My compliments.... this is the BEST ( easy and working ) Silver refinery movie ever! :-) Did it the same way with some silver coins.... about 25 gram of silver :-)
Dude, I'm replicating your experiment right now, so I just palce a copper tube inside that solution again and again till nothing happens. By the way, you're a genius. I tell you man, you're a genius!
Your a legend for showing this! I'm in the GRF too, but what you've presented is an incredibly practical small method for silver cell - I made one very similar and worked great. Finished with 12.665 grams 99.9% silver. This makes the most beautiful bars when cast, and leaves not a trace of oxides in the melting dish. To answer the q's below, I reuse my copper tube as its very difficult to get all traces of silver off it, so I use it again and it'll fall off when more silver builds up.
@metaltect basically you leave it to dry out. once dry it can be removed, only almost completely. there will always be a small bit left thus one does not throw away the filter. keep the filter paper and burn it with the torch, or burn more of them as they accumulate. the paper burns to ash and what is left over is mostly precious metal, it can be redissolved in nitric acid and put back into the cycle.
@27simber yes you can use sterling as a substitute for the fine silver. though you can make high purity silver by melting some of the cemented silver you get at 0:45
Thanks. I dissolved around 750-800 gram of various silver in Nitric Acid and distilled water. Am not totally done, as i was waiting for some copper who came yesterday. But have some who I have just to clean, when the vacuum pump arrives. And then melting some larger ingots with a silver stick in so I can easy hock up my + in the set-up. And rest I will make cornflakes of and add to the basket easy for faster dissolving :) And now I will order some 999 silver to add to the 999 I got to get enough to make the Silver Nitrate bath :) Will update you later on. Thanks for helping out! Kent
our mad-scientist-friend it's back......jesus dude took u quite long to upload another1.and yes, ur awesome like always, keep up the good work, nice1, kudos.
@doinen silver nitrate is a white salt, silver nitrate solution is colorless. the bluish thing is the copper nitrate, which is unwanted. yes, you can store the solution, in glass jars for example.
@RenkoTrader since you are new, i advise you to be more specific on your inquiries like: when you heat the silver at 1:59 i did not heat any silver nitrate, all that is being heated, actually melted, is metallic silver. if you heat silver nitrate you may end up with molten silver nitrate but most often this salt decomposes so it is not advisable to do such a thing.
Hi ... still reading Hoke here ... however I couldn't avoid to notice a mismatch on your video. At 2:43 the cathode is made from stainless steel but at 3:11 you used a silver sheet, I guess it can be done in both ways ... thank you for the great video, cheers.
@spacebrdcst actually it does not need to be fine silver, sterling works as well. but...just in case you need some fine silver, use the cemented silver, melt it down and it will be close enough to fine silver to do the job. still, sterling is also good for this.
@bigcoolviking 2. all other alloying metals that can be attacked by the acid will go into the aqueous solution. at 0:50 you can see that all the metals above copper will stay in solution in their nitric salt form, whereas all metals below copper will get cemented out in a metallic form. so, to cut it short, the 30% copper from the alloy is the blue water you see in the jar.
@27simber you can make silver nitrate from sterling, but it will be impure because of the copper nitrate. you can make a better quality silver nitrate by dissolving some cemented silver in nitric acid.
@bigcoolviking as a rule of thumb, for silver that is 97-99% pure you can use the eletrolitic process, whereas for silver that is 40-97% pure you have to go with the dissolution process using nitric acid. hydrochloric acid will not dissolve silver, it actually prevents it from dissolving. sulphuric acid is weak at dissolving silver but more importantly it will not dissolve copper you may have problems dissolving gold-silver alloys in nitric acid that have a silver content less than 40%.
@Squish120 thank you for answering some questions over here at the comments page. i made this video and others mainly to share knowledge with other people who are interested. back when i was searching for info i found little, so i want to contribute to improvement of that. i did not post videos lately mainly because of lack of time, but i still have some thing coockin', which will come out when i find the time for it.
@nikola96uf i think this topic is covered somewhere in the comments page, but concentration can be anywhere from 20 to 50% . you can also use higher concentrated acid but you will loose some of it because it tends to break down to these fumes quicker than the weaker concentrated one.
Best condensed tutorial on the web! Excellent work Sir. Do you purchase your acid? I made my own and it was a real pain in the ass. I will attempt to Ionize my silver this weekend. What is the stoichiometric amount of acid I should use per weight of silver? Thanks in advance.
