I highly appreciate and respect what you do here. I think this is an extremely important video showing a step far too many people seem to gloss over and you show you care enough to go into the finer details. I am NO WHERE near your scale but I pretty much do the exact same thing as you do with one small addition. I've found that no matter how long i leave the copper sitting in my spent silver nitrate solution there is ALWAYS some precious metals left in solution and I hate the idea of losing them when I add to the iron. I found if I filter the copper solution off into a separate bucket I can reclaim yet a bit more of the silver that cemented out. I then add finely ground potassium chloride to convert it to copper chloride and I always have silver chloride precipitate out which is then filtered and added to my silver chloride stockpot (I wait until I have a large enough amount before I bother with the lye/sugar process). I even go one step further and freeze the waste copper solution and let the potassium nitrate crystallise out to recover as much of the nitrate I can. What's left over is pretty much only copper chloride which I finally add to the iron. I know it's not really worth it for most people but I like to be as efficient as I can be and anything that doesn't go out as waste I see as profit. I'll even take the copper I collect from the iron bucket, wash it a few times and melt it into bars and use that to cement out the silver in the early stage. Other than my nitric, distilled water, filters and silver scrap I really don't have much in expenses. Even the iron bar stock was free and pulled from a dumpster. :) But as always, your videos are top tier and the best I've seen. You go into details others don't and clearly show the process in an easy to understand way. Huge respect for your efforts and skills. Many thanks to you for your willingness to share.
I add the silver waste to that bucket of copper coils to collect the tiny amount of metals that are still present. I'll have to study your procedure and see if I can get it to work for me. Don't quite understand all of it. Thank you for your very positive comment.
Thank you so very much for going through the waste material processing. I am just getting started in refining and recovering gold and silver, and almost none of the videos I watch talk about the waste material. I want to make sure I am responsible and do what is right by the earth. Thank you for going through how to make this waste safe to dispose.
I live my life from the view point of feeling safe by "being", "seeing", "doing" patterns... I think that is what and why I enjoy your channel so much, as there is so much involved in these processes, and each video or show, allows me to learn one thing at a time. It seems that you unveil one new "tip" or "trick" of the trade, in each video, so I do not feel so overwhelmed with info, and your methods and natural ability to teach/explain things, allows it to sink into my peanut brain smoothly. You also not only explain why to do something, you for the most part, explain what happens when or why or how things could go wrong, meaning, in chemistry, there is a reason for everything, based on qty's, in relationship to time and sequences of orders... Your videos are priceless and I thank you, for you taking the time to do these videos, and time you have invested, let alone, the amount of money you have forked out of your own pocket. I also, would like to mention, there is a great appreciation for your wife, that plays a large roll in supporting this venture of sharing on RUclips, what you and her have learned with the folks, like myself, who enjoy this stuff. I do not mean to sound chauvinistic in any fashion, but, Not to many women will allow their men to rock an roll like this, mostly due to the idea, that if they do not understand what is happening, they too often can throw a fit, that is unless, they actually do understand the process, and how learning chemistry can be allot of fun, and when done safely, and properly, can be very profitable. So, Thumbs up to your wife, for jumping in this venture with you, and her not fearing the unknown and being so willing to learn right along side of you. Pretty cool on her part to support this venture as a team effort goes. Dru
Dru, she's sitting with me now and we both read your comments together. She said to tell you, "thank you". It brings me a great deal of satisfaction to know that my videos are appreciated. Thank you for your kind words!
Thanks for getting back about the copper. It would be great if you could find a way to collect that copper too. The pure copper might be worth a shiny penny for your operations too. But, the real question is whether or not the end value of the copper would make it worth the time and effort, (so that indeed would be a consideration). Nice work though, I'm learning quite a bit from your channel. Keep it up, great job!
It's the simple things, the beautiful and sometimes surprising colours that these precious metals produce whilst in solution. Love the videos Sreetips, never stop. Love the Sreetips ❤️
GoldBug66 I would like to make a suggestion when you are washing the copper nitrate out of the cement silver. Pour all the liquid out of the beaker but leave the silver in the beaker. Then add the three rinse waters, one at a time. Mix the silver in the beaker very well each time but only pour out the liquid but the last. You should get a cleaner cement silver and it is easier to work with that way. I hope this helps.
Pour off the copper nitrate then pour hot water over the silver in the beaker, then pour that rinse water into the filter, then do it again three times. Instead of adding the silver to the funnel and rinsing with hot water in the funnel. Is that correct? I'll give it a try. Thank you.
It is truly amazing watching you do this with silver . and i see you do gold as as well . but your a wealth of information .it just amazes me to watch you do this .awesome to say the least .
Actually using the Cu wire is for the best. Larger surface area for the Ag to cement out on. Like you said...just have to keep an eye on it. Btw I love how when you time lapse your video with the audio on it makes your fume hood fan sound like a snare drum drum roll right before a big stunt or reveal
I like we watching your videos. This seems so redundant to me, however very interesting! You are so thorough you repeat yourself a lot, but you like to get your point across! Never change.🎉
G’Day Mate, I’m curious as to why, after all your hard work, you don’t dry the waste paste the cemented out on the angle iron? I recall you mention that it was copper cementing on the surface of the angle iron. Would it not be worth melting a few copper ingots rather than turfing the waste paste out into the shitter? P.S. love watching and learning from your channel. Kind Regards Michael (Blu) Turner Australia
G’Day! Clean copper is cheap and plentiful. It’s very useful for refining Precious metals. But to a refiner of gold and silver, copper, after it’s been used, is considered waste. It’s not worth the time and effort to try and recover.
If watched this vid before, but the problem of the highly concentrate of silver did not stick in my mind!! I'm glad I'm watching again as that will be vital information to know if/when that happens to me!! Thank you and Have a GREAT Day!!!
Shane, when dissolving the silver for the electrolyte, it's important to make sure that there's not lots of excess nitric in the electrolyte when it's done. The way to make sure is to have the solution boiling with no fumes and a little bit of undissolved silver left in the bottom of the beaker. Excess free nitric will dissolve palladium (the only one of the six sister metals that will) from the anode filter basket, if present, and cause palladium to build up in the cell. In higher concentrations the palladium could plate out with the silver thus contaminating the pure silver crystal.
Also, if you boil platinum in nitric acid nothing will happen. But an alloy containing 5% or less platinum and 95% or greater silver BOTH METALS WILL DISSOLVE COMPLETELY in hot dilute nitric acid. When the silver is cemented on copper from such a solution the platinum will cement out too. Usually showing up as a dark black powder that coats the copper at the very end after all the silver is done cementing. It will turn the silver powder a dark grey color. But, unlike palladium, the platinum will not dissolve in the filter of the anode basket in the silver cell. It gets trapped as slimes in the filter. The platinum can then be recovered from those filters. I've got a video on how to recover in insoluble gold and PGMs from the anode filters.
