tried doing more than one then they would stick together and trap material. No, I’ve only done it once to make video, so my experience level is very low. But I’m thinking that you’ll have to put your dilute bleach into a bucket, cut strips a foot long. Then dip into the bleach individually, and repeat. That’s what had to do. It’s very time consuming. But getting pure silver, from any source, is never quick, easy, or cheap.
The bleach batch you used are of what content each ie each bottle content is how many ml, or I should just get a gallon and empty into the bucket. Secondly the bucket that have water in it, it is just water or a combination of water and something else? Thanks as I await you response.
there is a some x ray film which is exposed by light but differ from used x ray film so this kind of x ray film only washing by naoh and filter then melt plus getting a product i think so because the silver is accumulated mainly.Say something and start this project?
I worked many years ago in industrial lithography. We had several film processing units that needed to have the chemistry changed out on a weekly basis. Rather than toss out the solution, we poured it into a device with a series of metal fins that ran a low electrical charge through. The silver halides would collect on the fins. A couple times a year we would scrape the fins and sell the collected material to a silver recovery concern. This was back when the Hunt family tried to corner the silver market. We did well enough to offset some other industrial costs. It was worth doing.
I have literally been watching your videos over and over for months. I'm curious if you could have taken the little silver you got rinsed it and dissolved it in nitric acid and cemented it and not delt with the lye.
Hi, Industrial silver recovery is somewhat fascinating to me. I have recycled several thousand pounds of film for aprox. $0.15/lbs in the US. Simple mathematics on .5 oz recovery on 5 lbs film, there is not much value in secondary recycling. Years back, before recycling was popular, I used to have to pay to have film removed. My question is, would the same practices work on a volume of 500 lbs at a time in large drums of bleach and some time sensitive chemistry? I have a challenge for Sreetips. If I mail you 250 lbs of film at no charge, could you create a solution video of volume recovery practices and split the raw silver 50/50? (less the cost of raw chemicals of course) Let me know...
John, thank you for the kind offer, but I must respectfully decline. I am not set up to refine other people's material. I only do this as a hobby. I made this video to demonstrate how it can be done.
Thank you for your time and efforts. And expence . Your efforts have saved us time effort and money. But most of all...thank you for emphasizing safety.too many videos out there gonna get someone sick or hurt.😎
Excellent experiment .....that's what science is all about...but FYI you could get the silver quicker by drying out the 1st sludge and smelting it with NaCO3 and borax then pouring into a cone mold.Commercially the film is shredded and dumped into a very large vat of caustic cyanide with much agitation and aeration then electro-refined and the cyanide is reused.Of course you don't want to bring cyanide into a home environment but this process is easily scaled up to handle large quanities quickly.
Good evening congratulations on your video, I will start the procedure you did I have enough quantities, and what I would like to ask you is if you counted the x-rays in kilos
I thought Drano was sodium hydroxide with bits of aluminum added. At least that is what it was back during my time in high school. Is it different now?
Don’t know. I only did this once. There were no videos on this. One channel had bits and pieces then referred the viewer to a web site for a fee for the rest of the process.
It seems a fish tank would be ideal for this process. you could put the entire stack of x-rays into the tank with bleach in it, and then pull them out 1 at a time to rinse them off.
I was thinking that if you know of a local scrapper maybe you could make a deal with them to buy their electronic waste after they process it that would also give you a cheaper source to get your ewaste since you may not have the time to go scrapping yourself.
So I take it this was more to explore the process suggested than anything else? I ask since I figured nitric would be ideal/more efficient, especially if you're going to send it through the cell anyway.
Thanks for the Video, I have one question , what is the bleach? which chemical is it? please clarify to me and i want to recover silver from X-ray film.
one thing you could have tryed when you did this few years back try and see if you could print on them with a laser and a inkjet printer. i have some that i did have and a laser printer did work you could see what it printed as the film had some type of chem that made ink and laser print stayed on it. next time you get some film next time try it b 4 hand and after then you could have 2 uses for them instead of binning them
Is there an easy way to convert the silver chloride solution to silver nitrate salts? The silver may be more valuable to you if sold to alternative process photographers as silver nitrate salts - AgNO3. As far as I know the only source for photo grade AgNO3 in the USA has stopped selling the salts in small quantities and will no longer sell it online. You might also look into selling platinum and palladium salts directly to photographers. There is a market for photo grade salts that is not being served at this time. The last time I purchased AgNO3 salts it was selling for about $55 for a 5 gram vial; a huge markup when the price per gram of silver bullion price today, (10/31/18), is 46c a gram, $14.35 an ounce. B&H photo is selling AgNO3 at $895.00 a pound, bullion is selling for $461.00 a kilo spot price. So: 1 kilo = 2.2046 lb = $1973.00 and that is not taking into consideration the weight of the NO3, just the silver.