@kalaliakas the amount is small enough, you don't necessarily need oxygen. if you find it hard to find oxygen-fuel torches, maybe you want to consider building a small charcoal furnace and melt it in crucibles.
cool vid, watching the crystals grow is fasinating. I have some I will try to refine like this. If ya do it in larger batches does the crystal structure come out larger or is it stll small and fern like? would be nice to get some meaty sized crystals to display
Hi, Great clip. Everything is explained clearly. The only thing I'm a bit lost is about the elocrolyte solution. How is that made? let's say i need 1 litre of solution will i put 100 grms of silver, 10grms copper, 300 ml of nitric and and 700ml water? Thanks again
@aviyeshurun you need the silver anode in order to plate out silver at the cathode. if you just want to get silver out of a nitrate solution, stick a piece of copper inside and it will get cemented out. i do not know how to grow large crystals, i have read something about it on the net, stating that normal plating voltage, low current and little nitrate concentrations yield large crystals....but i cannot confirm that
you may be right but on the other hand, they don't loose their charge, they just transfer from one to the other. the charge they stored stays the same, it will just be distributed another way amongst them.
@JesExaVid they stay in the solution. the 30% is mostly copper, it turns to copper nitrate in this process. hydrated copper nitrate is blue, hence the blue colour of the solution
@Heathenheart1979 the thing is, there is two times silver. one that will be consumed (anode +) and one that will attract the 999 silver crystals to it (cathode -). cathode is athe bottom, the plate thing you see (made out of fine silver) , the wire going to it is black--meaning negative. this cathode can also be stainless steel, a spoon for example should work. i do not know how to convert AgCl into Ag. browse the goldrefiningforum for more info
Very Interesting...ok so you showed 2 very different ,methods for extracing the silver is one any better ie scavenging more silver out than the other, or is it just a question on one being quicker than the other? 2. what happens to the copper or nicklt 7.5% that is mixed with the sterling, does it just turn to sludge? would these methods work of a 50% silver coin? Cheers Graeme
@modee31700 you are right, if there is any nickel in the solution than copper can not cement it out. you can get the nickel out, along with the copper, by adding iron to the solution, AFTER you have already separated the silver. You do not want to contaminate the silver! NO, the initial solution is not suited. It has to be fairly pure. Make silver nitrate by dissolving the washed cemented silver in nitric acid. In the electrolytic process you need to regenerate the nitrate when contaminated.
Good and informative compared to the other videos out there! Just one tip - you can use urea to neutralize excess acid to prevent the copper from being dissolved... saves your copper rod and gives you less copper in the solution...
@RainstormGB it will work only for the silver part, the copper electrochemical refining setup is different. i really see no point in getting the copper back. after cementing out the silver with copper, you can cement the copper out of the copper nitrate solution with iron, use iron nails for example.
@fedaikn hey, thanks for great vid! I`m going to try this very soon but I have a few questions first. 1. Is silver nitrate the blueish solution you get when dissolving sterling silver in nitric acid? 2. Can the solution be left in a jar over time or do you have to perform the electrochemical bit immediately?
@jonnymaclincoln i kept some copper tube in the solution, for two weeks or so to get even the smallest amount of silver out. then i did precipitate the silver with some hydrochloric acid and i still have the precipitate today. the electrolyte solution is a 10% silver nitrate solution. to make silver nitrate you need to dissolve some of the cemented silver in nitric acid. it doesen't even need to be 10%, just roughly estimate it
@gasdorf the experiment is now one year ago, kinda hard to say what quantity it was. i guess i used some 20 ml of 53% nitric acid that was later diluted to around 20%. of course i can calculate the theoretical amount but it is irrelevant. the butane consumption is not that bad. the price for one butane refill tube is 2 eur and i guess i can melt this amount of silver at least 13 times with it . anyhow it was only a demonstration, it did not need to be economical.
@BeanCalGuy if you add salt to silver nitrate you get silver chloride. you can try to torch it but you'll find out that it melts. it's rather hard to decompose silver chloride so it makes little sense to do it that way. you can only get the silver from your plated items dissolved, WHEN all the copper is dissolved as well. best method would be to strip the silver through an electrochemical process. check the goldrefiningforum for more info
@buggymak i can not buy nitric acid either in my country. i got it when i was on a trip to germany. if you consider producing your own nitric through a method described on the channel of nurdrage , you have to remember that the cheapest nitric is still the one you can buy.
@vellajoe1 1 kg is a large amount. congratulations. i can only imagine the efforts made for establishing the setup for this purpose. i am not sure i understand your question, i assume you mean the little hook that you need to attach to the silver piece to be refined. don't use stainless. i can think olny of gold and platinum but that is no option. the solution is to shape or positiobn your piece in such a way as to not have the hook touch the electrolyte solution until the last moment
Very nice informational video. I'm planning on doing the same thing with a bunch of scrap 925 jewelry as you described in the first demonstration. Did you buy your Nitric Acid, or did you make it?
Hi, Great video friend, but I have a question, once you have dissolved your sterling silver in the nitric acid, what happens to the other tin/nickel or other metals, also I have just ordered 1 litre of 70% nitric acid, how much silver will this process, its quite expensive, thanks again
@fedaikn ok, thanks. just to check if I got this right. first dissolve sterling silver in nitric acid. solution becomes muddy blue. add distilled water. put a copper pipe into the solution and leave it overnight (can this be done indoors, maybe with a lid on?). filter out the cemented silver. the clear blue solution is just waste now and has no purpose. the silver cement can be fire molded into a 98% ingot or added to nitric acid to make silver nitrate solution. have I got it right?