Does this process work for silver plated items as well? This kind of work and refining is so fascinating. I’m trying to absorb and rewatch videos multiple times before I start trying this for myself. Great explanation on everything sreetips 👍🏼
@@sreetips roger that! I won’t even bother with it then. I Was just curious. I Walked through an antique mall for several hours the other day. I only came across silver plated items. Not much sterling flatware around where I’m located. Lots of full price sterling jewelry though. I guess I’m just trying to figure out where to start with my refining processes and what I should be purchasing material wise to start and produce decent yields for a beginner
I just found this channel, and damn am I amazed. Great content and amazing detail! Also.. you're almost to your 100k subscribers, you should be getting your silver play button soon! I recommend just hanging that one up instead of refining it... haha.
Hi, cant wait for part 3. Meanwhile I'd like to as you, what you think is a fair (good) price for buying sterling (925) silver pr. Ounce or gram. If I was to set up a cell and all that stuff, and try to make some sort of profit or break-even it doesn't make sense to buy the sterling at too high a price. Right now silver spot is at 100 dkk/Ounce or about 16 usd/Ounce. With sterling being around 90% silver a calculation would say ca. 90 dkk/Ounce. But that's the theoretical silver weight. It's nowhere near pure and in order to get it there I'd need to do all that stuff. Of course, buying large quantities makes it more reasonable, but let's say I were to do a 10 kg. Sterling refining, yielding ca. 9 kg of pure silver, subtract the cost of chemicals, electricity etc., what would be a meaningful price/Ounce sterling?
Wow this is way more labor and time intensive than the gold refining. I am really enjoying learning from these videos. This is much more fun than high school science class was lol.
I use the neutralized iron nitrate waste in a mix with potassium phosphate. It makes clumps of iron phosphate and a solution of potassium nitrate that I can use as fertilizer! The solid iron phosphate dissolves very slowly in soil, making a good slow-release source of phosphate and iron. I can only do that when processing silver from jewelry and tableware. Anything from electronics may have high levels of lead, tin, and other toxic metals that end up in solution.
Hey Sreetips, I was wondering all that copper crust that comes out of solution on your iron in your waste treatment; could you melt that into bars or sheets of copper and reuse it for silver cementation from your silver liquids. Was just curious as thats alot of copper just getting tossed out. Appreciate your reply in advance and love your content a ton. GOD bless :)
i imagine it would be difficult to scrape copper off iron and then purify it just to cement silver. What he really wants to do is to get copper out of solution as it is very toxic as a liquid. And the metal is less reactive
Dear friend. I also recover the copper with iron. But after I filtered the copper it became green and couldn't melt. I would like your advice on how to recover the copper to be able to melt. Thank you so much for your videos. Regards from Brazil
Another phenomenal video Sreetips!!! Great stuff. I follow along those same procedures as you do ... It is indeed time consuming processing silver as you stated in your video, however, the end product, electrolyzing the silver to get "pure silver" makes it all worth it. I am truly inspired by you and the amount of detail you put into your videos. A question I have is how to you go about cleaning your beakers, flasks, and other glassware that you use? is it safe to run them through the dishwasher? Do you autoclave them to make them "contaminant free" meaning no fine particles or hydroxides or acid residue, before the next use? How bout your waste buckets, fume hood, counter tops and stove burners and oxy torch heads? I really like how you showed a little bit of the "waste treatment" process in your video. I am wondering if you run the semi wet hydroxide cake back through for any other precious metals like platinum, palladium, and other "platinum group metals. :-)
To the first question about melting the copper coils. I imagine it's also a benefit to leave the wire unmelted, which gives you a larger surface area to cement the silver--more time-saving.
Mr. Sreetips, first I’d like to thank you for the videos. I’ve learned a tremendous amount from your silver refining videos. What type of paper filter are you using with you Buchner Funnel and suction flask? I haven’t found much info on what type to use. Thanks for any information you can offer.
Another fun thing I played around with was chemical reduction of silver with hydroxide and then dextrose sugar. I used the sugary hydroxide waste to mix with the final acid-iron solution after recovering the silver and copper, and it made a black ooze that I dried into a mass of crystals. Then I burned those down into magnetic iron particles, with the sugar making a perfect carbon source.
This work looks so satisfying to do... Do you ever worry that the "deals" on gold and silver in your area will dry up and you wont have enough thrift store/yard sale metals to refine?
As the currency continues to decline in value relative to the precious metals, I believe that finding the metals at reasonable prices will become increasingly difficult. But for now, confidence in the currency is high. This false confidence will enable those with the insight to do so, to continue to rake in the metals at these fire sale prices. But when the giant awakens and people figure out that the dollars aren't really worth the ink that is used to print them, then it will be risk on as the precious metal skyrocket. It's a mathematical certainty, like knowing the future.
Question: when the nitric solution passivates the copper do you leave the copper in when you add the extra ml of nitric? I'm refining some sterling using poor man's nitric (first time refining anything) and I forgot to dilute the solution before cementing. Or should I just add enough nitric to redissolve everything (minus copper of course) and then dilute and cement? Thanks for any input! It's greatly appreciated. Love your videos. They have helped me alot in learning refining methods. Thanks
I prefer cementing on copper because if PGMs are present, then they will cement out on the copper with the silver. However, I could produce pure silver using silver chloride conversion with lye and sugar. Then cement the PGMs and gold, if any, on copper. Using this method (silver chloride conversion) would eliminate the need for the silver cell.
I read the 1st six comments and got to "boring old white guy". I thought his comment was VERY INTERESTING!! I especially like that he goes after the copper and makes bars out of that. I have accumulated about 600 pounds of copper over the past 20 months, most of it from a friend (of 35 years) who does residential restoration, he brings me all of his metals like romex and piping. I've been hoarding it because like silver I think copper is way low right now! I think it will get to $10 a pound, instead of $2.20! I know that probably sounds pretty lame, considering you work with metals daily that are worth $1,200+ an ounce, not something I hope to get 10 a lbs for one year. I think a video of you taking that copper from your silver recovery and refining a huge copper bar out of it (even a one lbs bar) would be something different, as a fan I think it might go over very well with your other fans too!! I know you'd probably loose money on the cost of doing it, like the ewaste vids. You could put the bar to use with future silver recovery, it'd be better than selling it. If you ever consider it, you could ask for comments to see if it's something your fans would even want to see!! I don't like asking, request or suggesting things like this, but I just had a strong feeling about this one. No big deal and I'd understand if you don't respond or especially act on these crazy suggestions. Thanks for your time and wonderfully educational videos!!!