I do not have X ray film, but I do have a lot of old 8x10 glass plates and large sheets of film that that have not been developed but have been rendered worthless for photography by time and humidity damage. I am thinking that I would experiment with the glass plates first. I would soak them in water, then scrape the silver off with a utility blade, then flame flash the goo to burn off any organics. This is where I get confused. I assume that the emulsion is silver bromide as placed on the glass. Silver bromide decomposes into metallic silver when exposed to light, and becomes a dull gray color. Would this be the silver cement stage of your process?
Cement silver is actually powdered metallic silver. It's called cement silver because it looks like wet cement. I don't know if your dull gray material is silver or not. Try to melt some with a map gas torch. Propane don't get hot enough.
Silly question whats in the bottle? More bleach to rinse the film or something else? The reason is if it is tap water then aren't you diluting the bleach in the first bucket? Not by much I would say. BTW Great job !
@@sreetips Hi I followed the video and got my silver today. However I can't wash the impurities on the silver in the last step. They just won't come off in my low heat solution. Could you explain what temperature you used to cook the silver in the solution of distilled water and sulfuric acid? How to let the impurities come off?
Hey sir...did u know by what chemical we can precipitate the photographic chemical waste which have in photo house?...and in ur exp,t is it naoh is enough...using nacl03 is give us best silver?
I only did this once because I could only find bits and pieces and a link to get the rest of the process for a fee. It was messy, time consuming, and the yield was low.
Sorry, I only did this once to demonstrate. I’m not sure of undeveloped films. But be aware, not all xray film contains silver. Some are heat activated.
is naoh function and bleach is the same? lastly during melting process i saw u add some chemical what is that? i guess that is to keep the quality of the silver,yeah.I want swift response dear steeps because am working now.
When using an x-ray automated x-ray film processor a silver recovery unit is attached in series to and to the fixer tank drain line. The silver recovery may be an electrical type which traps the silver magnetically to the recovery unit or is simply a 5 or 10 gallon bucket with lid stuffed with steel wool which attracts the silver to the steel wool. Each month the processor needs maintenance for cleaning and fresh chemistry to develop the x-rays and when the fixer tank is drained from the automated film processor the fixer flows through the recovery unit before going down the drain. (also all overflow fixer from everyday processor use goes through the silver recovery unit). Depending on your film volume the recovery units are cleaned or taken outright and refined in a similar manner as this video.
Is there any silver left in developed color photos from the late 70's, 80's to 2000 ?(common photos processed from a Wal-mart or equivalent)? Thank you.
If you decided to do this again it looks like it might be easier and speed up the process a bit if you cut your film in strips half as long. Also if you decided you wanted to do a lot of this film if you could run across one of those old cutting boards with the arm that has the blade on it and you just lower the arm with a blade attached and it cuts your paper or whatever, I can't remember what they are called but ifyou could find one for cheap if you decided to do a lot of this it would help. Sorry, I comment too much sometimes.
Dude that sreetips lab coat is badassery refined to .999
Did a demolition in an old doctor's office and took to the shop over 1k lbs of xrays, a summer project and your video is the best put there. Common chemicals while others weRe asking for money for the chemical list, you shared this with us for free, thank you very much, great video.
Excellent Dave, the best of luck with your X-ray films!
Well, it's 3 full pallets, now that I moved them again it's more like 2k pounds. Willing to donate one full pallet to you and the channel, if you do a video showing what a 3 lbs plus of silver looks like, but it would take awhile, but worth it maybe for the channel and the cash. It would be cool to get a high school chemistry class to help you or something. Just thought I would offer, love your channel and I've learned a lot, the offer is there if you decide on it, but I'm in Detroit. Best wishes, and keep rockin.
Dave, thank you for the kind offer. Are you certain that the films are silver? Some processes use film that has no silver. I'll bet that a pallet of film weighs a ton.
Do you still have the old xrays? I'm planning a video for my son's science project and I have some xrays, but I could use more
There are some available on eBay.
I have prospected in the past. Now I have to find a new hobby. I went through a huge back surgery to correct my spine from scoliosis which eventually turned into dextroscoliosis . It’s been a quite a while recovering. All is good now. Just wanted to say thank you so much for all the hard work you’ve put into your craft and sharing with us.
Excellent. Glad to hear that you’ve recovered nicely. Thank you for your interest.
My brother I just died in April 2022, he was a chiropractor. He has years worth of x-rays I’m presuming 500 pound anyways, my sister-in-law is giving that to me. Just for this purpose… Thank you so much for the info!
For higher yield buy photographically unprocessed film , Silver halogen that is on the gelatin of the film was already used to create silver oxide ( the dark image on the film) hence creating negative image, Most of silver halogen (silver bromide ) was already regenerated to silver and stripped in fixer bath . Recovered silver remained in the hypo and you bought material that had less than 20 % of original silver content. I checked on Ebay for unprocessed Xray film and for the price you paid you could buy unexposed film and recover 5 times the amount of silver you received, You were correct to assume 2.5 oz of silver from 5,5 lb of film, but because most of the weight was in cellulose and silver had already been extracted before you bought it 1/2 oz is a good yield . I have been working for a large photo company for 20 years and silver recovery was part of my job. Recovery was done by methods other than bleach stripping, and hypo solution would yield 1 oz of purest silver per 1000 sq. ft of combined photographic paper and film processed.
