I'm almost 60, I have a short attention span, and I'm fine with that. Nothing on this channel is ever boring, it's always evolving, and I learn so much. It is not just the video, and all the hard work you put into it, the comments not only support the video, they complete it. Thank you so much for your time and dedication, it might just be a hobby to you, but for us it's amazing!
When I retire, I'm absolutely going to start precious metal refining as a hobby. You & your wife are an inspiration, Sreetips! Love the silver cell prep process being captured in such detail. 👍
@ExtractingMetals want to be able to trawl yard sales and swap meets to generate an incoming stream of material. My current role has me working during the hours I'd be doing such things.
When I first subscribed I thought his name was Street Tips. Like you're gonna get some tips from the street knowledge he's gained and can help others with, common sense, etc. Well that's not wrong! STREETIPS.
You're going to need more flower pots. So glad to see the Beast running again. I'd looked at your channel earlier with no joy, but saw it pop up just as I was kicking back. Greatly appreciated as always. Thanks for another great video
What I find most astonishing about everything you've done with precious metal refining on TH-cam over the many years is that you live off the Gold refining and the literal thousands of kilos of silver you've run through those electrolytic cells over the years is just a bonus on the top. I think many of us would like to be in a position to have 100kg of silver sitting in a safe as a just in case of rainy days fund and what you've got tucked away as a nest egg I suspect makes 100kg of 999 fine silver look like chump change. Kudos to you.
So, it takes a significant amount of silver to refine pure silver. Very efficient that you use and recover all of the unrefined metals in your mad scientist operation!! 😊
Oh yeah. He's got 2500 gm (+ + +) = 80 tr oz * $31 = $2492 tied up in electrolyte. He can always get it out; and it gets polluted after 2 uses so he HAS to get it out. Cement onto copper and then back to the impure silver shot. Round and round.
@@alanpecherer5705 And at the end of each cycle he has more Elemental silver than he needs for the electrolyte, he'll put that aside for his retirement as per his wife's request.
Looking the crystal growth concentrates where the cathode/bowl is scratched. I wonder what would happen if the bowls had more scratches or completely polished.
If you take an orbital sander to the inside, well padded so as to keep the corners or edges if circular from digging in, and created a network of scratches, a well formed cross hatch rather than random, you could see a concentration in the accumulation along those lines, and at intersections the formation would grow faster. The scratches increase the surface area immediately around them and causes a minor electric field to form due to the deformation of the metal, the intersections have 2 reinforcing magnetic fields which attract the ions. Ions are larger or smaller than the atom they come from; just think one electron makes the atom smaller or larger depending on an addition of an electron or the subtraction of an electron. Since the silver is charged positively it has gained an electron making it larger and very attractive to the negative field of the bowl. The scratches affect this field to increase the effective surface area of the field making these areas a primary place to be attracted to. As the crystal grows it also affects the field like an antenna helping it to reach higher into the fluid and attracting the silver ions to the negative bowl. A virgin bowl will have no preferential areas to be more attractive to the ions. A well used bowl shows, as we see, many places of attraction. As Spock would say, "fascinating."
@@sreetips which increases resistance and therefore drops the current. Makes sense. Very effective set up you have there champ. You're the home smelting and refining lord of TH-cam
Cell number 1: Is that the oldest of the three? If so, dry polish the inside of the conductive (copper) ring with a brillo pad until shiny again. Then put it back on the bowl and retest. My guess is the nitrates are causing a patina to form on the copper, increasing the resistance in that conductor.
When you are working with this much Ag, you need to make sure you have enough H2O in the solution; otherwise, you get the supersaturation condition you saw where the AgNO3 crystals were dropping out of solution.
You're going to be a busy guy feeding all those cells! Cheers and I hope you all have a nice holiday coming up here soon. [and 30 seconds after i write this next comment i see you did measure things after all :) ] If you weighed out the silver crystals and measured how much nitric acid you were using eventually you should be able to come up with a formula that would tell you how much of each you needed to get you very close to being done without having to guess so much about when the solution is done. Maybe a help to make up some extra baskets so you can recharge them all at once and then just change them out as needed and then you can clean up and combine things from the baskets as needed but all at once, instead of having to do them piecemeal. Not sure how much time this would save but doing things at the same time does make some processes go faster.
I'd think this would be the optimal exercise to suck up and redissolve your NO2. I don't know how much you need the fancy condenser setup. I think I would try to just suck the fumes through 2 bubblers in series, 2nd bubbler more to protect your vacuum pump than anything else. Yes, some fumes will escape, so be it.
The series of bubbler stations should number 3 to 5 with an additional station just before the pump. This will increase the load on the pump and require a desicant system to protect the vanes, cylinders, or whatever is being used to create the vacuum. This way you can change the first for the second and on down the line with the new one being last in place, the water can be replaced with H2O2 if experience indicates this as a better solution to the recovery problem (pun intended).
