Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Reactions of Silver Chloride

LifeisElemental - 15-11-2014 at 12:26

Hey guys,

In the process of recovering gold from some old jewelry I also obtained a solution of copper and silver nitrate to which I added sodium chloride to isolate the silver as silver chloride.

Does anyone have any suggestions of interesting chemistry of silver chloride? I am surprised by how little I seem to find online.

Ideally, I would really love to find a way to produce purified silver nitrate from this or silver metal.

Any ideas?

blogfast25 - 15-11-2014 at 13:51

Quote: Originally posted by LifeisElemental  
Hey guys,

In the process of recovering gold from some old jewelry I also obtained a solution of copper and silver nitrate to which I added sodium chloride to isolate the silver as silver chloride.

Does anyone have any suggestions of interesting chemistry of silver chloride? I am surprised by how little I seem to find online.

Ideally, I would really love to find a way to produce purified silver nitrate from this or silver metal.

Any ideas?


Filter off and wash (in the dark if possible, AgCl is very light sensitive - obviously). Dissolve AgCl in strong NH3 and add some NaOH solution.

Then perform Tollens' Reaction:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tollens'_reagent

Dissolve silver in nitric acid if silver nitrate is what you want.

If you haven't found much online, spruce up your googlings: the Tinkerwebs are chocker with silver recovery instructables!


[Edited on 15-11-2014 by blogfast25]

CHRIS25 - 15-11-2014 at 14:42

Just quickly coming to mind was this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e0-AbwBDYM

Also if you want to get Pure silver out of the sterling silver, if you have any. Dissolve all in nitric acid. Then add Very clean piece of copper pipe or plate. Watch the copper displace the silver out of solution and cling to the copper. When finished, Take out copper piece and wipe the silver mud onto a clean plate or petri dish. Filter the copper nitrate solution and collect more of the silver mud.

Now sand a small concave shape into a piece of wood, like a bowl, charcoal this black with a torch, place silver mud onto the charcoaled area and blast it with a torch that reaches at least 1000c, the charcoaled area will make it hotter and provide the silver mud with enough heat to form your lovely pure silver ingot.

Alternatively put into crucible and cheat - that's Heat with a 'C':)

[Edited on 15-11-2014 by CHRIS25]

cyanureeves - 15-11-2014 at 18:18

you can add diluted hydrochloric acid to silver chloride and then file of the copper skin off a penny and drop it in the mix.silver chloride turns to elemental silver when it is all black and just resume with what chris25 said about the silver mud.the skinned pennies must be american(zinc).

[Edited on 11-16-2014 by cyanureeves]