Got it, thank you.
Hello. The conventional film are using developer to develop the image. Now the medical industry mainly use computered radiography which we call it CR film in Malaysia. Is it contain silver too? I have some sample photo of it. Thank you.
Khoohmkhoo956@gmail.com
Here's my mail. Thank you.
Damn! Thank you. Frkn Awesome
@Guodlca if it's legal doesn't make it ethical. But legal nontheless.
Tip to cut the time removing silver from x-rays. The silver is only on the dull side. Put two sheets together back to back exposing both dull sides while dipping. I've been a photographer for 40 years.
Great information sir. I used to be a radiographer doing weld inspection. Since I'm a pac-rat, I have a lot of old film laying around. Lol I might try your process here and have a steak dinner. Thank you sir.
Hey look thats my spine on that film! I recognize it immediately. It was the only proof i have a spine and now it's destroyed forever!
Refining my own bullion and a retired paramedic. I would have never thought about x-ray film. I have no plans to either but it was a great and educational video. Thank you
I'm so glad I found your channel. I've said it before, it's a treasure trove of content and keeps me awake on my graveyard shift 😆....right smartly!
have about 700 lbs of plastic film with silver on it after watching this video i think it will stay where it is seems like to much trouble for what is recovered a great project if you have the time keep up the great videos thanks again
Dipping these films took many hours. I was glad when it was over.
Well in case you will repeat this recycling I suggest 2 faster methods like:
- Cut the plastic:
A paper shradder would be GREAT cheap and effective.
A paper cutter as you used for cutting the electronics fingers from those 150++ boards that you got more gold than you expected
- Bath the plastic:
I suggest using something short and larger so that you can put the plastic all inside without the need of tipping in-out something like OLD PHOTO DEVELOPING but bigger.
From what I can spot in the video, the silver would go away from the plastic very nice using a brush.
- Settling of the metals:
I think that some kind of "VIBRATION" would make the settling A LOT FASTER!
I would be nice to make a desk with a drill that is gently beating the undersurface of the desk, in this way all desk would slightly vibrate to facilitate the settling.
Hope that would be a nice addendum to your future X-ray silver recovery method ;)
I suggest he wet the emulsion and scrape it off with a razor blade . Just kidding
I just re-watched . Can't believe this was 5 years ago.
This is probably my favorite. I watch from moon to moons.
I’ve got to say I love your channel and all of these videos. Keep it up Sreetips!
mad respect for the efforts
you make in the name of science and your hobby. 👍👍👊👊
Hi. Thanks for the video. I have actually done the silver chloride/lye/ sugar methods a number of times. I like it. The largest batch I did was 40#'s Xrays from which I got about 2 ozt of silver. I used lye to strip the Xrays, It appears your bleach did it much quicker, so I may try that in the future. When it came to the sugar, Kyro syrup alone or with a little honey and water works great. Much quicker. If you put too much sugar in you'll have brown waste which is the sugar being carmalized. It has caused me not problems. If I can find the picture of the bar I got I'll post it. The yield you got appears consistent. I didn't expect you to get the couple ounces you mentioned in the beginning of the video with the amount of Xray film you had. It of course varies with the quality of the Xrays. Older Xrays (which mine were) have a denser coating on them compared to today's, that is if you can find Xray today with all the places going to digital. Thanks again for the video!
Excellent Scott, thank you.
I worked in the printing industry (four color pressman) for sixteen years years (1989-2005), and we always operated a darkroom to make film negatives for plate making. A company would come by once a month and collect the discarded film negatives and used developer solutions to recover the silver from. They collected these same materials from printing companies all over the Phoenix metro area, and they got them for free! I imagine that a tidy profit could have been made, since they are getting the silver bearing materials for free. A streamlined operation could be set up, and you could be in the black fairly quickly (I assume). It looks like quite a lot of film negatives and used developer is needed to produce an ounce of pure silver, but once again, if you're getting the materials for free, the bleach, sodium hydroxide, and sugar are very inexpensive. The most significant amount of overhead will be for labor. Unless you are doing this for yourself, you will need to pay someone to work your operation. You'd have to keep them busy, and process enough material to cover your expenses for chemicals and wages. I imagine that they were making money at it, since they were in business for the entire time that I was in the printing industry.
interesting as an educational purpose ! it gives sense on the word "recycling", thanks for all your work, i also enjoy all you videos about gold refining
He’s like Bill Nye, Bob Ross and Mr. Rogers rolled into one badass process chemist.
Whate kind of sugar did you use ?