Shane, I barely have time to do the videos that I have planned. Refining copper is something I've never done for the reasons you've given. It's cheap to buy it at yard sales. Your 600 pounds of copper will come in handy when you start working with silver.
You would think that silver would be a lot more closer in price to gold since how it's ten times more trouble to extract than gold thank you for showing this to all of us
That coil of wire has much more surface area than a solid cube of the same volume. Therefore, there is more copper surface in contact with the nitric acid.
two filters I can understand, but why two different types/brands? Is one a fine paper filter that does the actual filtering, and the other a glassfibre weave filter to support the saturated paper filter?
It's about 250 to 300 CFM. Labconco with fiberglass interior and built-in fan motor. Go to the goldrefiningforum.com to see the installation my user name is kadriver there.
Hello, Here is a suggestion for you. Use your empty Soda Can (Aluminum) to precipitate out the Pure Copper from your solution rather then the Iron Bar. It costs $0.05 a can. Melt them down to a Bar and then make Rods by fusing them. You can then re-use the Pure Copper in your experiments. It should be a stoichiometric 1:1 displacement of Aluminum to Copper through solution. Copper is currently $2.20 per Pound while Aluminum is at $0.42 per Pound.
Red, I find copper at yardsales for very little cost. I spotted a roll of used heavy copper romax, about 10 pounds of copper, at a yardsale. Asked the lady how much and she said, "that's been taking up space in my garage for ages, you can just take it, for nothing." Plus, aluminum causes problems when working with precious metals. It's not the best metal to use. But copper has similar properties to silver. It's cheap and easy to find.
It vents up a stack through my garage roof. I used to do reactions outdoors. But it's a mess if it's raining and no matter how hard you try, some of that gas gets in your face from time to time. The fume hood solves all these problems. Once I had it I couldn't imagine refining with it.
I’m surprised you don’t refine the cemented copper, couldn’t you roll it out to sheet copper and use it for cementing out the silver? I know it would require removing the iron from the solution and copper cement so it might not be worth the extra work. But it would probably make a good video
I’m terribly backed up on my gold and silver refining. I don’t have the time to devote to copper. To a precious metals refiner copper is a waste metal.
Silver plate does contain silver. I haven’t found an economical way to recover it yet. When I get silver plated material I throw it in a container and save it. One day I’ll figure a way to get the silver from it.
Why did you not use fresh copper to start with on those reactions to cement out the silver? It makes sense to me to use fresh new copper instead of something that's already been used
i had that happen to me once with my copper coil not working ., i submersed it into a jug of boiling water with a few drops of bleach . shook it and let it sit in the water for about a minute or two then it was fine and worked again . and the bleach wont affect the silver , if anything it will help
I understand scientists and others use elemental Iron powder and pay a lot for elemental iron. Could you cement the iron and perhaps dry it in a hydrogen or argon atmosphere and then package it using a kitchen appliance that vacuum seals seals bags of food?
That was my question. Is the yield worth the effort. A breakdown of yield vs effort would be nice. Time is money. Profit vs refining costs is an important factor. Also can the acids involved be cleaned up and refurbished or are they a total loss after process if so cost of them would factor into overall cost of refining. What is the overall profit margin?
thank you for showing your mistakes and your fixes bro most would just edit out and the info is invaluable praticing with silver and gold atm and working my way up to rh ru as ive got alot xD
Why don’t you filter the Cu cementation and melt it into bars you can drop back into your Silver stock pot? Then you don’t have to keep buying copper for precipitation of your silver.
Two reasons, the copper will be contaminated with other metals. And I can get pure clean copper for cheap. I just bought a 60 foot roll of 3/4 copper tubing for $65. It will last me for months.
I wonder why you don't use the electrochemical way to sediment the copper as well. As you are using iron you will get all that iron solution for further treatment. You could reduce your amount of waste that way. Coz even iron is still a heavy metal toxic in higher concentrations. And btw: We call it a sediment or sedimentation! Not a cement or cementation! ;-)
In the refining community, adding a more reactive metal to a less reactive metal, in solution, to render the metal out of solution is called "cementing". For example, adding less reactive clean copper metal to a silver nitrate solution will cause the silver to come out of solution as a grey powder that falls to the bottom of the container. It looks like wet cement hence the name "cement silver". But the term "cementing", in the refining community, is a term used to describe any reaction of this sort. For example, using zinc to render platinum out of solution is called, cementing the platinum on zinc, even though the resulting powder is black and looks nothing like wet cement. It's the same if we use iron to "cement" the copper out of solution.
I don’t think it’s necessary. Sterling is about 90% pure silver the rest copper. I refine it because it’s my hobby. But sterling can be held just like it is. Will track right on up with three nines investment grade silver.
I may have made a huge mistake. I cast a copper bar to cement out my silver in solution. The silver I was gave to refine had brass mixed in with it. So I dissolved it in nitric no problem. Problem is. The copper bar had iron in it and I didn’t notice until all silver was cemented out. How do I make sure there is no iron, zinc or lead in my cement silver. Or do I need to redissolve it in nitric and start over?
Copper won’t cement iron. But metallic iron will cement copper. Got iron in you copper? Or copper in your cement silver? That’s a brain twister. I’d redissolve and do a silver chloride conversion with lye and sugar, if it were mine.
sreetips just didn’t know if the zinc would fall out of solution. But I believe it will fall out of solution it then convert to silver. Am I correct on this ?
Because the copper builds up in the cell. If allowed to get too high then it could start plating out and contaminate the silver. It’s best to remove all the copper that you can while it’s in this state.
It seems like it takes much less volume of copper wire than the amount of silver that cements out. If the two metals are "trading places" why would it takes less copper?
That's my observation as well. I don't have an answer. But it seems that only a little copper is consumed while much silver comes out of solution. It may have something to do with the silver being in a powdered state while the copper is more densely packed together as solid metal.
Because the copper enters the picture as solid metal, electrical wire, in an industrially-produced form. It is in the most compressed form possible. (Though if you placed the copper under tens of thousands of pounds of pressure it might turn into liquid, or some other form. In fact, this is what happens in an IED improvised explosive device or EFP explosively formed penetrator where an explosion super-compresses solid copper, it liquefies, then is directed in a jet of molten metal) The cemented out silver is in the form of random tiny crystals with lots of space in between them. It is kind of fluffy, so it looks bigger. But you can't really compare them because the copper is solid and the silver is fluffy. As a matter of chemical fact, the nitrate ion prefers copper over silver about 3:1 which is why in the electrolytic cell (in the next video) once the copper in solution is too concentrated, the electrolyte will no longer dissolve the silver in the basket. The metals are said to be "trading places" (an imprecise piece of slang but it is not "wrong") because the nitrate ion in the silver nitrate solution prefers copper over silver. Copper is more reactive than silver, it is higher in the electromotive series of metals. It would be like going to a dance with a gal and then meeting a much more attractive gal at the dance and then abandoning the gal you came with. So the nitrate ions in solution puke out the silver they came to the dance with and start going after the copper in the coils. The poor, dejected silver falls out of solution as the grey mud, and the copper coils start to dissolve. They get thinner and eventually got so thin they break because the solid copper is replacing the silver that used to be in solution.
pneumatic00 the silver cemented out might be fluffier, but it still seems there's lots more of it than copper. By weight it looked like he dissovled several pounds of silver and cemented it out with like a 1/2 pound of copper maybe. I can't say for sure because he didn't show weights though.
