one of the few channels i actually look forward to the new videos.. the information is invaluable if considering doing this yourself... i can hardly wait for part 2......
That residue at 10mins. Copper sulphate is much more soluble in water (about 200g/liter at 30 deg c) than silver sulphate (about 10g per liter) so you could dissolve as much as you can in hot water and discard the solution and you should be left with silver sulphate. Bear in mind this is only theory details from Wikipedia. you will also have more waste.
Great video. Really goes to show the correct tool for the job makes a HUGE difference. H2SO4 works for silver but the huge volume of waste is a big downside. I've done silver plated wire like this in the past (both copper and brass cored) and I've found an AP soak is the best way to do it if you don't have (or want to use) nitric. Sure it takes a lot longer but it is DEAD cheap and easy to do.
Which A/P do you use? I've tried Hydrochloric acid /peroxide but can't seem to precipitate any silver out of the HCL/P. I'm refining very thin silver plated wire like .020 thousandth of inch.
@@jacobshrewsbury1938 For my Ap I'll use mostly straight HCl with about 10% copper chloride from previous batches. I may add 5-10m of 30% H2O2 per L of HCl but frankly I rarely do. Usually just left open to the air is enough to do the job. To make sure everything settles I'll usually pop it int he fridge for a few days after everything is done to make sure any AgCl crashes out but most of the time it'll just be a super fine white dust on the bottom of the beaker. 've actually stopped processing this kind of stuff now and it'll all just go straight into my stockpot along with any pins or the like. I've just found it to be a much better use of my time.
One thing I notice is that you never seem to calculate the volume of solution you need to carry the amount of metal you wish to dissolve. You seem to get stuck and just keep adding more time and heat but that does not always work. If a solution is fully saturated, nothing will make it take more except more liquid ie the acid. I know that is a cost but time also has value. Just a thought.
Ag.sub.2 SO.sub.4 + Ca(NO.sub.3).sub.2 → 2AgNO.sub.3 + CaSO.sub.4 You can use calcium nitrate to remove the silver nitrate from the copper-silver sludge. The copper should remain and you will get silver nitrate and calcium sulfate.
@@sreetips Also, if you wanted to recover some of your dilute nitric acid from your copper nitrate, you could add sulfuric acid and then distill it out and have copper sulfate and sulfuric acid, and then use electrolysis to precipitate out the copper and have impure sulfuric acid.
I agree H2SO4 would not be my 1st choice, pure forms can be viscous, its persistent gets everywhere and is a pain to clean plus if you get AgS its insoulble, I might try it on an electrolytic basis use it as the anode and plate out the material. Could you have chopped up the wire and used it in your silver cell arrangement, You might be able to thermally decompose the sludge back to Ag by heating and oxidizing off the copper as dross since AgO decomposes back to Ag but that might be better with a flux slag process.
Hi sreetips, the vids you linked are "video unnavailable" not surre if it's a geographic issue or a problem with that channel and I don't currently have enough data to test with vpn, but there are other vids by that name
Love the videos! I honestly wish my school teachers was as good at explaining things as you.. I have another question I hope you might could help with.. do you know if this method could be used to refine silver cadmium alloys?
I think you might have gotten better results with HCl, though I am not sure. Perhaps with a bubbler and peroxide. I would have at least tried on a few inches of that wire. Very problematical material to start with. Hot sulfuric is so dangerous!
My two cents: this process is highly intensive on time, resources, and skill. I expect that the purity of the silver will be higher than what can be refined via nitric acid. This experiment would be more effective than nitric in a no electricity scenario.