Could it not be done without the initial dissolving stage. Just take your sterling silver and do the last stage, basically suspend the piece in a fabric bag attached to the - probe within a silver nitrate solution, this would then only dissolve and translate the silver across to the + probe. I could be very wrong, but i would be interested in your thoughts.
the comment that the guy had commented on was referring to the use of some Hydrocloric Acid to form Aqua Regia. Aqua Regia can, by context of the coversation, make dilute silver precipitate from a solution. you don't put the copper tube in the solution again and again, if that solution was going to work, then you would have had to pull out the tube before the reaction was finished working.
@goku569 sounds interesting. there are more options for you but you need nitric acid. take a small sample of the white paste and take a sample of the grid as well. dissolve in nitric acid and then add a drop of table salt after dissolving. if a white precipitate appears than you may have some silver, you may also have lead. anyhow, if only the paste shows presence of silver, take only the paste and try the method in this video. else melt down anything and follow the method.
@jdat747 perhaps there is a solution but i was not interested in finding out. recovering the copper with cheap iron seems the quickest way and since iron nitrate is not so harmful as copper...for the moment i'll keep doing it this way
@NytingGayle Not much point refining the copper due to its value, but it can be done the same way. With your spent solution of copper nitrate, add a clean piece of steel and copper will plate out. Then you can use the same electrolysis method with copper - usually as copper sulfate because its cheaper and plate pure copper, very difficult to melt though without creating oxides
+fedaikn hello nice video there, can I get some help here, I need Silver Nitrate for my project, as its not cheap I thought of making some my self now as I understand making it with pure 999 silver nothing complicated but I have lots of spare 925 silver so before making silver nitrate I need to purify my 925 silver first using all method in this video? I just did't get the last part were do I get that silver sheet from?
+Laiptiniu Remontas it is very simple. digest some of your 925 silver with nitric acid. then cement the silver out with copper metal. wash the cemented silver well , just like in my video. now you have cemented silver that is almost pure (maybe 990). you can redissolve this silver in nitric acid to make silver nitrate for your project. if you need it very pure than just recristalize this silver nitrate solution like here /watch?v=uVA0rK_VITY i made the silver sheet from the washed cemented silver. just melted , poured an ingot and rolled it out. it was pure enough for my purpose.
@washnon you have got something wrong.... the amount of silver cemented out is dependent on the amount of silver in your alloy, not on the volume of solution.
If one used the electrolytic technique to strip silver off a "nickel silver" base, would the nickel silver be dissolved as well? Would that adversely affect they electrolyte?
thank you i did purchase the nitric acid...from germany . it is ilegal in my country. you can make your own but it is some pain in the ut to make it and to get it pure enough. you can use stoichiometric amounts but it is more simple if you do only observe it. follow the advice given at 0:26 , just add a little acid a t a time
@hahanex the corect term would be aqueous solution or just solution. the solution contains mainly copper nitrate but in small quantities it can contain some silver nitrate as well for disposing i would stick some nails inside until all the copper gets cemented out and then i flush it down the toilet. iron nitrate is not as harmful as copper nitrate is
in this system is the silver nitrate destroyed or is it continually replenished from the bit that you are refining? That is of course until impurities finally make it impossible to recombine the silver nitrate.
@tempoeagle i have not tried anything like recovering silver from photographic film processed silver. still, i guess it will work as well. the method described in my video should be quite efficient but you need good equipment to ensure this (like a plating rectifier as current source). try it out if you have time/resources and let us know.
@fedaikn Thanks a lot. I refined a kilo of silver succesfully. Everything went as planed. The only issue i had was the silver i attached to the anode. It kept being dissolved in the nitrate solution. Do you know what metal can be used that silver nitrate doesn't attack in electrolyses for future reference. I was thinking of stainless steel grade 316. Thanks again.
@666Pockets666 smash it up, really fine. separate the silver out of the crushed rock by panning in water (like the gold diggers do). melt the silver that you collect. the lump of silver can the be refined through the same principle, using the same steps as explained in this video
ok, so I heated up the jar with the nitric acid and the sterling silver and now it`s almost completely dissolved. I may have to add a little more acid. But around the sides of the jar there`s white and blue crystalls. I presume the white crystals are silver nitrate, and the blue crystals are copper nitrate. Should I scrape this off back into the solution? Should I filter when I pour the solution into a clean glass and add distilled water?