@@husseinhamad2686 plain sugar that you would put in your coffee,white.
100 grm silver out put howmuch pound x ray film needs
There's no other Bill Nye but sreetips is still pretty good at this stuff
I think you did great I will look for a lot of videos and couldn’t find a lot to explain specially when somebody’s talking you through it makes it better it was maybe one or two other videos that was silent great job
Wow! I just realized that I have been watching you for over 5 years. The years have flown by!
I’ve been refining since 2010. Thirteen years!
Great demonstration, I've always wondered how silver recovery from film works. That 0.525oz is a much lower yield than I expected from over 5lbs of material, which is OK, because now I have a realistic idea of what to pay for this type of silver recovery scrap.
Thank you so much for taking the time to explore all of these different recovery and refining methods, and sharing your findings with all of us!
Do you have a Patreon or some account where I can make a monetary donation to help keep these videos coming?
Kyle, I'm not sure how that works. I'll have to get one set up. Thank you.
Which salts are added plz tell
Exelent job man!!!
Hi, i see you there😁😁😁
sir sreetips, your demonstration was so grate. i will try it thanks for you recovery.
Great video, thanks. Can I add to the calls for a video on the reclamation of silver in suspension please !
Years ago, when film development was manual, we use to sell the spent Fix solution for the modern equivalent of 20 Dollars/Gallon (with a lot of wheeling and dealing between us and the scrapman)
I was told by old heads that the process involved a trickle charge of current and produced 'Black Silver' - I've still got some 'Silver Estimating' papers somewhere...
i was also told that silver recovery from film was done by burning the excess away to leave silver behind - I've no idea if this was true, its just what I was told !
Fill a bucket full of steel wool and pour the fixer in stirring ever so often and then letting the silver bind to the steel wool....once all the fixer is gone and drained out rinse the steel wool with water and walla....there's your silver. I have over 5,000 pounds of film in my shop so I believe bringing it straight to the refinery works best for me.
BTW.....the steel wool has some sort of chemical electrical reaction to the fixer and silver so the silver binds to the steel wool.
This is a great video..many thanks, having worked in the medical X Ray industry for years, I have a good stock of X Ray film silver halide recovered from electrolysis units, I would say it is around 5kg....however it is like a fine black sand with a sulphur like odour, it is very dense and settles quickly in distilled water, IE it forms a sand like layer, but it is black and not grey like your metallic residue detailed here...do you have any suggestions how to process it to metallic silver ( it is definitely silver as it has come from recovery machines) thanks
In my experience, it may be silver oxide. Silver oxide is black in color, in my experience. If it were me, I would get a small sample, say about 100ml volume, and I'd put it in a crucible and heat it to 1000 degrees C or 1948 degrees F. Silver oxide, when heated, releases the oxygen and leaves behind pure metallic silver metal. Another experiment that I would try is to add a gram of sodium hydroxide to a 100ml sample of the black material, then stir and add some sugar. If it's silver oxide then I would expect to see the black silver oxide turn to pure elemental grey silver powder. This is what I would do, if it were me.
Amazing. I had no idea that was that easy. I worked for a company dealt with recycling xrays, but we shipped them to a refiner. I was doing the math and it was impressive for a 25,000 pound truck load at a time. We did that every couple of months.
The yield was roughly 0.1 troy ounces per pound or 1 troy ounce for every ten pounds. So 25k pounds would produce 2500 troy ounces! It took me six hours to get the silver off of five pounds. 25,000 pounds would take me the rest of my life.
@@sreetips could you put the films in a sealed bucket with the bleach on a shaker table for a bit…. Then rinse. Bulk processing the material.
I tried doing several at once and they tended to stick together and trapping the silver.
When I use this process for developed black and white film ( which is what X-ray film is) I always use a vacuum filter before converting AgCl to AgO. There is always a gross amount of the emulsion and silverhalide carried over with this process.
Your yield was better than expected. Better than the same mass of keyboard mylars.
13:37 here you see a man MOVE'N with a purpose,,,,,,,,LOL ka-ching,,,,ka-ching.,,,,,Mrs Sreetips is smile'n.It's look'n alot like Christmas,that happy time of year.
Hello sreetips my name is Yoem Diaz and I tell you that I have learned a lot from you, I saw some of your videos that I would like to know how many grams of silver came out on that occasion with only 150 grams.
here is the link of you tube
Silver Cell Build Step by Step From Scratch
thank you very much for what he does
Thank you for this video. I had no idea that X-ray film contains silver *shy*. Once again thanks for investing your own money to show this to us :)
Ow yes. Also keyboard mylars.
I learned a lot from this. Mainly, not to buy films from eBay. But I wish I kept the stack of old panoramic dental films I saw a few years ago get tossed. Maybe I can find a free stack again and refine them.
well...........you may not be making any money on these demos but i think your still nothing less than a genious thanks pard
Great video!! I was wondering if you could use this process to strip old cds and dvds instead of using caustic soda?