I just had a thought... Does the anode filter slime up faster if you use the cement silver directly instead of shot? Because that seems like an unnecessary step if you're just electro-chemically dissolving it to replace the silver that crystallizes out on the cathode.
What would the end result be if you used just silver nitrate solution, no distilled added? Could you use a copper anode bar instead of the silver one, keeping out of solution of course? Thank you for a great series.
The excess silver from the highly concentrated electrolyte would just plate out on cathode. But that’s a good question. Makes me wonder about using the concentrations that I use. Copper and electrode would probably work.
Since you mention the green tint: Why is there still copper in your "pure silver crystals" that you grew in your cells? Thought the copper stays in solution? Or is it from not rinsing the crystals enough?
he said it, he didnt rinsed that silver when he finished as you saw there will be copper there because the silver shot will have some copper so there you have the reason
A little copper in the electrolyte doesn’t matter. Some pros even recommend adding some copper because it improves crystal structure and growth. But the electrolyte will have copper in it soon enough from the copper in the impure silver that I add into the anode basket.
Whenever I see the electrolyte I wonder how dense it is. Do you know or would you be so kind and weigh one liter of it? When mixing different liquids and dissolving stuff in the liquid,the volumes don't add up so I don't know how to calculate the density. Thanks and best regards. Peter
Just an elementary question. Do you think different tempatures warm or cold would promote more or less growth? Meaning would one of those speed up or slow down crystal growth.
Yes, cold temps can increase the end yield but room temperature will plate out faster even if the yield is 2% less, so, tradeoffs happen. This is called cold forcing in the trade if memory serves me.
I’ve only been watching your channel for a couple weeks and you may have already covered this in a video I haven’t seen yet, but one question: do you reuse the electrolyte over and over again? It seems like you use A LOT of silver to make the electrolyte and for the extra bars you use at the anode end that makes the “slimes” to dissolve the silver out of the impure shot. What is the ratio of “silver used” vs “silver recovered” in this process? I know you eventually precipitate the silver out of the electrolyte on copper later, but do you have to purify THAT silver again? Just curious about the cost/benefit of this process.
I never use the electrolyte more than twice. And I always add fresh electrolyte for the second run. For this run I used 2500 grams of silver. And I’ll use another 800 grams for the second run of these three cells. That’s a total of 3300 grams (over 100 Troy ounces) for both runs of these three silver cells. And I fully expect to harvest 7000 grams of pure silver from each run. So, I should harvest 14000 grams of pure silver from both runs. I should net (14000g-3300g) = 11000g of pure silver crystal from both runs.
Just love watching the refiner works. Still confused about the current flowing through the cells. I would expect the current to be even on the two small cells and bigger on the larger cell. What's going on there?
The amperage is different because of a difference in resistance. Could be as simple as how much surface area there is between the impure silver shot and the bar. Bigger granules have more air between them, so less metal to metal contact, or the bar could be angled a bit and not making as good of contact as the other cell.
@13Nagash13 on another comment sreetips says it was a dirty copper cathode on cell 2. Hence greater resistance, hence difference in current flow we saw
@@13Nagash13 The contact of the bar to the shot shouldn't be the bottleneck. Would be easy to see, if the current changes when the bar is moved. I think, that the surface of the suspended silver and the steal-kathode are decicive for the resistance. At the end, the differences of the shot should middle out and the yield will show, if this thought was right 🙂
Hello streetips 🤗, may I ask please? Can I use any ready made battery solution instead of pure sulfuric? for dropping in AR just incase if there's any lead maybe present, thank you in advance 🙂
"Sreeties, the breakfast of chempions" - Me, every time you picked up a spoonful of the shot in a spoon. I guess I never realized that the electrolyte contained silver and was confused when you put silver from a cell... back into a cell??? I will venture another guess that the rig attempts to supersaturate the solution, accelerating the plating while keeping the current stable? Electro-chemical equilibrium with end result of crystal formation? It's always fascinating!
You should measure resistance between the anode and cathode on each cell with a multi meter and also directly from the solution to the cathode for comparison I think you will find why your current is vastly different, Incidentally measuring the resistance of fresh and "spent" solution would allow you to monitor the health of the solution and the exact time to change it out
@@sreetips and the deeper dished reflux plates work much better but are hard to find at flea markets and thrift stores whereas the clear glass dishes are readily available. You work with what you got though.
@@sreetips Well, i grow my own with a steam distillery, but I only use it to soften the hard hard water we have in North Alabama. So much limestone and kidney stones are a problem around here. Got tired of buying it from the stores and broke out the distillery we had bought for my dad's CPAP machine. He died back in the 1990s and we had put it in storage. Only cost pennies to run and the maintenance is easy, white vinegar after several gallons, boil it to remove the crud left behind and ė voila, like new again. Change the carbon filters if you want a better taste than the steamed aluminum of the condenser coils. Distilled water is a great solvent, plenty of room within the structures to carry oxides. I wish the coils were gold plated on the inside but those units were much too high for our needs in a CPAP where taste and smell don't matter.