@vellajoe1 hello actually, you need not have any copper. you need only silver nitrate, 10% concentration should do fine. so....prepare your silver nitrate by dissolving either fine silver or the cemented silver in nitric acid. you need not calculate amounts, but if you wish and have the means, do it. basically you keep adding nitric acid to the silver until it gets dissolved. than you add a little more silver to be sure all the acid is consumed and that's it.
can't you recycle the acid when it turns blue/green by electroplating out the copper? Also, if you do it that way, then you don't end up with hazardous chems to dispose of.
@JohnChristianLien you can filter out the cemented silver, you can and have to wash it with DISTILLED water only. it is fairly pure silver, but no 99,99%. that's why we do the next step, electrochemical, to get it to be fine silver you can recover the silver from the copper nitrate waste by adding muriatic acid, known also as hidrochloric acid or simply HCL . that will precipitate the silver and you can filter it out. however, converting silver chloride to silver is complicated. just keep it
Just a question to make sure I follow...isn't silver nitrate the resultant liquid after the cemented silver is removed after the first refining step (the blue liquid)? If so can it be used for the second step, or does it need to be fresh?
*Those the electrolyte system that you show on the movie is suitable for all amount of refined silver (for exampale 10kilo) ??? *In the last part of the process you are doing the silver electrolysis with silver nitrate solution,can it be done with the silver nitrate that we creat in the first part of process???
@spacebrdcst interesting fact....the silver nitrate that forms crystals indicates one thing ! too high concetration of your acid or already too much silver dissolved how strong is is your acid? you may solve the problem by adding a distilled water
hello .... I would like to know how to prepare the silver nitrate solution as my strength is very low and also further diluted silver ... and tried to lower the pH with distilled water but it takes long time to complete the process
Hi there, just a clarification. Is silver working as anode or cathode? At 2:42 you write " silver anode" (positive) then at 4:40 you said "silver negative". And then, instead of silver,what can I use? I've got so much plenty of AgCl to be recovered in Ag. First pass, I dissolve it in NH3. At this moment, can I recover by electrochemistry pure Ag? Anyway, a great video!
@RainstormGB why want to get the copper back when you have almost pure copper in wires and tubing? ....anyhow, you can get it back from it's salts by putting iron objects into the solution. the copper will be cemented out and the iron will go into solution
@FreeSpinsAgain yes, they have been melted down and re-alloyed with a calculated amount of coin silver to whon i know the composition. that way i can make 925 silver, more or less accurately.
@BeanCalGuy any copper object will be corroded by silver nitrate. that's why you have to use mostly pure silver. you could use other metals as well, but they have to be inert towards silver nitrate how to cement the copper out.... simply stick a object made from IRON into the copper nitrate solution. in my experiment there was no point in recovering the small amount of copper
@McNeeBullion common sense will tell that loose or tightly packed metal powder will conduct electricity well enough but my guess is that this method will only corrode the wire that leads to the anode instead of the cemented silver. for silver nitrate you just add cemented silver to a small quantity of nitric acid until the acid is depleted. what has been poured off at step one is a BLUE solution...at step 2 the solution is colorless.... blue comes from copper nitrate..undesired
I have two large melted chunks about the size of two jelly donuts that are various grades of sterling silver how would I go about trying to purify them?
Almost any place that buys and sells silver, will also take sterling silver, and refining it is usually a waste of time. It could be worthwhile to refine yourself if you got a lot of really low quality, or mixed quality silver scrap that you can get cheap enough. I'd talk with your local coin shops / shops that deal in precious metal first, to find out if it you need to refine at all, if it would make you any more money by doing so, and if you'll actually make a profit.
could this technique be used to gain silver from galena lead ore ? i ve been hunting around for an easy means of extracting the silver from my high grade lead ores, but i haven t found one yet. any ideas for me?
Thank you this saves a lot of time converting silver chloride to silver metal this is one of the most useful videos on utube
My compliments.... this is the BEST ( easy and working ) Silver refinery movie ever! :-)
Did it the same way with some silver coins.... about 25 gram of silver :-)
Dude, I'm replicating your experiment right now, so I just palce a copper tube inside that solution again and again till nothing happens. By the way, you're a genius. I tell you man, you're a genius!
Your a legend for showing this! I'm in the GRF too, but what you've presented is an incredibly practical small method for silver cell - I made one very similar and worked great. Finished with 12.665 grams 99.9% silver. This makes the most beautiful bars when cast, and leaves not a trace of oxides in the melting dish.
To answer the q's below, I reuse my copper tube as its very difficult to get all traces of silver off it, so I use it again and it'll fall off when more silver builds up.
That's really excellent. Looks like the silver from the melt was pretty pure to start with as the surface crazed when it cooled down.
This is all in one .. super easy and self explanatory thx for uploading :)
You are the Macgaiver of the silver world!
That was the best video on silver refining. Thank you.
Awesome work. Very informative. Thanks for taking the time to produce this video and share with us.
@metaltect basically you leave it to dry out. once dry it can be removed, only almost completely. there will always be a small bit left thus one does not throw away the filter.
keep the filter paper and burn it with the torch, or burn more of them as they accumulate. the paper burns to ash and what is left over is mostly precious metal, it can be redissolved in nitric acid and put back into the cycle.