I can make a separate video with smaller amounts and carefully weigh everything before and after doing the reactions to see what the numbers really are - great idea for a new video, thanks!
Great video. However, as you mentioned, silver is a pain in the butt. Silver is bulky too. I sell my silver to the refiner and take back 24K gold bars instead of a check. I'm waiting for the silver and gold ratio to become more favorable to silver. It's 78 to 1 now. I'd like it to be in the 60s to 1. In a pinch, I can sell pure gold to my jeweler friends as it's easy to alloy but no one is really interested in fine silver.
I sell some gold to a fellow who makes teeth. Wish I could keep more of it. Most of the non-refiner types that have seen my bars seem to prefer the silver over the gold.
no need for the coffee filters an old t shirt works fast and good and with rinses you can get the copper back and the iron can be taken out with a neodymium magnet no sense throwing away money kids will buy the iron oxide for thermite and the copper is worth melting back into bars and the water can be used as a drain cleaner both worth your time I think anyways lol .
Have you ever calculated what your loses were by doing this process, say you put 1000 grams of sterling, theoretical you should have 925 grams of pure silver but what are you actually seeing coming back, 5-10% loss?
Casey, I do this as a hobby. I don't track my expenses and profit for each batch. In fact, with silver prices so low right now, I'm not selling any of my silver. So my expense to profit ratio is 100% right now, zero profit. You only make a realized profit when you sell. And right now I'm not selling. Does that make sense?
@@sreetips we are talking about 2 different things, im not talking about profits/money im talking about loses of silver content due to the refining process, if you start with 100grams of silver then process it you're not going to have 100grams of pure silver in the end so you're losing silver in your processing to some degree but have you ever figured out how much youre actually losing, hopefully i explained this better this time
I've never picked it apart to see how much I actually get verses the amount I put in. I just keep processing it and saving the silver for a rainy day. Sorry I can't be more specific.
Lance, I bought mine on eBay for about $250 plus $250 shipping $500 all in. I documented the install with photos on the goldrefiningforum.com my user name there is kadriver.
Those used filters can be placed in a beaker and boiled in dilute nitric to dissolve the silver. Then filter out the paper and recover the silver nitrate. Any traces of other metals should stay solids and get trapped in the filter. It (the filter with traces of other metals) can then be added to the gold refining filter storage.
Dewey, I throw the copper away after it comes out of the waste bucket. It's plentiful and cheap. I can't even give it away because it's heavily contaminated with other metals.
Rewind today to 5 years ago and I would love to have been your apprentice. Can’t thank you enough for sharing your knowledge!
Thank you so much for showing how to dispose of the waste, I do appreciate it and thank you for replying to questions without being defensive.
I highly appreciate and respect what you do here. I think this is an extremely important video showing a step far too many people seem to gloss over and you show you care enough to go into the finer details. I am NO WHERE near your scale but I pretty much do the exact same thing as you do with one small addition. I've found that no matter how long i leave the copper sitting in my spent silver nitrate solution there is ALWAYS some precious metals left in solution and I hate the idea of losing them when I add to the iron. I found if I filter the copper solution off into a separate bucket I can reclaim yet a bit more of the silver that cemented out. I then add finely ground potassium chloride to convert it to copper chloride and I always have silver chloride precipitate out which is then filtered and added to my silver chloride stockpot (I wait until I have a large enough amount before I bother with the lye/sugar process). I even go one step further and freeze the waste copper solution and let the potassium nitrate crystallise out to recover as much of the nitrate I can. What's left over is pretty much only copper chloride which I finally add to the iron. I know it's not really worth it for most people but I like to be as efficient as I can be and anything that doesn't go out as waste I see as profit. I'll even take the copper I collect from the iron bucket, wash it a few times and melt it into bars and use that to cement out the silver in the early stage. Other than my nitric, distilled water, filters and silver scrap I really don't have much in expenses. Even the iron bar stock was free and pulled from a dumpster. :)
But as always, your videos are top tier and the best I've seen. You go into details others don't and clearly show the process in an easy to understand way. Huge respect for your efforts and skills. Many thanks to you for your willingness to share.
I add the silver waste to that bucket of copper coils to collect the tiny amount of metals that are still present. I'll have to study your procedure and see if I can get it to work for me. Don't quite understand all of it. Thank you for your very positive comment.
What are your costs per troy ounce of silver refined?
May the Schwarz be with you this is my hobby. I don’t track expenses on each batch. I’ve never taken the time to do the calculations.
You are one of the best DIY RUclipsrs ever! Thanks for sharing your experience and from one veteran to another thanks for your service!
Appreciate that, thank you
Thank you so very much for going through the waste material processing. I am just getting started in refining and recovering gold and silver, and almost none of the videos I watch talk about the waste material. I want to make sure I am responsible and do what is right by the earth. Thank you for going through how to make this waste safe to dispose.
I live my life from the view point of feeling safe by "being", "seeing", "doing" patterns... I think that is what and why I enjoy your channel so much, as there is so much involved in these processes, and each video or show, allows me to learn one thing at a time. It seems that you unveil one new "tip" or "trick" of the trade, in each video, so I do not feel so overwhelmed with info, and your methods and natural ability to teach/explain things, allows it to sink into my peanut brain smoothly. You also not only explain why to do something, you for the most part, explain what happens when or why or how things could go wrong, meaning, in chemistry, there is a reason for everything, based on qty's, in relationship to time and sequences of orders... Your videos are priceless and I thank you, for you taking the time to do these videos, and time you have invested, let alone, the amount of money you have forked out of your own pocket. I also, would like to mention, there is a great appreciation for your wife, that plays a large roll in supporting this venture of sharing on RUclips, what you and her have learned with the folks, like myself, who enjoy this stuff. I do not mean to sound chauvinistic in any fashion, but, Not to many women will allow their men to rock an roll like this, mostly due to the idea, that if they do not understand what is happening, they too often can throw a fit, that is unless, they actually do understand the process, and how learning chemistry can be allot of fun, and when done safely, and properly, can be very profitable. So, Thumbs up to your wife, for jumping in this venture with you, and her not fearing the unknown and being so willing to learn right along side of you. Pretty cool on her part to support this venture as a team effort goes. Dru
Dru, she's sitting with me now and we both read your comments together. She said to tell you, "thank you". It brings me a great deal of satisfaction to know that my videos are appreciated. Thank you for your kind words!