I have a couple of pounds of silver oxide batteries that I would be happy to donate to you if you ever want to try refining them.
Thanks Ken. I'll have to look into how that's done. It would make a good video.
It is a bit tedious but it is a simple process. Break the silver oxide batteries open and use nitric acid. This could be used as the electrolyte for your silver cell.
@@Robbob9933 more exactly?
Really informative. Learned something for sure.
Great video!!! I am gonna be getting about 40 or 50 pounds of films soon!!
If I did this again I'd use a 5 gallon bucket instead of the small bucket that I used in the video. If I remember it took me 6 hours to strip five pounds! Good luck with it.
Really like the video but can you explain what the purpose for the Sodium Hydroxide and table sugar? There are other videos show placing the silver sludge in a coffee filter and going straight for the melt. Much thanks
I was thinking that the sludge was a chloride since it came off with chlorine bleach. I used lye to convert the silver chloride to silver oxide - but I do not know if this was even necessary, it didn’t react like I expected, but this whole thing was a big experiment. After converting silver chloride to silver oxide (I think) then I added sugar to convert the silver oxide to pure silver metal. That seemed to work fine. But I may have had silver oxide before adding the lye - I don’t know. Silver oxide will melt into pure silver metal without the lye and sugar. I only did this once. I’ll probably never do it again. It was messy, time consuming, produced much waste that had to be treated before disposal and the yield was low. I couldn’t find a video on it. The videos that existed back then showed bits and pieces, then directed you to a web site and for a fee you could get the rest of the process. This disturbed me so I decided to do a video of the complete process.
@@sreetips I think you gave all of us what we needed and proved your point. The process was interesting and easy to follow and the result was spot on. Thank you...
Thank you so much For doing that..
Yes you demonstrated how to extract the silver and also gave us kinda a formula to go by when doing ut ourselves and wether or not its worth it to follow the project all the way through or not....
That's assuming that all x-rays are generally about the same in their silver content...
I would love to invest to get started...
But the way things are going right now..
I am building a gravity fed water filtration system..
So we can have clean water..
Things are so different anymore..
The carefree days have vanished..
These are different times..
I think a good water filtration system will be the smartest thing i have ever done...
Even better than college..
Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Well the smartest thing
Next to making colloidal silver..
Have a nice evening
Someone made a comment about settling more with regards to your yield. I didn't expect 2 ounces from the amount of Xray film you had there from my experience, but I do think that making sure every bit is converted to silver chloride and letting the silver chloride settle until liquid is clear before decanting would've increased your yeild. Then at that point lye until dark black (from my experience) and no more reaction, then a liquid sugar like Kyro syrup diluted just a little and add until you start to get it very brown (excess sugar is carmelized) then rinse, let settle, and repeat until clear. Then you can be confident you have converted and recovered ALL the silver present. I would've still been surprised if you'd gotten a whole troy ounce but you might have recovered more. Still, I love your videos. Much respect!!
Scott its a film. It will have no silver chloride which is less sensitive and mainly is is used in contact printing, Film will contain Silver bromide or in rare cases silver fluoride , which will be the emulsion.depending on application.
Buying exposed/processed film by pound is like buying a goldfish with 5 gallons of water and paying per pound.
John Abramyan
Hi John. you missed the word **converted** the silver based emulsion is converted to silver chloride then converted to silver oxide by the lye, then to metallic silver by the sugar.
John Abramyan.
It’s called *yield*. If you know how many goldfish each lb of water yields you could purchase goldfish by water weight. Knowing that older heavier coated X-ray film gave me 2 ounces nearly pure silver from approximately 40lbs of film goes toward estimating “how much to pay by weight for that goldfish containing water”. 😉
Thank you for once again showing us another place to find silver:-)
Love your videos. Its a GREAT hobby to have. Alchemy is alive and well.
I wonder, if having used glucose instead of saccharose you wouldn´t have gotten a better yield, since glucose has a reducing effect, which is also used in the Tollens probe when silver nitrate is instantly conversed to metallic (mirror) silver.
We used to recover silver from the fixing bath of black and white film development. We used powdered zinc to precipitate the silver out of the solution. Allowing the zinc silver mix to settle out we would recycle the fixing bath and allow the mud to dry. This mud can be smelted to separate the zinc from the silver.
Smelting is a term used to describe extracting metal from ore. To seperate the zinc and silver, both are dissolved in hot dilute nitric acid. Then copper metal is introduced into the acidic zinc/silver solution. Zinc, being above copper in the reactivity series of metals, will stay in solution. Silver being located below copper in the reactivity series of metals, will cement (precipitate) out as nearly pure silver metal as a grey powder that looks like wet cement. This is where the term "cement" comes from. (Edited once for spelling).
Great video, I'm just wondering if shredding the xrays then dropping in a bucket of bleach and stirring would not maybe save a bit of bleach or cutting into smaller squares so that they can all get dropped into the bucket at once?