@27simber yes you can use sterling as a substitute for the fine silver. though you can make high purity silver by melting some of the cemented silver you get at 0:45
Thanks.
I dissolved around 750-800 gram of various silver in Nitric Acid and distilled water.
Am not totally done, as i was waiting for some copper who came yesterday.
But have some who I have just to clean, when the vacuum pump arrives.
And then melting some larger ingots with a silver stick in so I can easy hock up my + in the set-up.
And rest I will make cornflakes of and add to the basket easy for faster dissolving :)
And now I will order some 999 silver to add to the 999 I got to get enough to make the Silver Nitrate bath :)
Will update you later on. Thanks for helping out!
Kent
Hey I also waiting hear a shout from u brother .....even .I am waiting do this.... Keep writing I need u to share ur own experience ....c ya ..thanx
our mad-scientist-friend it's back......jesus dude took u quite long to upload another1.and yes, ur awesome like always, keep up the good work, nice1, kudos.
@doinen silver nitrate is a white salt, silver nitrate solution is colorless.
the bluish thing is the copper nitrate, which is unwanted.
yes, you can store the solution, in glass jars for example.
@RenkoTrader since you are new, i advise you to be more specific on your inquiries like: when you heat the silver at 1:59
i did not heat any silver nitrate, all that is being heated, actually melted, is metallic silver.
if you heat silver nitrate you may end up with molten silver nitrate but most often this salt decomposes so it is not advisable to do such a thing.
Very cool, nice job!
Hi ... still reading Hoke here ... however I couldn't avoid to notice a mismatch on your video.
At 2:43 the cathode is made from stainless steel but at 3:11 you used a silver sheet, I guess it can be done in both ways ... thank you for the great video, cheers.
This man is a genius!!!!!
@spacebrdcst actually it does not need to be fine silver, sterling works as well. but...just in case you need some fine silver, use the cemented silver, melt it down and it will be close enough to fine silver to do the job.
still, sterling is also good for this.
@bigcoolviking
2. all other alloying metals that can be attacked by the acid will go into the aqueous solution. at 0:50 you can see that all the metals above copper will stay in solution in their nitric salt form, whereas all metals below copper will get cemented out in a metallic form.
so, to cut it short, the 30% copper from the alloy is the blue water you see in the jar.
@27simber you can make silver nitrate from sterling, but it will be impure because of the copper nitrate. you can make a better quality silver nitrate by dissolving some cemented silver in nitric acid.
@bigcoolviking as a rule of thumb, for silver that is 97-99% pure you can use the eletrolitic process, whereas for silver that is 40-97% pure you have to go with the dissolution process using nitric acid.
hydrochloric acid will not dissolve silver, it actually prevents it from dissolving. sulphuric acid is weak at dissolving silver but more importantly it will not dissolve copper
you may have problems dissolving gold-silver alloys in nitric acid that have a silver content less than 40%.
@Silversmyth thanks for commenting.
you might find the improvised liver of sulphur interesting as well
@Squish120 thank you for answering some questions over here at the comments page.
i made this video and others mainly to share knowledge with other people who are interested. back when i was searching for info i found little, so i want to contribute to improvement of that.
i did not post videos lately mainly because of lack of time, but i still have some thing coockin', which will come out when i find the time for it.
@nikola96uf i think this topic is covered somewhere in the comments page, but concentration can be anywhere from 20 to 50% . you can also use higher concentrated acid but you will loose some of it because it tends to break down to these fumes quicker than the weaker concentrated one.
Best condensed tutorial on the web! Excellent work Sir. Do you purchase your acid?
I made my own and it was a real pain in the ass. I will attempt to Ionize my silver this
weekend. What is the stoichiometric amount of acid I should use per weight of silver?
Thanks in advance.
man im really digging this music! awesome video man really interesting stuff1
@SuperMiner49r it is because the scrap silver had copper alloyed within. the blue color is given by copper nitrate
@kalaliakas the amount is small enough, you don't necessarily need oxygen. if you find it hard to find oxygen-fuel torches, maybe you want to consider building a small charcoal furnace and melt it in crucibles.
cool vid, watching the crystals grow is fasinating. I have some I will try to refine like this. If ya do it in larger batches does the crystal structure come out larger or is it stll small and fern like? would be nice to get some meaty sized crystals to display
Hi, Great clip. Everything is explained clearly. The only thing I'm a bit lost is about the elocrolyte solution. How is that made? let's say i need 1 litre of solution will i put 100 grms of silver, 10grms copper, 300 ml of nitric and and 700ml water? Thanks again
@aviyeshurun you need the silver anode in order to plate out silver at the cathode. if you just want to get silver out of a nitrate solution, stick a piece of copper inside and it will get cemented out.
i do not know how to grow large crystals, i have read something about it on the net, stating that normal plating voltage, low current and little nitrate concentrations yield large crystals....but i cannot confirm that
you may be right
but on the other hand, they don't loose their charge, they just transfer from one to the other. the charge they stored stays the same, it will just be distributed another way amongst them.