Thanks for getting back about the copper. It would be great if you could find a way to collect that copper too. The pure copper might be worth a shiny penny for your operations too. But, the real question is whether or not the end value of the copper would make it worth the time and effort, (so that indeed would be a consideration). Nice work though, I'm learning quite a bit from your channel. Keep it up, great job!
The mud at the bottom of the angle iron bucket?
It's the simple things, the beautiful and sometimes surprising colours that these precious metals produce whilst in solution. Love the videos Sreetips, never stop.
Love the Sreetips ❤️
Your videos are fantastic and informative, as always - thank you for taking the time to create and upload them
your knoledge, and will to teach is superior, videos are so enjoyable an easy to follow, thanks for share
I was really happy that you fail cementing at least once. I really wanted to see how you fixed it.
I suppose that the copper wire with a passivated layer of silver could be used for inquarting gold.
Yes, but it can also be fixed by adding a few ml of nitric and diluting the solution with distilled water
GoldBug66
I would like to make a suggestion when you are washing the copper nitrate out of the cement silver. Pour all the liquid out of the beaker but leave the silver in the beaker.
Then add the three rinse waters, one at a time. Mix the silver in the beaker very well each time but only pour out the liquid but the last. You should get a cleaner
cement silver and it is easier to work with that way. I hope this helps.
Pour off the copper nitrate then pour hot water over the silver in the beaker, then pour that rinse water into the filter, then do it again three times. Instead of adding the silver to the funnel and rinsing with hot water in the funnel. Is that correct? I'll give it a try. Thank you.
thank you again for your patience in explaining the process. #3 should be amazing to watch
Awesome videos on how to do the process and how to fix problems. Great job. Thank you for this amount of thoughtful teaching.
Wonderfully detailed Process Sreetips, You omit nothing for our benefit and we see your learning process in excellent clarity, thank you.
It is truly amazing watching you do this with silver . and i see you do gold as as well . but your a wealth of information .it just amazes me to watch you do this .awesome to say the least .
Actually using the Cu wire is for the best. Larger surface area for the Ag to cement out on. Like you said...just have to keep an eye on it.
Btw I love how when you time lapse your video with the audio on it makes your fume hood fan sound like a snare drum drum roll right before a big stunt or reveal
I like we watching your videos. This seems so redundant to me, however very interesting! You are so thorough you repeat yourself a lot, but you like to get your point across! Never change.🎉
G’Day Mate,
I’m curious as to why, after all your hard work, you don’t dry the waste paste the cemented out on the angle iron? I recall you mention that it was copper cementing on the surface of the angle iron. Would it not be worth melting a few copper ingots rather than turfing the waste paste out into the shitter?
P.S. love watching and learning from your channel.
Kind Regards
Michael (Blu) Turner
Australia
G’Day! Clean copper is cheap and plentiful. It’s very useful for refining Precious metals. But to a refiner of gold and silver, copper, after it’s been used, is considered waste. It’s not worth the time and effort to try and recover.
You a very good job of explaining the silver refining process. That's a 👍.
If watched this vid before, but the problem of the highly concentrate of silver did not stick in my mind!! I'm glad I'm watching again as that will be vital information to know if/when that happens to me!!
Thank you and
Have a GREAT Day!!!
Shane, when dissolving the silver for the electrolyte, it's important to make sure that there's not lots of excess nitric in the electrolyte when it's done. The way to make sure is to have the solution boiling with no fumes and a little bit of undissolved silver left in the bottom of the beaker. Excess free nitric will dissolve palladium (the only one of the six sister metals that will) from the anode filter basket, if present, and cause palladium to build up in the cell. In higher concentrations the palladium could plate out with the silver thus contaminating the pure silver crystal.
Also, if you boil platinum in nitric acid nothing will happen. But an alloy containing 5% or less platinum and 95% or greater silver BOTH METALS WILL DISSOLVE COMPLETELY in hot dilute nitric acid. When the silver is cemented on copper from such a solution the platinum will cement out too. Usually showing up as a dark black powder that coats the copper at the very end after all the silver is done cementing. It will turn the silver powder a dark grey color. But, unlike palladium, the platinum will not dissolve in the filter of the anode basket in the silver cell. It gets trapped as slimes in the filter. The platinum can then be recovered from those filters. I've got a video on how to recover in insoluble gold and PGMs from the anode filters.
Does this process work for silver plated items as well? This kind of work and refining is so fascinating. I’m trying to absorb and rewatch videos multiple times before I start trying this for myself. Great explanation on everything sreetips 👍🏼
Silver plate is just a thin coating of silver. Not enough to recover.
@@sreetips roger that! I won’t even bother with it then. I Was just curious. I Walked through an antique mall for several hours the other day. I only came across silver plated items. Not much sterling flatware around where I’m located. Lots of full price sterling jewelry though. I guess I’m just trying to figure out where to start with my refining processes and what I should be purchasing material wise to start and produce decent yields for a beginner
I just found this channel, and damn am I amazed. Great content and amazing detail!
Also.. you're almost to your 100k subscribers, you should be getting your silver play button soon! I recommend just hanging that one up instead of refining it... haha.
I’ll hang it up
Hi, cant wait for part 3.
Meanwhile I'd like to as you, what you think is a fair (good) price for buying sterling (925) silver pr. Ounce or gram.
If I was to set up a cell and all that stuff, and try to make some sort of profit or break-even it doesn't make sense to buy the sterling at too high a price.
Right now silver spot is at 100 dkk/Ounce or about 16 usd/Ounce. With sterling being around 90% silver a calculation would say ca. 90 dkk/Ounce.
But that's the theoretical silver weight. It's nowhere near pure and in order to get it there I'd need to do all that stuff.
Of course, buying large quantities makes it more reasonable, but let's say I were to do a 10 kg. Sterling refining, yielding ca. 9 kg of pure silver, subtract the cost of chemicals, electricity etc., what would be a meaningful price/Ounce sterling?
You make your profit when you buy. I try to get it for as little as possible. My wife finds it for pennies on the dollar at yard sales.
Wow this is way more labor and time intensive than the gold refining. I am really enjoying learning from these videos. This is much more fun than high school science class was lol.