I would put those through a heavy duty shredder first. Very interesting salvage process 👍
Shredding will be a wasted effort, because the coating on the sheet contains silver. That needs to be submerged to dissolve it in bleach or Nitric acid...
some other person tried bu using hno3 likeSilver recovery by chemical leaching depends on the heating of the film in the solution of oxalic acid (H2C2O4), nitric acid (HNO3), sodium hydroxide (NaOH), at boiling temperature for the separation of the inorganic component from the polymer layer. The development of X-ray film leads to waste from the fixer and from the aqueous solutions containing from 1000 to 10,000 mg Ag/L and respectively 50-200 mg Ag/L silver in form of thiosulfate complex how do u seen ?
Tem, you're way over my head here. I got this to work because I'm familiar with these reactions from my years of refining experience. I used bleach to get the silver off the films. I duducted that there was silver chloride in the material that came off the films. So I added NaOH to convert any silver chloride to silver oxide. Then I added sugar, just like we use to sweeten our breakfast cereal, to convent the silver oxide to pure elemental silver metal. Rinsed off all the sugar and lye, then melted the silver into a button. I bought those films for $100 on eBay because they were guaranteed to have silver on them. I needed them to make the video. Some films do not have silver. I don't know how to tell which do and which don't have silver. All I really needed to know is what solution was used to get the silver off the films. Turns out it's just regular household bleach. The rest is history as documented in my video. Good luck!
Would you do a video of a complete process of recovering silver from the keyboard mylars? I've seen a couple on TH-cam but I think your methodological way of doing things will greatly benefit such a video.
It's probably the same process with even less silver to get.
Oh, O.K.
I had to do some wastewater testing for an industrial permit at a college and one part was for the building for dental hygienists and nurses. Figure chemical treatment system along with silver recovery systems for the Xray and dental areas. Even in the wastewater pipes leaving the building I could detect silver. The worst part, the copper pipes for the drains from all the HVAC units. The pipes from the labs were glass and no problems with the chemical system.
I wonder how much is in your waste buckets , and how much reaction did not finish ?
Is there a test for silver in , during these processes - to see if the drop reaction is finished ?
Thanks again
Another great video, thank you for your teachings, you are the man!!!
ooof i am kicking myself watching this, about 6 months ago i threw out 15+ kg of old x-rays I'd hoarded. this looks like a fun process, and damn, had no idea there was silver on them!
Great video. Thank you very much for your wonderful video.
Excellent video. I wonder what one would get as yield from soldered copper pipe ends, since that type of solder contains silver. Not to mention solder that is sucked off of old print circuits. I gather quite a bit of it working on electronics, especially vintage electronics where parts are soldered to contact bridges.
Thanks for your sharing your knowledge and video.
It was entertaining and interesting
I bought some silver solder from the welding supply store. I've had it for about two years now. A whole tube of it for about $50 bucks. I had forgotten all about it. It would make a great video. Thank you.
I think you lost a lot of material with the rinses. The silver was so fine to start with is there any chemical that would help condense it, like an gold amalgamate?
Not that I know of
If that's acetate, you can sell the films themselves after you strip them. There's a market for those and it's a lot larger than you would think!
This is really cool! Is the bleach still usable?
I only did this one time. So my experience level is low.
God i love your channel. It's a dictionary of precious metal recovery and refining.
I have an old full-length b&w feature film from the 1940's-1950's that went bad (smells like vinegar). I've been toying with ideas how to strip the silver off it. I could cut the reel and drop the whole film intact into a 5 gallon bucket and add bleach. This would allow me to hand squeegee the emulsion off it in a plastic tub. I could cut the reel half-way thru which would give me hundreds of little strips of film which would allow for better soaking but would be difficult clean them off unless I put them into another 5 gallon bucket with a lid and shook them or used a drill with a cement paddle. Any ideas?
I had to hand-dip each piece. If I tried doing more than one then they would stick together and trap material. No, I’ve only done it once to make video, so my experience level is very low. But I’m thinking that you’ll have to put your dilute bleach into a bucket, cut strips a foot long. Then dip into the bleach individually, and repeat. That’s what had to do. It’s very time consuming. But getting pure silver, from any source, is never quick, easy, or cheap.
The bleach batch you used are of what content each ie each bottle content is how many ml, or I should just get a gallon and empty into the bucket.
Secondly the bucket that have water in it, it is just water or a combination of water and something else?
Thanks as I await you response.
I can't remember. I think I added 1/2 gallon of bleach to each bucket.
Thanks a lot for this video but please I have a question, what is the white powder you added to the silver in melt dish before burning?
Borax, it acts as a flux.
such a deal, Wow ! 9 dollars worth, good work ace, thumbs up.
Thank you
@@sreetips i went through the same ordeal with cd,s & nitric, aint got nothin on there man. have fun & be safe.