That is awesome! thanks for sharing
@JesExaVid they stay in the solution. the 30% is mostly copper, it turns to copper nitrate in this process. hydrated copper nitrate is blue, hence the blue colour of the solution
@Heathenheart1979 the thing is, there is two times silver. one that will be consumed (anode +) and one that will attract the 999 silver crystals to it (cathode -).
cathode is athe bottom, the plate thing you see (made out of fine silver) , the wire going to it is black--meaning negative. this cathode can also be stainless steel, a spoon for example should work.
i do not know how to convert AgCl into Ag. browse the goldrefiningforum for more info
Very Interesting...ok so you showed 2 very different ,methods for extracing the silver is one any better ie scavenging more silver out than the other, or is it just a question on one being quicker than the other?
2. what happens to the copper or nicklt 7.5% that is mixed with the sterling, does it just turn to sludge? would these methods work of a 50% silver coin?
Cheers Graeme
@modee31700 you are right, if there is any nickel in the solution than copper can not cement it out. you can get the nickel out, along with the copper, by adding iron to the solution, AFTER you have already separated the silver. You do not want to contaminate the silver!
NO, the initial solution is not suited. It has to be fairly pure. Make silver nitrate by dissolving the washed cemented silver in nitric acid.
In the electrolytic process you need to regenerate the nitrate when contaminated.
Good and informative compared to the other videos out there!
Just one tip - you can use urea to neutralize excess acid to prevent the copper from being dissolved... saves your copper rod and gives you less copper in the solution...
I see in comments that you say copper nitrate is unwanted. But is there a way to refine copper?
@RainstormGB it will work only for the silver part, the copper electrochemical refining setup is different. i really see no point in getting the copper back. after cementing out the silver with copper, you can cement the copper out of the copper nitrate solution with iron, use iron nails for example.
@fedaikn hey, thanks for great vid! I`m going to try this very soon but I have a few questions first.
1. Is silver nitrate the blueish solution you get when dissolving sterling silver in nitric acid?
2. Can the solution be left in a jar over time or do you have to perform the electrochemical bit immediately?
@jonnymaclincoln i kept some copper tube in the solution, for two weeks or so to get even the smallest amount of silver out. then i did precipitate the silver with some hydrochloric acid and i still have the precipitate today.
the electrolyte solution is a 10% silver nitrate solution. to make silver nitrate you need to dissolve some of the cemented silver in nitric acid. it doesen't even need to be 10%, just roughly estimate it
@gasdorf the experiment is now one year ago, kinda hard to say what quantity it was. i guess i used some 20 ml of 53% nitric acid that was later diluted to around 20%. of course i can calculate the theoretical amount but it is irrelevant. the butane consumption is not that bad. the price for one butane refill tube is 2 eur and i guess i can melt this amount of silver at least 13 times with it .
anyhow it was only a demonstration, it did not need to be economical.
@BeanCalGuy if you add salt to silver nitrate you get silver chloride. you can try to torch it but you'll find out that it melts. it's rather hard to decompose silver chloride so it makes little sense to do it that way.
you can only get the silver from your plated items dissolved, WHEN all the copper is dissolved as well.
best method would be to strip the silver through an electrochemical process.
check the goldrefiningforum for more info
Hi nice work.
Does it work with silverbutton batteries,too? I mean the silveroxid in it.
@buggymak i can not buy nitric acid either in my country. i got it when i was on a trip to germany.
if you consider producing your own nitric through a method described on the channel of nurdrage , you have to remember that the cheapest nitric is still the one you can buy.
@vellajoe1 1 kg is a large amount. congratulations. i can only imagine the efforts made for establishing the setup for this purpose.
i am not sure i understand your question, i assume you mean the little hook that you need to attach to the silver piece to be refined. don't use stainless. i can think olny of gold and platinum but that is no option.
the solution is to shape or positiobn your piece in such a way as to not have the hook touch the electrolyte solution until the last moment
@littlebitsick it may work, although the amount of silver is very small. feel free to experiment and document it. maybe you would want to post it
Very nice informational video. I'm planning on doing the same thing with a bunch of scrap 925 jewelry as you described in the first demonstration. Did you buy your Nitric Acid, or did you make it?
Hi, Great video friend, but I have a question, once you have dissolved your sterling silver in the nitric acid, what happens to the other tin/nickel or other metals, also I have just ordered 1 litre of 70% nitric acid, how much silver will this process, its quite expensive, thanks again
That was amazing !