I use the neutralized iron nitrate waste in a mix with potassium phosphate. It makes clumps of iron phosphate and a solution of potassium nitrate that I can use as fertilizer! The solid iron phosphate dissolves very slowly in soil, making a good slow-release source of phosphate and iron. I can only do that when processing silver from jewelry and tableware. Anything from electronics may have high levels of lead, tin, and other toxic metals that end up in solution.
Lots of questions answred, but, still very curious...better then most Sci-Fi's I watch....way to go.
Is this just a hobby of yours? It does seem time consuming. it is very interesting to understand the process. thanks
Hey Sreetips, I was wondering all that copper crust that comes out of solution on your iron in your waste treatment; could you melt that into bars or sheets of copper and reuse it for silver cementation from your silver liquids. Was just curious as thats alot of copper just getting tossed out. Appreciate your reply in advance and love your content a ton. GOD bless :)
i imagine it would be difficult to scrape copper off iron and then purify it just to cement silver. What he really wants to do is to get copper out of solution as it is very toxic as a liquid. And the metal is less reactive
Very good explaining the procedure.
Honestly this guy is a GOD in refining precious metals 😍
Dear friend. I also recover the copper with iron. But after I filtered the copper it became green and couldn't melt. I would like your advice on how to recover the copper to be able to melt. Thank you so much for your videos. Regards from Brazil
Another phenomenal video Sreetips!!! Great stuff. I follow along those same procedures as you do ... It is indeed time consuming processing silver as you stated in your video, however, the end product, electrolyzing the silver to get "pure silver" makes it all worth it. I am truly inspired by you and the amount of detail you put into your videos.
A question I have is how to you go about cleaning your beakers, flasks, and other glassware that you use? is it safe to run them through the dishwasher? Do you autoclave them to make them "contaminant free" meaning no fine particles or hydroxides or acid residue, before the next use? How bout your waste buckets, fume hood, counter tops and stove burners and oxy torch heads?
I really like how you showed a little bit of the "waste treatment" process in your video. I am wondering if you run the semi wet hydroxide cake back through for any other precious metals like platinum, palladium, and other "platinum group metals. :-)
Thanks Eric
To the first question about melting the copper coils. I imagine it's also a benefit to leave the wire unmelted, which gives you a larger surface area to cement the silver--more time-saving.
Quite true.
Thank you for such long and detailed videos
Thank you for saying everything at least 23 times because I'm that one guy that says what did you say 30 times. love these vids!
Fun watch. Looking forward to watching more.
Mr. Sreetips, first I’d like to thank you for the videos. I’ve learned a tremendous amount from your silver refining videos. What type of paper filter are you using with you Buchner Funnel and suction flask? I haven’t found much info on what type to use. Thanks for any information you can offer.
Here is the type that I like at a great price: www.ebay.com/itm/274331520849
Another fun thing I played around with was chemical reduction of silver with hydroxide and then dextrose sugar.
I used the sugary hydroxide waste to mix with the final acid-iron solution after recovering the silver and copper, and it made a black ooze that I dried into a mass of crystals. Then I burned those down into magnetic iron particles, with the sugar making a perfect carbon source.
This work looks so satisfying to do... Do you ever worry that the "deals" on gold and silver in your area will dry up and you wont have enough thrift store/yard sale metals to refine?
As the currency continues to decline in value relative to the precious metals, I believe that finding the metals at reasonable prices will become increasingly difficult. But for now, confidence in the currency is high. This false confidence will enable those with the insight to do so, to continue to rake in the metals at these fire sale prices. But when the giant awakens and people figure out that the dollars aren't really worth the ink that is used to print them, then it will be risk on as the precious metal skyrocket. It's a mathematical certainty, like knowing the future.
@@sreetips a well spoken southern man that gets it
Can't wait for part 3!!! I hope you show how to use an old computer power supply for the silver cell!
That is exactly what it will be
Question: when the nitric solution passivates the copper do you leave the copper in when you add the extra ml of nitric? I'm refining some sterling using poor man's nitric (first time refining anything) and I forgot to dilute the solution before cementing. Or should I just add enough nitric to redissolve everything (minus copper of course) and then dilute and cement? Thanks for any input! It's greatly appreciated. Love your videos. They have helped me alot in learning refining methods. Thanks
Mate, Ive seen you use both methods. Hydrochloric acid and copper wire. Which one do you prefer/advise to use, and why? Cheers.
I prefer cementing on copper because if PGMs are present, then they will cement out on the copper with the silver. However, I could produce pure silver using silver chloride conversion with lye and sugar. Then cement the PGMs and gold, if any, on copper. Using this method (silver chloride conversion) would eliminate the need for the silver cell.
I read the 1st six comments and got to "boring old white guy".
I thought his comment was VERY INTERESTING!! I especially like that he goes after the copper and makes bars out of that. I have accumulated about 600 pounds of copper over the past 20 months, most of it from a friend (of 35 years) who does residential restoration, he brings me all of his metals like romex and piping. I've been hoarding it because like silver I think copper is way low right now! I think it will get to $10 a pound, instead of $2.20!
I know that probably sounds pretty lame, considering you work with metals daily that are worth $1,200+ an ounce, not something I hope to get 10 a lbs for one year. I think a video of you taking that copper from your silver recovery and refining a huge copper bar out of it (even a one lbs bar) would be something different, as a fan I think it might go over very well with your other fans too!!
I know you'd probably loose money on the cost of doing it, like the ewaste vids. You could put the bar to use with future silver recovery, it'd be better than selling it. If you ever consider it, you could ask for comments to see if it's something your fans would even want to see!!
I don't like asking, request or suggesting things like this, but I just had a strong feeling about this one. No big deal and I'd understand if you don't respond or especially act on these crazy suggestions.
Thanks for your time and wonderfully educational videos!!!
Shane, I barely have time to do the videos that I have planned. Refining copper is something I've never done for the reasons you've given. It's cheap to buy it at yard sales. Your 600 pounds of copper will come in handy when you start working with silver.
You would think that silver would be a lot more closer in price to gold since how it's ten times more trouble to extract than gold thank you for showing this to all of us
That coil of wire has much more surface area than a solid cube of the same volume. Therefore, there is more copper surface in contact with the nitric acid.
two filters I can understand, but why two different types/brands? Is one a fine paper filter that does the actual filtering, and the other a glassfibre weave filter to support the saturated paper filter?
I'm curious as to your fume hood. How many CFM, and did you purchase one or is it homemade?? Thanks for the great videos. :)
It's about 250 to 300 CFM. Labconco with fiberglass interior and built-in fan motor. Go to the goldrefiningforum.com to see the installation my user name is kadriver there.