@@sreetips our distilled water here in North Texas is right around $1.13 per gallon from Walmart. Other places is just a little bit higher. At Kroger it's like a $1.24 per gallon of distilled water.
Buck fifty at food lion. Used to be 0.99 cents for years. Then it went to $1.19 now it’s $1.50 - but that water hasn’t become more valuable nor more scarce. It the value of the currency declining so it takes lots more of it to buy the same amount of water.
@@sreetips Have you priced deionized water lately or DDD? Through the roof. Of course it was alway more expensive to acquire since the process takes time and isolation of the water from ion streams after production and in storage. Easy enough to degas the fluid. DDD is distilled, deionized, degased H2O. Distilled does not have to be hot, membranes work well, and if followed by the deionization pellets in the process frame, can streamline production. Using additional membranes to degas the water makes the hat trick. It is typically made on site for most modern EDM ( electric discharge machining ) equipment. As cooled or chilled H2O it works better than dielectric oils since it also cools the metal as well as electrically insulate it from the currents used in cutting the metal; it is the method of choice in Wire EDM and Sinker EDM types.
Hey Sreetips! Forgive me if this is a dumb question, but why use your already-refined silver to make the electrolyte? I believe in another video that you said you use the electrolyte across two batches, so it sounds like it's okay containing a significant amount of impurities, no? Wouldn't it be a lot more efficient to use the impure shot to create the electrolyte? Thanks!
So chemistry question, or metallurgy? I don't know... I know the impure silver shot is the "refuse" or resultant of your gold refining. And I think I remember you saying in the past you use your electrolyte twice before cleaning out the bowls and starting again. Is it possible/wise to somehow refine out the copper before creating silver shot so you can constantly reuse the electrolyte more than just twice (rehydrating it)?
Professor Sreetips, quick question. Why do you use sterling silver silverware/cups/etc instead of your pure silver from these cells to inquart your gold? It seems like you have (literal) tons of silver around, and you're continually adding new silver.
Hello Mrs and Mr Sreetips. So happy to wake up to another upload. Nobody make silver crystals like you Sir🎸🔥Have a wonderful weekend. God bless you🔥🙂🙏 Arne
It would be cool if you did like a 2-3 day(or longer) time lapse of the silver crystal growth. But do it at the beginning of a new batch like this one.
I thought copper was blue. Nevertheless, good work team. One question. Why did you dissolve the silver crystal in nitric acid for the silver cell when you had it already done and made as pure silver product? It would just reconvert it to silver crystal and you already had it as silver crystal.
I'm not entirely sure what you do with your pure silver crystal. I have noticed that you put them in containers that look pricy, in my opinion. I've been cutting up some thick gage copper wire into quarter inch pieces. After i get enough to fill a Mason jar full, i place the Mason jar full of copper with an aluminum pipe that fits around the Mason jar on a heat plate and heat it on medium heat for about 30 minutes. Turn the heat off, place the ring on the lid, and then i have vacuum sealed copper. Potentially something you could do with you silver crystal.
I'm not in a place in life to start refining, so I've been trying out different things that's not detrimental to my health. As in not having the proper equipment to safety refine metals. I love the video's!
Great idea for the future, you can also use the vacuum systems with a suction cap for mason jars, you place the lid and suck the air, sealed just like your system and at a somewhat lower cost if you buy the vacuum system for sealing bags and get some of the ancillary stuff as well.
Oh man some them big crystals ya stick in there those wpuld be cool af ta make some one off necklaces feom of course youd have ta soldering the crystals so they dont fall apart but still that would make some cool 1off stuff that nobody does ive never seen a pure silver crystal necklace or anything like it or find away ta design somw cufflinks out of em
If this is to be functional jewelry worn on a regular basis it will need strengthing with many thin 2 part epoxy washes or many thin super glue washes. These would be applied before placing on a chain or post for cufflinks or ear dangles. For the showoff within us carry a loop, I suggest a 10 power or higher. The prices would reflect the artistry and labor, the material cost of the principle metal would be only a small fraction of the cost.
@CothranMike thats why i said he would have to solder em so they dont fall apart and id doubt that would be somwthing someone would wear every day i know i wouldnt if i wore nechlaces
@CothranMike see that i didnt know man thanks for the schooling i do greatly appriceate it most people dont do that now days they freak out n go off on people or well idk hell theyre probably bots or some smuck n a dam closet with 37 phones on a board the mfers trying run some kinda dcam ta make money off th3 bots or fake accounts they have like some them mfers n china doing that bs shit any how thank u i really didnt know soldering would do that man
There’s a critical distance that must be maintained; 4 inches (10 cm) to 4.5 inches (11.5 cm) between the anode and the cathode. Too far away and the resistance is too great causing sluggish to no depositing of silver. Too close and the silver crystal will contact the anode filter bag, short the current flow, burn a hole in the bag, and release anode slimes into the cell and ruin the silver.