@fedaikn ok, thanks. just to check if I got this right. first dissolve sterling silver in nitric acid. solution becomes muddy blue. add distilled water. put a copper pipe into the solution and leave it overnight (can this be done indoors, maybe with a lid on?). filter out the cemented silver. the clear blue solution is just waste now and has no purpose. the silver cement can be fire molded into a 98% ingot or added to nitric acid to make silver nitrate solution. have I got it right?
Could it not be done without the initial dissolving stage. Just take your sterling silver and do the last stage, basically suspend the piece in a fabric bag attached to the - probe within a silver nitrate solution, this would then only dissolve and translate the silver across to the + probe. I could be very wrong, but i would be interested in your thoughts.
the comment that the guy had commented on was referring to the use of some Hydrocloric Acid to form Aqua Regia. Aqua Regia can, by context of the coversation, make dilute silver precipitate from a solution. you don't put the copper tube in the solution again and again, if that solution was going to work, then you would have had to pull out the tube before the reaction was finished working.
@goku569 sounds interesting. there are more options for you but you need nitric acid. take a small sample of the white paste and take a sample of the grid as well. dissolve in nitric acid and then add a drop of table salt after dissolving. if a white precipitate appears than you may have some silver, you may also have lead. anyhow, if only the paste shows presence of silver, take only the paste and try the method in this video. else melt down anything and follow the method.
@jdat747 perhaps there is a solution but i was not interested in finding out. recovering the copper with cheap iron seems the quickest way and since iron nitrate is not so harmful as copper...for the moment i'll keep doing it this way
@NytingGayle Not much point refining the copper due to its value, but it can be done the same way. With your spent solution of copper nitrate, add a clean piece of steel and copper will plate out. Then you can use the same electrolysis method with copper - usually as copper sulfate because its cheaper and plate pure copper, very difficult to melt though without creating oxides
+fedaikn hello nice video there, can I get some help here, I need Silver Nitrate for my project, as its not cheap I thought of making some my self now as I understand making it with pure 999 silver nothing complicated but I have lots of spare 925 silver so before making silver nitrate I need to purify my 925 silver first using all method in this video? I just did't get the last part were do I get that silver sheet from?
+Laiptiniu Remontas
it is very simple. digest some of your 925 silver with nitric acid. then cement the silver out with copper metal. wash the cemented silver well , just like in my video.
now you have cemented silver that is almost pure (maybe 990). you can redissolve this silver in nitric acid to make silver nitrate for your project. if you need it very pure than just recristalize this silver nitrate solution like here /watch?v=uVA0rK_VITY
i made the silver sheet from the washed cemented silver. just melted , poured an ingot and rolled it out. it was pure enough for my purpose.
@washnon you have got something wrong....
the amount of silver cemented out is dependent on the amount of silver in your alloy, not on the volume of solution.
If one used the electrolytic technique to strip silver off a "nickel silver" base, would the nickel silver be dissolved as well? Would that adversely affect they electrolyte?
is it possible to keep pouring more and more cemented silver on top of a piece of silver to form a big chunk?
thank you
i did purchase the nitric acid...from germany . it is ilegal in my country.
you can make your own but it is some pain in the ut to make it and to get it pure enough.
you can use stoichiometric amounts but it is more simple if you do only observe it. follow the advice given at 0:26 , just add a little acid a t a time
Is the electromotive reaction the reason steel wool is used in photographic silver recovery?
How do you get the rest of the silver out of the nitric/silver/copper solution? You mentioned to keep the material because it still contains silver.
@hahanex the corect term would be aqueous solution or just solution.
the solution contains mainly copper nitrate but in small quantities it can contain some silver nitrate as well
for disposing i would stick some nails inside until all the copper gets cemented out and then i flush it down the toilet. iron nitrate is not as harmful as copper nitrate is
in this system is the silver nitrate destroyed or is it continually replenished from the bit that you are refining? That is of course until impurities finally make it impossible to recombine the silver nitrate.
@fedaikn the process you demonstrate is used at the industrial level
@tempoeagle i have not tried anything like recovering silver from photographic film processed silver. still, i guess it will work as well. the method described in my video should be quite efficient but you need good equipment to ensure this (like a plating rectifier as current source). try it out if you have time/resources and let us know.
@fedaikn
Thanks a lot. I refined a kilo of silver succesfully. Everything went as planed. The only issue i had was the silver i attached to the anode. It kept being dissolved in the nitrate solution. Do you know what metal can be used that silver nitrate doesn't attack in electrolyses for future reference. I was thinking of stainless steel grade 316. Thanks again.
@666Pockets666 smash it up, really fine. separate the silver out of the crushed rock by panning in water (like the gold diggers do). melt the silver that you collect. the lump of silver can the be refined through the same principle, using the same steps as explained in this video
ok, so I heated up the jar with the nitric acid and the sterling silver and now it`s almost completely dissolved. I may have to add a little more acid. But around the sides of the jar there`s white and blue crystalls. I presume the white crystals are silver nitrate, and the blue crystals are copper nitrate. Should I scrape this off back into the solution? Should I filter when I pour the solution into a clean glass and add distilled water?