Which Type of bleach is used ?
there is a some x ray film which is exposed by light but differ from
used x ray film so this kind of x ray film only washing by naoh and
filter then melt plus getting a product i think so because the silver is
accumulated mainly.Say something and start this project?
I worked many years ago in industrial lithography. We had several film processing units that needed to have the chemistry changed out on a weekly basis. Rather than toss out the solution, we poured it into a device with a series of metal fins that ran a low electrical charge through. The silver halides would collect on the fins. A couple times a year we would scrape the fins and sell the collected material to a silver recovery concern. This was back when the Hunt family tried to corner the silver market. We did well enough to offset some other industrial costs. It was worth doing.
I remember the Hunt brothers.
whether bleach liquid for clothing can be used
and what is the second chemical component used
I used bleach for cloths. Then I see lye to turn the chloride to silver oxide. Then I used sugar to convert the silver oxide to pure silver metal.
Is borax needed during the combustion process?
I have literally been watching your videos over and over for months. I'm curious if you could have taken the little silver you got rinsed it and dissolved it in nitric acid and cemented it and not delt with the lye.
Possibly
Thankyou I enjoyed watching that unfold
And yet another great video! Very clear explaned and educative, thanks very much, I'll will be following you!
Hi, Industrial silver recovery is somewhat fascinating to me. I have recycled several thousand pounds of film for aprox. $0.15/lbs in the US. Simple mathematics on .5 oz recovery on 5 lbs film, there is not much value in secondary recycling. Years back, before recycling was popular, I used to have to pay to have film removed.
My question is, would the same practices work on a volume of 500 lbs at a time in large drums of bleach and some time sensitive chemistry? I have a challenge for Sreetips. If I mail you 250 lbs of film at no charge, could you create a solution video of volume recovery practices and split the raw silver 50/50? (less the cost of raw chemicals of course) Let me know...
John, thank you for the kind offer, but I must respectfully decline. I am not set up to refine other people's material. I only do this as a hobby. I made this video to demonstrate how it can be done.
Thank you for your time and efforts. And expence . Your efforts have saved us time effort and money. But most of all...thank you for emphasizing safety.too many videos out there gonna get someone sick or hurt.😎
Is there any particular reason not to use a casserole dish? It would seem to be better for large flat surfaces...
If I had to do this again I would use a 5 gallon bucket instead of a two gallon bucket
Excellent experiment .....that's what science is all about...but FYI you could get the silver quicker by drying out the 1st sludge and smelting it with NaCO3 and borax then pouring into a cone mold.Commercially the film is shredded and dumped into a very large vat of caustic cyanide with much agitation and aeration then electro-refined and the cyanide is reused.Of course you don't want to bring cyanide into a home environment but this process is easily scaled up to handle large quanities quickly.
Good evening congratulations on your video, I will start the procedure you did I have enough quantities, and what I would like to ask you is if you counted the x-rays in kilos
It was about 5 pounds times 453 grams equals 2215 grams equals 2.2 kilos
I thought Drano was sodium hydroxide with bits of aluminum added. At least that is what it was back during my time in high school. Is it different now?
I didn’t use draino I used straight sodium hydroxide drain cleaner.
@@sreetips I know. I asked the question because you said not to use Draino.
So found your channel a week or so ago and I got hooked. How much higher would the yield be with "green" or undeveloped film?
Don’t know. I only did this once. There were no videos on this. One channel had bits and pieces then referred the viewer to a web site for a fee for the rest of the process.
@@sreetips I can send you 8.5 lbs of un-exposed film if you want to run the comparison.
It seems a fish tank would be ideal for this process. you could put the entire stack of x-rays into the tank with bleach in it, and then pull them out 1 at a time to rinse them off.
I was thinking that if you know of a local scrapper maybe you could make a deal with them to buy their electronic waste after they process it that would also give you a cheaper source to get your ewaste since you may not have the time to go scrapping yourself.
So I take it this was more to explore the process suggested than anything else? I ask since I figured nitric would be ideal/more efficient, especially if you're going to send it through the cell anyway.
Yes, I wanted to do it with bleach for the benefit of those who don't have access to nitric acid. Bleach, lye and sugar.
I've been waiting for this!
Thanks for the Video,
I have one question , what is the bleach? which chemical is it? please clarify to me and i want to recover silver from X-ray film.
Sodium hypochlorite 6% solution. It's called chlorox in the U.S. It can be bought at the grocery store. Used to whiten cloths in the laundry.
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can we use the cleaning x ray film again like original x ray film ?
one thing you could have tryed when you did this few years back try and see if you could print on them with a laser and a inkjet printer. i have some that i did have and a laser printer did work you could see what it printed as the film had some type of chem that made ink and laser print stayed on it. next time you get some film next time try it b 4 hand and after then you could have 2 uses for them instead of binning them
such a underrated/underapreciated mineral! lets hope the kilo goes up to 1000$ that would be a good thing.