So then you do recover all of it one way or another I'm just asking because I'm wanting to start doing it myself and I just wanted to make sure I wouldn't be losing a bunch of stuff during the process
yes but it would be very in effective and somewhat dangerous.. if you wanted to wait longer and spread the voltage yea it can be done safely if you double it over 2 cells on 1 power supply at 6 volts and 4 amps you risk blowing a fuse or causing a fire that also depends on the power supply as well
I tried running two cells in series once and it didn’t work well. But I’ve never tried parallel. No need, I prefer separate power supply for each cell.
I love your videos even tho I go broke trying to do silver it takes to much heat and nitric silver should be labeled the hardest to go in solution it takes almost same heat as platinum bad thing they under price it silver is beautiful but no money in it so I won't do it but I enjoy watching while I do gold lol ♥️👉👉👉screetips
I'm almost 60, I have a short attention span, and I'm fine with that. Nothing on this channel is ever boring, it's always evolving, and I learn so much. It is not just the video, and all the hard work you put into it, the comments not only support the video, they complete it. Thank you so much for your time and dedication, it might just be a hobby to you, but for us it's amazing!
Thank you!
Same goes for me. I usually look how long a video Is before I watch apart from this channel ✌️
When I retire, I'm absolutely going to start precious metal refining as a hobby. You & your wife are an inspiration, Sreetips!
Love the silver cell prep process being captured in such detail. 👍
Why wait until you retire?
@ExtractingMetals want to be able to trawl yard sales and swap meets to generate an incoming stream of material. My current role has me working during the hours I'd be doing such things.
Sreetips attempting to single-handedly corner the world silver market.
The "other" Hunt brother!
I will never do what you do. I will watch and enjoy what you do. Thank you for sharing
always such "mise en place" in the way you setup your work areas, excellent
I'd like to see you get your own 1oz coins stamped. I'd buy that!
The three tips mint lol that would be awesome.
When I first subscribed I thought his name was Street Tips. Like you're gonna get some tips from the street knowledge he's gained and can help others with, common sense, etc. Well that's not wrong! STREETIPS.
You're going to need more flower pots. So glad to see the Beast running again. I'd looked at your channel earlier with no joy, but saw it pop up just as I was kicking back. Greatly appreciated as always. Thanks for another great video
Excellent, thank you
Professor sreetips stepping it up into silver production line all I can say is frickin awesome
I love seeing those silver crystals and it's amazing how quickly they start to form once you switch the current on. 👍🏻
What I find most astonishing about everything you've done with precious metal refining on TH-cam over the many years is that you live off the Gold refining and the literal thousands of kilos of silver you've run through those electrolytic cells over the years is just a bonus on the top. I think many of us would like to be in a position to have 100kg of silver sitting in a safe as a just in case of rainy days fund and what you've got tucked away as a nest egg I suspect makes 100kg of 999 fine silver look like chump change. Kudos to you.
Once again, very good and accurate explanations.
Thank you, Sir.
Gooooood evening from central Florida! Hope everyone has a great night!
Goooood evening!
Love how the crystals grow along surface imperfections on the stainless bowls.
I’d love to see an epic melt episode, just stacking bars. Use the big furnace.
So, it takes a significant amount of silver to refine pure silver. Very efficient that you use and recover all of the unrefined metals in your mad scientist operation!! 😊
Oh yeah. He's got 2500 gm (+ + +) = 80 tr oz * $31 = $2492 tied up in electrolyte. He can always get it out; and it gets polluted after 2 uses so he HAS to get it out. Cement onto copper and then back to the impure silver shot. Round and round.
@@alanpecherer5705 And at the end of each cycle he has more Elemental silver than he needs for the electrolyte, he'll put that aside for his retirement as per his wife's request.
Can u please show us a silver tree under a microscope please. Love what u do.
Happy 🦃 Thanksgiving to Mr. & Mrs. Sreetips and family 😊
🎉🎉
Happy Thanksgiving.
Looking the crystal growth concentrates where the cathode/bowl is scratched. I wonder what would happen if the bowls had more scratches or completely polished.
If you take an orbital sander to the inside, well padded so as to keep the corners or edges if circular from digging in, and created a network of scratches, a well formed cross hatch rather than random, you could see a concentration in the accumulation along those lines, and at intersections the formation would grow faster.
The scratches increase the surface area immediately around them and causes a minor electric field to form due to the deformation of the metal, the intersections have 2 reinforcing magnetic fields which attract the ions. Ions are larger or smaller than the atom they come from; just think one electron makes the atom smaller or larger depending on an addition of an electron or the subtraction of an electron. Since the silver is charged positively it has gained an electron making it larger and very attractive to the negative field of the bowl. The scratches affect this field to increase the effective surface area of the field making these areas a primary place to be attracted to. As the crystal grows it also affects the field like an antenna helping it to reach higher into the fluid and attracting the silver ions to the negative bowl. A virgin bowl will have no preferential areas to be more attractive to the ions. A well used bowl shows, as we see, many places of attraction. As Spock would say, "fascinating."