Hello, Here is a suggestion for you. Use your empty Soda Can (Aluminum) to precipitate out the Pure Copper from your solution rather then the Iron Bar. It costs $0.05 a can. Melt them down to a Bar and then make Rods by fusing them. You can then re-use the Pure Copper in your experiments. It should be a stoichiometric 1:1 displacement of Aluminum to Copper through solution. Copper is currently $2.20 per Pound while Aluminum is at $0.42 per Pound.
Red, I find copper at yardsales for very little cost. I spotted a roll of used heavy copper romax, about 10 pounds of copper, at a yardsale. Asked the lady how much and she said, "that's been taking up space in my garage for ages, you can just take it, for nothing." Plus, aluminum causes problems when working with precious metals. It's not the best metal to use. But copper has similar properties to silver. It's cheap and easy to find.
Is your fume hood filtered? Does it vent to outside? I assume doing the rections outdoors with a mask would be safe but I'd like to make sure.
It vents up a stack through my garage roof. I used to do reactions outdoors. But it's a mess if it's raining and no matter how hard you try, some of that gas gets in your face from time to time. The fume hood solves all these problems. Once I had it I couldn't imagine refining with it.
Thanks for the info Sreetips, helpful!
We need a silver stock pot refining video- I’d like to see if you get any gold or PM’s out of it
Excellent video !, Maybe make a deal on your silverware when you get more ?.
im keeping most of my silver for now
If you already did this, please forgive me, but ... could you please explain the difference between *_cementing_* and *_plating?_*
Cementing is an exchange. Plating is a deposit.
Good videos, do you know if the tap water made any difference in forming the passive layer of silver cement?
I don’t think so, but dissolved chlorides will react with the silver nitrate and for silver chloride.
I’m surprised you don’t refine the cemented copper, couldn’t you roll it out to sheet copper and use it for cementing out the silver? I know it would require removing the iron from the solution and copper cement so it might not be worth the extra work. But it would probably make a good video
I’m terribly backed up on my gold and silver refining. I don’t have the time to devote to copper. To a precious metals refiner copper is a waste metal.
Is silver plated worth messing with ? Reason being I found around 40-59 pounds of plated items ... forks knifes cream cups
Silver plate does contain silver. I haven’t found an economical way to recover it yet. When I get silver plated material I throw it in a container and save it. One day I’ll figure a way to get the silver from it.
I think the folks that make fireworks use iron oxide for their red stars. I wonder if they would be interested in your waste product?
Hi Sreetips, is that method of rinsing more effective ????
Not sure
Why did you not use fresh copper to start with on those reactions to cement out the silver? It makes sense to me to use fresh new copper instead of something that's already been used
Fresh copper is not necessary.
What would happen if you attempted to boil down the waste fluid, or let it evaporate? I'm assuming any acids would still be left over?
i had that happen to me once with my copper coil not working ., i submersed it into a jug of boiling water with a few drops of bleach . shook it and let it sit in the water for about a minute or two then it was fine and worked again . and the bleach wont affect the silver , if anything it will help
Bleach on silver will form silver chloride.
@@sreetips it didnt when u stripped the silver from the exrays
if you're not worried about lead in you solution, you can precipitate silver (as silver chloride) by adding table salt
Very interessting..but how big refiner doing it? They do in same way?
Artin Aslan I don’t know. I’ve never visited a big refiner to see how they do it. I am just a hobby refiner.
@@sreetipsI like very much...good video with nice detail...
Good to see you still at it.
Thanks I finally understand. Now I just need to find some junk gold or silver.
I understand scientists and others use elemental Iron powder and pay a lot for elemental iron.
Could you cement the iron and perhaps dry it in a hydrogen or argon atmosphere and then package it using a kitchen appliance that vacuum seals seals bags of food?
I don't know. I've never tried that.
That was my question. Is the yield worth the effort. A breakdown of yield vs effort would be nice. Time is money. Profit vs refining costs is an important factor. Also can the acids involved be cleaned up and refurbished or are they a total loss after process if so cost of them would factor into overall cost of refining. What is the overall profit margin?
Try boiling down waste after neutralized and trashing remaining metals instead of filtering etc
thank you for showing your mistakes and your fixes bro most would just edit out and the info is invaluable praticing with silver and gold atm and working my way up to rh ru as ive got alot xD
Why don’t you filter the Cu cementation and melt it into bars you can drop back into your Silver stock pot? Then you don’t have to keep buying copper for precipitation of your silver.
Two reasons, the copper will be contaminated with other metals. And I can get pure clean copper for cheap. I just bought a 60 foot roll of 3/4 copper tubing for $65. It will last me for months.
Couldn't you recover and reuse almost all of your nitric acid by doing all of these processes in a distillation apparatus?
I don’t think so.
I wonder why you don't use the electrochemical way to sediment the copper as well. As you are using iron you will get all that iron solution for further treatment. You could reduce your amount of waste that way. Coz even iron is still a heavy metal toxic in higher concentrations.
And btw: We call it a sediment or sedimentation! Not a cement or cementation! ;-)
In the refining community, adding a more reactive metal to a less reactive metal, in solution, to render the metal out of solution is called "cementing". For example, adding less reactive clean copper metal to a silver nitrate solution will cause the silver to come out of solution as a grey powder that falls to the bottom of the container. It looks like wet cement hence the name "cement silver". But the term "cementing", in the refining community, is a term used to describe any reaction of this sort. For example, using zinc to render platinum out of solution is called, cementing the platinum on zinc, even though the resulting powder is black and looks nothing like wet cement. It's the same if we use iron to "cement" the copper out of solution.
I don't try to recover the copper because I can get it at yard sales, sometimes for free. It's plentiful and it's pure.
Is it financially beneficial to refine the sterling? Assuming you buy it for a good price.
I don’t think it’s necessary. Sterling is about 90% pure silver the rest copper. I refine it because it’s my hobby. But sterling can be held just like it is. Will track right on up with three nines investment grade silver.
I may have made a huge mistake. I cast a copper bar to cement out my silver in solution. The silver I was gave to refine had brass mixed in with it. So I dissolved it in nitric no problem. Problem is. The copper bar had iron in it and I didn’t notice until all silver was cemented out. How do I make sure there is no iron, zinc or lead in my cement silver. Or do I need to redissolve it in nitric and start over?
Copper won’t cement iron. But metallic iron will cement copper. Got iron in you copper? Or copper in your cement silver? That’s a brain twister. I’d redissolve and do a silver chloride conversion with lye and sugar, if it were mine.
sreetips just didn’t know if the zinc would fall out of solution. But I believe it will fall out of solution it then convert to silver. Am I correct on this ?
you could put the copper crystals fp for sale on ebay couldn't you they are pretty pure yes?
Why spend so much effort cleaning the copper nitrate off of the silver cement when its just going to be re refined in the electrolytic cell anyway?