Hello Sreetips, a like your videos. I have a question about process. Why use sugar? tks
Something about the carbon in the sugar
Is there an easy way to convert the silver chloride solution to silver nitrate salts?
The silver may be more valuable to you if sold to alternative process photographers as silver nitrate salts - AgNO3. As far as I know the only source for photo grade AgNO3 in the USA has stopped selling the salts in small quantities and will no longer sell it online.
You might also look into selling platinum and palladium salts directly to photographers.
There is a market for photo grade salts that is not being served at this time.
The last time I purchased AgNO3 salts it was selling for about $55 for a 5 gram vial; a huge markup when the price per gram of silver bullion price today, (10/31/18), is 46c a gram, $14.35 an ounce. B&H photo is selling AgNO3 at $895.00 a pound, bullion is selling for $461.00 a kilo spot price.
So: 1 kilo = 2.2046 lb = $1973.00 and that is not taking into consideration the weight of the NO3, just the silver.
I can make it by dissolving pure silver crystal from my silver cell in nitric acid then growing the silver nitrate crystals.
I do not have X ray film, but I do have a lot of old 8x10 glass plates and large sheets of film that that have not been developed but have been rendered worthless for photography by time and humidity damage.
I am thinking that I would experiment with the glass plates first. I would soak them in water, then scrape the silver off with a utility blade, then flame flash the goo to burn off any organics.
This is where I get confused. I assume that the emulsion is silver bromide as placed on the glass. Silver bromide decomposes into metallic silver when exposed to light, and becomes a dull gray color.
Would this be the silver cement stage of your process?
Cement silver is actually powdered metallic silver. It's called cement silver because it looks like wet cement. I don't know if your dull gray material is silver or not. Try to melt some with a map gas torch. Propane don't get hot enough.
Silly question whats in the bottle? More bleach to rinse the film or something else? The reason is if it is tap water then aren't you diluting the bleach in the first bucket? Not by much I would say. BTW Great job !
I think I used water to rinse.
This video is fantastic! May I ask you what is the white powder that you added in the very last after you roast the silver using torch lighter?
That was some borax
@@sreetips Thank you!
@@sreetips Hi I followed the video and got my silver today. However I can't wash the impurities on the silver in the last step. They just won't come off in my low heat solution. Could you explain what temperature you used to cook the silver in the solution of distilled water and sulfuric acid? How to let the impurities come off?
i have one idea that is after we clean the x ray film can we reuse the x ray film
Hey sir...did u know by what chemical we can precipitate the photographic chemical waste which have in photo house?...and in ur exp,t is it naoh is enough...using nacl03 is give us best silver?
I don’t know
I like this video and teaching method. Thanks.
How long did it take to melt with the torch you was using?
Maybe about 5 minutes.
I think if you used a flat rectangular basin you might get thru it faster. Like a photographer
I only did this once because I could only find bits and pieces and a link to get the rest of the process for a fee. It was messy, time consuming, and the yield was low.
@@sreetips it was interesting to watch
What is the process if the x-Ray film is not developed? Other than developing it first, what chemicals are needed?
Sorry, I only did this once to demonstrate. I’m not sure of undeveloped films. But be aware, not all xray film contains silver. Some are heat activated.
is naoh function and bleach is the same? lastly during melting process i saw u add some chemical what is that? i guess that is to keep the quality of the silver,yeah.I want swift response dear steeps because am working now.
The NaOH converts the silver chloride to silver oxide. I think I added some borax during the melt.
Great video as always. I'd like to echo the requests for a video on recovery of silver from waste fixer solution.
When using an x-ray automated x-ray film processor a silver recovery unit is attached in series to and to the fixer tank drain line. The silver recovery may be an electrical type which traps the silver magnetically to the recovery unit or is simply a 5 or 10 gallon bucket with lid stuffed with steel wool which attracts the silver to the steel wool. Each month the processor needs maintenance for cleaning and fresh chemistry to develop the x-rays and when the fixer tank is drained from the automated film processor the fixer flows through the recovery unit before going down the drain. (also all overflow fixer from everyday processor use goes through the silver recovery unit). Depending on your film volume the recovery units are cleaned or taken outright and refined in a similar manner as this video.
Is there any silver left in developed color photos from the late 70's, 80's to 2000 ?(common photos processed from a Wal-mart or equivalent)? Thank you.
I’m not sure. Some films are thermal and have no silver at all
If you decided to do this again it looks like it might be easier and speed up the process a bit if you cut your film in strips half as long. Also if you decided you wanted to do a lot of this film if you could run across one of those old cutting boards with the arm that has the blade on it and you just lower the arm with a blade attached and it cuts your paper or whatever, I can't remember what they are called but ifyou could find one for cheap if you decided to do a lot of this it would help. Sorry, I comment too much sometimes.
Thats the best way ĺ have seen on youtube
cool video! what chemicals did you use (sequentially)? P.S. my English is bad. but google translate works well.