Happy Thanksgiving to Everyone and to Sreetip's Family !!! Nice to See the Beast is Back!!!; )
Happy Thanksgiving!
You are welcome. Now you’re a juggler or is it a three ring circus?…definitely not clowning around though! Mass production! Thank you Sir!👍👍🤟
The difference in current in the first two silver cells you showed reflects different resistances
A dirty copper cathode connection on cell #2
@@sreetips which increases resistance and therefore drops the current. Makes sense.
Very effective set up you have there champ.
You're the home smelting and refining lord of TH-cam
I think the neat part is that you make mistakes and adapt to each pretty well and with each video we see your setups and skills etc evolve.
I’m still learning as I go.
Patient #2 might need extra assistance. Thank you for sharing with us Sreetips. God Bless 🙏
Saw a cool commercial set up that had a conveyor belt built in so they could continuously harvest wile running
like a snow globe, beautiful
Yes folks that's $2500 worth of silver in the electrolyte. That's a lot of turkey! Happy Thanksgiving sreetips family :)
Happy Thanksgiving!
Cell number 1:
Is that the oldest of the three?
If so, dry polish the inside of the conductive (copper) ring with a brillo pad until shiny again. Then put it back on the bowl and retest.
My guess is the nitrates are causing a patina to form on the copper, increasing the resistance in that conductor.
I was thinking the same thing.
Nice and easy, sir. Good job! All is good when it ends good.
When you are working with this much Ag, you need to make sure you have enough H2O in the solution; otherwise, you get the supersaturation condition you saw where the AgNO3 crystals were dropping out of solution.
You're going to be a busy guy feeding all those cells! Cheers and I hope you all have a nice holiday coming up here soon.
[and 30 seconds after i write this next comment i see you did measure things after all :) ]
If you weighed out the silver crystals and measured how much nitric acid you were using eventually you should be able to come up with a formula that would tell you how much of each you needed to get you very close to being done without having to guess so much about when the solution is done.
Maybe a help to make up some extra baskets so you can recharge them all at once and then just change them out as needed and then you can clean up and combine things from the baskets as needed but all at once, instead of having to do them piecemeal. Not sure how much time this would save but doing things at the same time does make some processes go faster.
Thank you sir for sharing these informative and enjoyable video with us six stars
I'd think this would be the optimal exercise to suck up and redissolve your NO2. I don't know how much you need the fancy condenser setup. I think I would try to just suck the fumes through 2 bubblers in series, 2nd bubbler more to protect your vacuum pump than anything else. Yes, some fumes will escape, so be it.
The series of bubbler stations should number 3 to 5 with an additional station just before the pump. This will increase the load on the pump and require a desicant system to protect the vanes, cylinders, or whatever is being used to create the vacuum. This way you can change the first for the second and on down the line with the new one being last in place, the water can be replaced with H2O2 if experience indicates this as a better solution to the recovery problem (pun intended).
How do I learn how to do this for myself on a smaller scale to start with it's very interesting work and I really want to learn how to do this
I learned on the goldrefiningforum.com
Id like to see how pure that stuff from the great lakes is. Thanks for the share sir.
I have 1 Ounce Troy of your silver crystals I bought off eBay. It’s still in the bag and they are very beautiful in person.
Gotta love the science involved here
I bet your glad to see the price of silver up.
I have a question, Kevin is it possible to use silver bought from a mint to make silver nitrate
Yes
Sreetips, thanks for making my day again!!
I just had a thought...
Does the anode filter slime up faster if you use the cement silver directly instead of shot? Because that seems like an unnecessary step if you're just electro-chemically dissolving it to replace the silver that crystallizes out on the cathode.
It clogs the filter.
Thanks for the silver cell video! Great content as always !!
What a treat. Thanks for another great video!
What would the end result be if you used just silver nitrate solution, no distilled added? Could you use a copper anode bar instead of the silver one, keeping out of solution of course? Thank you for a great series.
The excess silver from the highly concentrated electrolyte would just plate out on cathode. But that’s a good question. Makes me wonder about using the concentrations that I use. Copper and electrode would probably work.
Yes! Return of the GIGANTIC funnel! I love that thing, it's so ridiculous and so amazing at the same time!
Thank you for that excellent cameo!
I had to break it out. Someone was requesting it.
@sreetips haha! Yeah, it was me 😃 Thank you again, I love seeing that thing!
Man,, all those beautiful Silver Crystal formations sent into the Nitric Acid (9:00 min) ,, very cool reactions,
All the best to you guys,,
Happy Thanksgiving Boats!
Since you mention the green tint: Why is there still copper in your "pure silver crystals" that you grew in your cells? Thought the copper stays in solution? Or is it from not rinsing the crystals enough?
he said it, he didnt rinsed that silver when he finished
as you saw there will be copper there because the silver shot will have some copper so there you have the reason
@@betag24cn Ah ok, sorry must have overheard that (: Thank you!