Because the copper builds up in the cell. If allowed to get too high then it could start plating out and contaminate the silver. It’s best to remove all the copper that you can while it’s in this state.
@@sreetips Thanks!
Really excellent information thank you
Thanks for the video, my question is : if I don't have a beaker can i use aluminium pot ?
Stainless steel would be better
Just a thought wouldn't copper wire mesh work more effectively than a coil due to surface area 🤔
Possibly
It seems like it takes much less volume of copper wire than the amount of silver that cements out. If the two metals are "trading places" why would it takes less copper?
That's my observation as well. I don't have an answer. But it seems that only a little copper is consumed while much silver comes out of solution. It may have something to do with the silver being in a powdered state while the copper is more densely packed together as solid metal.
Because the copper enters the picture as solid metal, electrical wire, in an industrially-produced form. It is in the most compressed form possible. (Though if you placed the copper under tens of thousands of pounds of pressure it might turn into liquid, or some other form. In fact, this is what happens in an IED improvised explosive device or EFP explosively formed penetrator where an explosion super-compresses solid copper, it liquefies, then is directed in a jet of molten metal) The cemented out silver is in the form of random tiny crystals with lots of space in between them. It is kind of fluffy, so it looks bigger. But you can't really compare them because the copper is solid and the silver is fluffy. As a matter of chemical fact, the nitrate ion prefers copper over silver about 3:1 which is why in the electrolytic cell (in the next video) once the copper in solution is too concentrated, the electrolyte will no longer dissolve the silver in the basket.
The metals are said to be "trading places" (an imprecise piece of slang but it is not "wrong") because the nitrate ion in the silver nitrate solution prefers copper over silver. Copper is more reactive than silver, it is higher in the electromotive series of metals. It would be like going to a dance with a gal and then meeting a much more attractive gal at the dance and then abandoning the gal you came with. So the nitrate ions in solution puke out the silver they came to the dance with and start going after the copper in the coils. The poor, dejected silver falls out of solution as the grey mud, and the copper coils start to dissolve. They get thinner and eventually got so thin they break because the solid copper is replacing the silver that used to be in solution.
Excellent explaination, thank you.
pneumatic00 the silver cemented out might be fluffier, but it still seems there's lots more of it than copper. By weight it looked like he dissovled several pounds of silver and cemented it out with like a 1/2 pound of copper maybe. I can't say for sure because he didn't show weights though.
I can make a separate video with smaller amounts and carefully weigh everything before and after doing the reactions to see what the numbers really are - great idea for a new video, thanks!
1.7K+👍's up sreetips thank you for sharing
Great video. However, as you mentioned, silver is a pain in the butt. Silver is bulky too. I sell my silver to the refiner and take back 24K gold bars instead of a check. I'm waiting for the silver and gold ratio to become more favorable to silver. It's 78 to 1 now. I'd like it to be in the 60s to 1. In a pinch, I can sell pure gold to my jeweler friends as it's easy to alloy but no one is really interested in fine silver.
I sell some gold to a fellow who makes teeth. Wish I could keep more of it. Most of the non-refiner types that have seen my bars seem to prefer the silver over the gold.
Ever considered using an electric current across two electrodes immersed into the solution to quickly separate/extract the metals? (electroplating)
I've done it many times.
this worked good for my rocks. thank you
nice info i did save some of my destiled water thanks for that
no need for the coffee filters an old t shirt works fast and good and with rinses you can get the copper back and the iron can be taken out with a neodymium magnet no sense throwing away money kids will buy the iron oxide for thermite and the copper is worth melting back into bars and the water can be used as a drain cleaner both worth your time I think anyways lol .
At the end of the day are you making any money doing this. I have a lot of plate to work with and you have a complex system.
I've never worked with plated silver. Yes, there will be a profit from selling this silver when the time comes.
Great, then it is all worth while and not just an experiment. Pour up some neat things as we do and have some fun eh !
This is really fascinating stuff!
silly question but you made sure that cu wire didn't have any coating right? might account for the floaters during electrolysis
No coating. Just clean bare copper wire
@@sreetips it would be interesting to see you anodize something in gold or silver
17:27 I want a silver cake for my birthday!
Joking aside, thank you for your excellent tutelage. I have a blast watching you work.
so you throw away copper and other metals instead of reusing them ? vyrcool story bro ...
Have you ever calculated what your loses were by doing this process, say you put 1000 grams of sterling, theoretical you should have 925 grams of pure silver but what are you actually seeing coming back, 5-10% loss?
Casey, I do this as a hobby. I don't track my expenses and profit for each batch. In fact, with silver prices so low right now, I'm not selling any of my silver. So my expense to profit ratio is 100% right now, zero profit. You only make a realized profit when you sell. And right now I'm not selling. Does that make sense?
@@sreetips we are talking about 2 different things, im not talking about profits/money im talking about loses of silver content due to the refining process, if you start with 100grams of silver then process it you're not going to have 100grams of pure silver in the end so you're losing silver in your processing to some degree but have you ever figured out how much youre actually losing, hopefully i explained this better this time
I've never picked it apart to see how much I actually get verses the amount I put in. I just keep processing it and saving the silver for a rainy day. Sorry I can't be more specific.
Can you melt down the cemented copper down and use it again?
Fume hood prices on eBay are high. Is yours purchased or DIY?
Lance, I bought mine on eBay for about $250 plus $250 shipping $500 all in. I documented the install with photos on the goldrefiningforum.com my user name there is kadriver.
Thank you
I hope you are able to make a video on getting the silver removed from your filter papers and I am able to see it. Sorry I can be a bit chatty.
Those used filters can be placed in a beaker and boiled in dilute nitric to dissolve the silver. Then filter out the paper and recover the silver nitrate. Any traces of other metals should stay solids and get trapped in the filter. It (the filter with traces of other metals) can then be added to the gold refining filter storage.
Thanks for the info, I sure appreciate it.
If you have any extra time some people buy copper bars on Ebay if you melt down that copper in the waste
Dewey, I throw the copper away after it comes out of the waste bucket. It's plentiful and cheap. I can't even give it away because it's heavily contaminated with other metals.
Where do you get/buy your glassware? Those 4 L beakers must be $50-$60/each!
Ebay
Another dumb question. Do you have a video or advice on what you do if you accidentally put a silver plated item in your nitric?
Best to not let plated stuff in the batch. But if it did and I could detect it then I'd just pull it out of the acid.
Why tap water on the final rinse? I thought the tap water world contaminate the silver powder
I use hot distilled water to rinse the silver powder
Is there a way to precipitate out the silver without using copper? Like when you use SMB to precipitate gold?
Yes, hydrochloric acid.