[Jewelry making - Article 00935] - Re: [Orchid] Retrieving silver from a nitric acid bath

[David Popham]

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Kerri,

    I'm making mys suggestion based on first principles learned in 1st
    year chem. 

    Are you using concentrated nitric acid? If so, I sincerely hope that
    your are wearing eye protection when pouring it, because a splash in
    yours eyes will cause permanent eye damage. 

    The Handbook of Chemistry and Physics does not include nitric acid
    as a solvent for for AgCl. So my first approach would be to add
    table salt(NaCl) to the acid bath, and since AgCl is very insoluble
    in water, adding the salt should create AgCl. If the pickle is too
    acid and nothing comes out of solution, I would then add baking
    soda, Na2CO3, to buffer the acidity. Be careful, because a
    considerable amount of CO2 will come off as a messy foam. 

    Finally I would ask myself if it is worth the effort. How many
    milligrams of silver are in solution? Let's imagine that is 1000mg,
    and let's say for the sake of argument that silver is costing around
    $7.00 for 31 grams. All your effort would yield about $0.23. I
    suspect that you will spend more than that to neutralize the pickle. 

David


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