Failed to rinse all the old electrolyte off. Some copper remained.
@@sreetips I see. Thank you for your answer (:
A little copper in the electrolyte doesn’t matter. Some pros even recommend adding some copper because it improves crystal structure and growth. But the electrolyte will have copper in it soon enough from the copper in the impure silver that I add into the anode basket.
I know it would take longer but why not use the impure shot for making the nitrate? You are going to dissolve the copper anyway once you refine some.
Because that’s the way I learned it.
i was thinking the last month or two, why you didnt showed us the single silver cell in operation
i see you have been very busy!
Whenever I see the electrolyte I wonder how dense it is. Do you know or would you be so kind and weigh one liter of it? When mixing different liquids and dissolving stuff in the liquid,the volumes don't add up so I don't know how to calculate the density. Thanks and best regards. Peter
I have some more electrolyte. I’ll try to weigh it and compare the weight of the electrolyte with the same volume of water with no silver in it.
Just an elementary question. Do you think different tempatures warm or cold would promote more or less growth? Meaning would one of those speed up or slow down crystal growth.
Yes, cold temps can increase the end yield but room temperature will plate out faster even if the yield is 2% less, so, tradeoffs happen. This is called cold forcing in the trade if memory serves me.
I don’t know, I’ve never measured the difference.
Some of your equipment is huge! The sizes were doing funny things to my sense of perspective watching this😂
Spatial disorientation.
Good morning, Mrs and Mr Sreetips from Dubai
Good morning Dubai
Hello Dubai friend 🙂🔥
Is running 3 cells a question of can it be done or is there time and production objectives due to possible silver price increases on the way?
I’m just trying for some entertainment value.
Yes the silver cells are back and all 3 absolutely brilliant 👏 how exciting 😁👏👍💕xxx
Thank you!
I’ve only been watching your channel for a couple weeks and you may have already covered this in a video I haven’t seen yet, but one question: do you reuse the electrolyte over and over again? It seems like you use A LOT of silver to make the electrolyte and for the extra bars you use at the anode end that makes the “slimes” to dissolve the silver out of the impure shot. What is the ratio of “silver used” vs “silver recovered” in this process? I know you eventually precipitate the silver out of the electrolyte on copper later, but do you have to purify THAT silver again? Just curious about the cost/benefit of this process.
I never use the electrolyte more than twice. And I always add fresh electrolyte for the second run. For this run I used 2500 grams of silver. And I’ll use another 800 grams for the second run of these three cells. That’s a total of 3300 grams (over 100 Troy ounces) for both runs of these three silver cells. And I fully expect to harvest 7000 grams of pure silver from each run. So, I should harvest 14000 grams of pure silver from both runs. I should net (14000g-3300g) = 11000g of pure silver crystal from both runs.
Just love watching the refiner works.
Still confused about the current flowing through the cells. I would expect the current to be even on the two small cells and bigger on the larger cell. What's going on there?
The amperage is different because of a difference in resistance. Could be as simple as how much surface area there is between the impure silver shot and the bar. Bigger granules have more air between them, so less metal to metal contact, or the bar could be angled a bit and not making as good of contact as the other cell.
@13Nagash13 on another comment sreetips says it was a dirty copper cathode on cell 2. Hence greater resistance, hence difference in current flow we saw
@@13Nagash13 The contact of the bar to the shot shouldn't be the bottleneck. Would be easy to see, if the current changes when the bar is moved.
I think, that the surface of the suspended silver and the steal-kathode are decicive for the resistance. At the end, the differences of the shot should middle out and the yield will show, if this thought was right 🙂
I finally looked up what's in those nasty yellow fumes. Yeesh.
What does the pure silver electrolyte smell like, I think cotton candy with orange mango what say you
Odorless to slightly nitric
I want to be like Sreetips when I grow up
Hello streetips 🤗, may I ask please? Can I use any ready made battery solution instead of pure sulfuric? for dropping in AR just incase if there's any lead maybe present, thank you in advance 🙂
I don’t see why not
Thank you! 😊 ❤❤@@sreetips
Thank you for sharing Sreetips' question. So with that fume hood, you don't need to wear a mask?
I wear a mask doing hot work
Will be interesting to see how the yealds compare between one 6 L vs two 3.5 L
Yeah, that's what I'm waiting for!
"Sreeties, the breakfast of chempions" - Me, every time you picked up a spoonful of the shot in a spoon.
I guess I never realized that the electrolyte contained silver and was confused when you put silver from a cell... back into a cell???
I will venture another guess that the rig attempts to supersaturate the solution, accelerating the plating while keeping the current stable?
Electro-chemical equilibrium with end result of crystal formation?
It's always fascinating!
14 👍 's up sreetips thank you for sharing 🤗
Do the silver cells produce any fumes please Mr T?
Also. What turns the electrolyte to that lovely blue please?
No fumes detected. The blue is from copper in the impure silver shot
@sreetips Thank you. It's such an amazing colour.
