[Jewelry making - Article 00337] - Re: [Orchid] Reclaimed silver

[Helen Hill]

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Dear Ag,

>     how do you proceed to precipitate out the silver, and clean and
>     reduce to pure metal? 

    Adding silver to nitric acid makes a solution of silver nitrate.
    Once the silver is in solution, the solution will contain Ag+ and
    NO3- ions. If you add a piece of pure, clean solid copper, the copper
    will "swap" places with the silver in a displacement reaction (the
    copper is more reactive than the silver) and the pure silver will
    precipitate out of solution as silver crystals which will cling to
    the outer surface of the copper. The copper in the original alloy
    will stay in solution. 

    At the exposed copper surface you will have copper nitrate and pure
    silver metal crystals. The reaction is: 

    Cu(s) + 2AgNO3(aq) =E2=86' 2Ag(s) + Cu(NO3)2(aq) 

    Then you should be able to gently shake the silver crystals off the
    copper to bring more silver out of solution. If all the copper
    dissolves you could try adding more copper to see if you can get
    more 

    silver out of solution until all has been recovered. Then it's a case
    of filtering it and rinsing to get pure silver. 

    Have fun, it's a reaction the kids at school used to love when I was
    teaching as you can see the fine silver crystals growing before your
    eyes. 

Helen Hill
Preston, UK
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