Hey Sreetips been watching your videos for a while, just recently watched your Gold Deplating series.. just wondering if it was possible to do a similar experiment where the deplated material plates on to the cathode, (i know you did a video on gold purification by electrolysis) but I was wondering if this could be used to perform the deplating in a way that could be turned into a continual process. also I saw that your deplating cell also had issues with heating up and becoming ineffective, would it be possible to add some kind of cooling loop using something like copper or Glass tubing that would be unaffected by the reaction to assist in regulating the temperature.
copper doesn't really want to dissolve in sulfuric acid, silver will dissolve more easily but to get the copper to dissolve, you really need to pump air into it or add some hydrogen peroxide "I don't think I'd ever be brave enough to use sulfuric acid or add hydrogen peroxide to it after seeing what it does to things like paper and hot dogs"
Just curious what the point of trying to desolve all the copper is? Why not remove it after the silver plate is removed then add fresh silver plated wire to desolve and repeat till solution is fully saturated to increase silver yeald per amount of acid?
I don't have experience with the chemistry of Cu/Ag and sulphuric acid. But it must be slow and very stinky... wasn't it? I think an easier way would have been to melt it into shot or anodes and run it through an electrowinning process similar to your silver electrolytic cell. The silver should settle as anode slime.
Hi Streetips. Great video. Please stay safe and healthy and take care of yourself and your family members. To all members also. Talk to you later my friend. ☺☺☺😇😇😇
The sulfuric dissolves the silver to make silver sulfate. Silver sulfate is soluble in sulfuric acid but not very soluble in water. Adding distilled water would cause the silver sulfate to precipitate. Then I don’t know how to get pure silver from silver sulfate solids. Yet.
You best bet is nitric, if you can't get nitric you can make it in situe with sulfuric and a nitrate there plenty of videos that have done it, its week like 10-15% but time will strip the plating most likly
I've got the same thing to work on. I realize the most straightforward path would be dissolving it all in nitric then dropping out the silver chloride; but I don't have any nitric acid. I saw another video where OwlTech uses sodium sulFITE Na2SO3 in an electrolysis cell. This is NOT the sulfate.The anode (plus terminal) is the silver plated material and the cathode is a strip of stainless steel. It appears the silver forms a loose sulFITE and falls off but the base copper forms a solid red copper sulfite layer that stays on the anode. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-aAh8El8K74A.html No idea if this is really practical, but at least the materials are fairly cheap and relatively safe.
No, as with all electrolytic refining, the silver cell requires high purity metal to begin with. Anything lower than 99% pure silver and the electrolyte would quickly become saturated with copper.
copy a comment: one of the few channels i actually look forward to the new videos.. the information is invaluable if considering doing this yourself... i can hardly wait for part 2......
The box says #1 fast flow, doesn’t give micron size. I’ll never use boiling sulfuric ever again because it’s too dangerous. No experience with ic chips
@@sreetips you commented on that. Why? The fumes? Does it have a flash point? If it’s just fumes, I can rig it up outside and use gas mask. Need those safety sreetips. I have other silver goodies but I am looking for the best process on those chips. Thanks for always responding to help me in my endeavors!
@@sreetips thanks just wondering. I farm with a chemical called lambda star. Just the fumes hitting your face will cause intense burning that renders you sleepless for 30 hours. Thanks again for helping me learn the precautions as I repeat A LOT of what you do for my own part time hobby. I mostly do copper bars but I have a lot of precious metals of all kinds that I need to process and you’re making the journey a lot faster and safer!! Thanks
You should add some H2O2 to the H2SO4 which makes Peroxymonosulfuric acid or Caro’s acid or "piranha solution". One patent for production of Caro's acid gives the following reaction: H2O2 + H2SO4 ⇌ H2SO5 + H2O [5] This is the reaction that produces the acid transiently in "piranha solution". 3:1 ratio Three parts sulfuric acid to one part 30% hydrogen peroxide. Don’t use 98% H2SO4 for this. I would only use the 93% “Rooto” drain cleaner. As with doing anything new in a lab : Please do some research before attempting to produce this solution. There are some very serious incompatibility issues with the solution
seem a lot of silver lost ? boiling sulfuric acid for weeks at home ? you're not easily afraid. one small mistake can be catastrophic, i'll NEVER do that for silver (nor gold).