Nice work as always. I may try this one day.
cell number 2 was a little tilted and didnt make full contact on the consuming anode. i bet thats why a full amp less was transferring
I’m going to check the patina on the copper strap on the anode connection.
good little production line. henry ford would approve, i'm sure.😎
Another awesome vid. I'd love to see a time lapse of the crystal growing.
I have a couple videos of that posted on my channel.
Awesome I'll take a look
You should measure resistance between the anode and cathode on each cell with a multi meter and also directly from the solution to the cathode for comparison I think you will find why your current is vastly different, Incidentally measuring the resistance of fresh and "spent" solution would allow you to monitor the health of the solution and the exact time to change it out
That’s a great idea. I must learn how to do it.
9:10 with a fume hood in use, why is it that you semi cover the beaker?
Reflux
@@sreetips and the deeper dished reflux plates work much better but are hard to find at flea markets and thrift stores whereas the clear glass dishes are readily available. You work with what you got though.
So which brand of distilled water are you using? Food Lion? Home depot? Kroger? Safeway?
Food Lion and Lowes. Publix is a dollar per gallon more.
@@sreetips Well, i grow my own with a steam distillery, but I only use it to soften the hard hard water we have in North Alabama. So much limestone and kidney stones are a problem around here. Got tired of buying it from the stores and broke out the distillery we had bought for my dad's CPAP machine. He died back in the 1990s and we had put it in storage. Only cost pennies to run and the maintenance is easy, white vinegar after several gallons, boil it to remove the crud left behind and ė voila, like new again. Change the carbon filters if you want a better taste than the steamed aluminum of the condenser coils. Distilled water is a great solvent, plenty of room within the structures to carry oxides. I wish the coils were gold plated on the inside but those units were much too high for our needs in a CPAP where taste and smell don't matter.
@@sreetips our distilled water here in North Texas is right around $1.13 per gallon from Walmart. Other places is just a little bit higher. At Kroger it's like a $1.24 per gallon of distilled water.
Buck fifty at food lion. Used to be 0.99 cents for years. Then it went to $1.19 now it’s $1.50 - but that water hasn’t become more valuable nor more scarce. It the value of the currency declining so it takes lots more of it to buy the same amount of water.
@@sreetips Have you priced deionized water lately or DDD? Through the roof. Of course it was alway more expensive to acquire since the process takes time and isolation of the water from ion streams after production and in storage. Easy enough to degas the fluid. DDD is distilled, deionized, degased H2O. Distilled does not have to be hot, membranes work well, and if followed by the deionization pellets in the process frame, can streamline production. Using additional membranes to degas the water makes the hat trick.
It is typically made on site for most modern EDM ( electric discharge machining ) equipment. As cooled or chilled H2O it works better than dielectric oils since it also cools the metal as well as electrically insulate it from the currents used in cutting the metal; it is the method of choice in Wire EDM and Sinker EDM types.
You know he can.😃
Hey Sreetips! Forgive me if this is a dumb question, but why use your already-refined silver to make the electrolyte? I believe in another video that you said you use the electrolyte across two batches, so it sounds like it's okay containing a significant amount of impurities, no? Wouldn't it be a lot more efficient to use the impure shot to create the electrolyte? Thanks!
I don’t know.
WOW. It's crazy that each of those 1000ml beakers has almost $900CAD of silver in it.
And that's just the starter solution!!
So cool, wtg eh. A canadian fan
when you add the nitric acid to the silver, what is the vapor product (orange yellow gas). is it impurities disolving ?
Nitrogen dioxide
@@sreetips KK thank you
So chemistry question, or metallurgy? I don't know... I know the impure silver shot is the "refuse" or resultant of your gold refining. And I think I remember you saying in the past you use your electrolyte twice before cleaning out the bowls and starting again. Is it possible/wise to somehow refine out the copper before creating silver shot so you can constantly reuse the electrolyte more than just twice (rehydrating it)?
No, I would not do that. The electrolyte gets deplete of silver as the cell operates.
Hi Ya & best wishes. SuperB! Thanks for work. Be Happy. Sevastopol/Crimea.)
Thanks Crimea
Professor Sreetips, quick question. Why do you use sterling silver silverware/cups/etc instead of your pure silver from these cells to inquart your gold? It seems like you have (literal) tons of silver around, and you're continually adding new silver.
Because the pure silver crystal has already been through the silver cell. Be like taking a step backwards.
Does the electrolyte fill heavy will all that dissolved metal or is it noticeable?
Yes
Maybe fewer amps on cell 2 due to oxidation on the anode bar. It appears much “dirtier” than the other two.
Possibly
Hello Mrs and Mr Sreetips.
So happy to wake up to another upload. Nobody make silver crystals like you Sir🎸🔥Have a wonderful weekend. God bless you🔥🙂🙏
Arne
Thank you Arne, same to you and your family!
@sreetips Thank you buddy 🙂
It would be cool if you did like a 2-3 day(or longer) time lapse of the silver crystal growth. But do it at the beginning of a new batch like this one.