This seems to be a good method, can it work for the mineral ore galena? as I have large quantities...
@vellajoe1 hello
actually, you need not have any copper. you need only silver nitrate, 10% concentration should do fine. so....prepare your silver nitrate by dissolving either fine silver or the cemented silver in nitric acid. you need not calculate amounts, but if you wish and have the means, do it. basically you keep adding nitric acid to the silver until it gets dissolved. than you add a little more silver to be sure all the acid is consumed and that's it.
can't you recycle the acid when it turns blue/green by electroplating out the copper?
Also, if you do it that way, then you don't end up with hazardous chems to dispose of.
@JohnChristianLien
you can filter out the cemented silver, you can and have to wash it with DISTILLED water only. it is fairly pure silver, but no 99,99%. that's why we do the next step, electrochemical, to get it to be fine silver
you can recover the silver from the copper nitrate waste by adding muriatic acid, known also as hidrochloric acid or simply HCL . that will precipitate the silver and you can filter it out. however, converting silver chloride to silver is complicated. just keep it
I have a 17 pound boulder containing mostly native silver. If I get it broken up is there a way to refine it using electrolisis?
Just a question to make sure I follow...isn't silver nitrate the resultant liquid after the cemented silver is removed after the first refining step (the blue liquid)? If so can it be used for the second step, or does it need to be fresh?
@27simber if you want to make 999 silver out of sterling, yes you can.
i used the method to make sterling out of a bunch of scraps and coins.
*Those the electrolyte system that you show on the movie is suitable for all amount of refined silver (for exampale 10kilo) ???
*In the last part of the process you are doing the silver electrolysis with silver nitrate solution,can it be done with the silver nitrate that we creat in the first part of process???
@spacebrdcst interesting fact....the silver nitrate that forms crystals indicates one thing ! too high concetration of your acid or already too much silver dissolved
how strong is is your acid?
you may solve the problem by adding a distilled water
Two questions, one - can you reuse the same copper tube? and two - does this work with gold?
hello .... I would like to know how to prepare the silver nitrate solution as my strength is very low and also further diluted silver ... and tried to lower the pH with distilled water but it takes long time to complete the process
ok if you dont have a furnace thing to melt all of your silver can you make cemented silver and melt it all into a mold using only a blow torch?
Hi there, just a clarification. Is silver working as anode or cathode? At 2:42 you write " silver anode" (positive) then at 4:40 you said "silver negative". And then, instead of silver,what can I use? I've got so much plenty of AgCl to be recovered in Ag. First pass, I dissolve it in NH3. At this moment, can I recover by electrochemistry pure Ag? Anyway, a great video!
Does the silver in the solution get spent or the anode silver?
Thx!
@RainstormGB why want to get the copper back when you have almost pure copper in wires and tubing? ....anyhow, you can get it back from it's salts by putting iron objects into the solution. the copper will be cemented out and the iron will go into solution
@FreeSpinsAgain yes, they have been melted down and re-alloyed with a calculated amount of coin silver to whon i know the composition. that way i can make 925 silver, more or less accurately.
@BeanCalGuy any copper object will be corroded by silver nitrate. that's why you have to use mostly pure silver. you could use other metals as well, but they have to be inert towards silver nitrate
how to cement the copper out.... simply stick a object made from IRON into the copper nitrate solution.
in my experiment there was no point in recovering the small amount of copper
@fedaikn how do u get the copper back? from the solution
Can i do this with crushed Silver ore? or does the silver already slightly refined?
@McNeeBullion common sense will tell that loose or tightly packed metal powder will conduct electricity well enough but my guess is that this method will only corrode the wire that leads to the anode instead of the cemented silver.
for silver nitrate you just add cemented silver to a small quantity of nitric acid until the acid is depleted.
what has been poured off at step one is a BLUE solution...at step 2 the solution is colorless.... blue comes from copper nitrate..undesired
I have two large melted chunks about the size of two jelly donuts that are various grades of sterling silver how would I go about trying to purify them?
Almost any place that buys and sells silver, will also take sterling silver, and refining it is usually a waste of time. It could be worthwhile to refine yourself if you got a lot of really low quality, or mixed quality silver scrap that you can get cheap enough.
I'd talk with your local coin shops / shops that deal in precious metal first, to find out if it you need to refine at all, if it would make you any more money by doing so, and if you'll actually make a profit.
Silver nitrate can also be used for photography experiments.
could this technique be used to gain silver from galena lead ore ? i ve been hunting around for an easy means of extracting the silver from my high grade lead ores, but i haven t found one yet. any ideas for me?
How many time can I repeat the process before I change the electrolyte?
Hello. Gold coins can also be included electronic waste?
How pure is the nitric acid you are using. The commercial nitric acid I can find is 68% nitric acid. Does that work also?
@metalicmario thank you