I have two silver cell time lapse videos posted on my channel
@@sreetips I'll search your channel for it thanks! :)
I thought copper was blue. Nevertheless, good work team. One question. Why did you dissolve the silver crystal in nitric acid for the silver cell when you had it already done and made as pure silver product? It would just reconvert it to silver crystal and you already had it as silver crystal.
Copper is blue. But sometimes the electrolyte can be a slight yellow tint. So the copper blue and yellowish tint made it appear a slight green
@@sreetips awesome
I think the two small silver cells need names. I would respectfully suggest Bert and Ernie.
Love this stuff
I'm not entirely sure what you do with your pure silver crystal. I have noticed that you put them in containers that look pricy, in my opinion. I've been cutting up some thick gage copper wire into quarter inch pieces. After i get enough to fill a Mason jar full, i place the Mason jar full of copper with an aluminum pipe that fits around the Mason jar on a heat plate and heat it on medium heat for about 30 minutes. Turn the heat off, place the ring on the lid, and then i have vacuum sealed copper. Potentially something you could do with you silver crystal.
I'm not in a place in life to start refining, so I've been trying out different things that's not detrimental to my health. As in not having the proper equipment to safety refine metals. I love the video's!
Great idea for the future, you can also use the vacuum systems with a suction cap for mason jars, you place the lid and suck the air, sealed just like your system and at a somewhat lower cost if you buy the vacuum system for sealing bags and get some of the ancillary stuff as well.
Oh man some them big crystals ya stick in there those wpuld be cool af ta make some one off necklaces feom of course youd have ta soldering the crystals so they dont fall apart but still that would make some cool 1off stuff that nobody does ive never seen a pure silver crystal necklace or anything like it or find away ta design somw cufflinks out of em
If this is to be functional jewelry worn on a regular basis it will need strengthing with many thin 2 part epoxy washes or many thin super glue washes. These would be applied before placing on a chain or post for cufflinks or ear dangles. For the showoff within us carry a loop, I suggest a 10 power or higher. The prices would reflect the artistry and labor, the material cost of the principle metal would be only a small fraction of the cost.
@CothranMike thats why i said he would have to solder em so they dont fall apart and id doubt that would be somwthing someone would wear every day i know i wouldnt if i wore nechlaces
@@ericbeeman8717 I see, well, it is just that the heat from solder will destroy the fine structures. Hence the reason for my recommendations.
@CothranMike see that i didnt know man thanks for the schooling i do greatly appriceate it most people dont do that now days they freak out n go off on people or well idk hell theyre probably bots or some smuck n a dam closet with 37 phones on a board the mfers trying run some kinda dcam ta make money off th3 bots or fake accounts they have like some them mfers n china doing that bs shit any how thank u i really didnt know soldering would do that man
Dumb question - does the silver weigh the same weight in solution form to metal form?
It should
Yes, mass is mass, dissolution does not change that at all. Also it is wet so you have to weight the water.
Why is the silver nitrate tinted greenish blue this time?
Seconds after I asked that u answered me!
Oh boy..... this is gonna be a good'an.
Excellent video 🎉🎉🎉❤❤❤
Thank you 🤗
Stainless 55 gal drum and high out put DC power supply.
There’s a critical distance that must be maintained; 4 inches (10 cm) to 4.5 inches (11.5 cm) between the anode and the cathode. Too far away and the resistance is too great causing sluggish to no depositing of silver. Too close and the silver crystal will contact the anode filter bag, short the current flow, burn a hole in the bag, and release anode slimes into the cell and ruin the silver.
Is this a first for you running them at this scale?
Yes
This is going to be good
Do you recover all the silver you put in you electrolyte or do you lose a bunch?
I recover it. Some of it gets plated out on the cathode.
So then you do recover all of it one way or another I'm just asking because I'm wanting to start doing it myself and I just wanted to make sure I wouldn't be losing a bunch of stuff during the process
Stupid question - strictly curiosity - could one power supply operate more than one silver cell?
yes but it would be very in effective and somewhat dangerous.. if you wanted to wait longer and spread the voltage yea it can be done safely if you double it over 2 cells on 1 power supply at 6 volts and 4 amps you risk blowing a fuse or causing a fire that also depends on the power supply as well
thwre are bigger power supplies with two outputs, but those are expensove and since he got one of those hp units very cheap why not use it?
thx for commenting
I tried running two cells in series once and it didn’t work well. But I’ve never tried parallel. No need, I prefer separate power supply for each cell.
if I lived next door I'd be begging to come help and learn lol
I love your videos even tho I go broke trying to do silver it takes to much heat and nitric silver should be labeled the hardest to go in solution it takes almost same heat as platinum bad thing they under price it silver is beautiful but no money in it so I won't do it but I enjoy watching while I do gold lol ♥️👉👉👉screetips
Silver is money. Currency is a money substitute and has no value. But silver and gold will always have value.