Easiest Way to Convert Silver Nitrate to Pure Silver?

Silver nitrate is a strong oxidising agent and readily yields silver metal in the presence of a reducing agent. As you have probably found out, contact with your flesh is enough to reduce AgNO3 to silver metal - leaving black stains behind - hard to remove!

If you add formaldehyde in solution ("formalin") to a silver nitrate solution, silver will immediately be deposited on the sides of the vessel. This is in fact a test for reducing agents, such as aldehydes.

Nope!-Never found that out-(lol)-I remember reading something somewhere that Dr's used to treat warts with silver nitrate.That was enough information for me to Not to touch it.

Is "Formalin" effective enough to create a heavy precipitate of Ag when mixed with a silver nitrate solution? What kind of solubility am I looking at when it comes to Ag in formalin?-Seems like it would'nt be soluble enough to get a good yield,but I don't know.

Silver chloride is alot safer to handle than silver nitrate.What do you think about burning off the chloride in a crucible,as I described. Would the yield be better than trying to precipitate it out of Formalin?

Remember,Treat me with kid gloves,I'm lucky I did'nt flunk out of Chemistry 101 spring quarter many years ago. With silver at 23.25 oz,I think when it hits 50. oz,I would be more motivated to try and recover the silver.

I've always been interested in Chemistry,now I wish I would have taken it a few steps further than high school,and one college course.

Thanks for your answer.

I think you should forget about the idea of decomposing silver chloride. It simply will not decompose, but will melt and finally boil at 1550 degrees centigrade. If you mix it with sodium carbonate however, and heat it to better than 960 degrees, it will give you a button of silver.

Silver nitrate, on the other hand, will decompose at 450 degrees centrigade, yielding the metal. It won't be a nice fused button, however, but a fine powder. And it might splatter a bit as you heat it.

There are quite a few ways of making silver metal, such as adding an organic material as mentioned above. However, you will need to fuse the resulting material to get a button of silver. This is usually done by heating it with sodium carbonate in a crucible in a furnace. So it would probably be best if you found someone who has a furnace and a suitable crucible. You will need to remember that silver melts at 960 degrees.

Some further comments.

The type of sodium carbonate you will need to use is called soda ash. You can possibly get it from a swimming pool shop. Washing soda will not do - it is full of water of crystallization.

Use equal weights of soda ash and silver chloride. This will provide an excess of soda ash for the reaction, which will evolve carbon dioxide and oxygen and produce sodium chloride and silver metal.

Mix the ingredients thoroughly beforehand, by grinding them together. Use dry reagents.

Heat the mixture up in the crucible to 600 degrees and hold there for an hour. Then bring the temperature up to 1050 degrees for a few minutes and then cool down.

You will need to try this out on a few trial batches. A zirconium metal crucible would be ideal if you can get one.

I believe that it is also put into the eyes of new borns.

oilcan13

The process of reduction is used in the Mirror making industry (when silver layer mirrors are made). They use what is called Stabilised Silver Nitrate (Amoniacal Silver Nitrate) to prevent the silver from precipitating in a silver notrate solution, exposed to light.

Just add Glucose and heat the vessel. the silver will precipitate on the hot surfaces.

Then collect the silver.

Just add Glucose and heat the vessel. the silver will precipitate on the hot surfaces

Good luck with scraping 100g of silver off the hot surfaces

Well, If all this is for 100g recovery, he might as well do that instead of all the complicated schemes involving chemical reactions and cooking for some time and also the other dangers (?). By the way, if he is diabetic, he could use his Urine (no offence intended... it works).

Sir,

How much of glucose need to form like the mirror and how to filter the silver from this chemical?

I stand corrected Kevin!

Way back in high school (50 yrs ago) my chemistry teacher demonstrated recovery of silver via electrolysis. He connected the wires from a transformer to two probes made of pencil lead (i.e. the carbon graphite rods), immersed these in the siver solution and silver deposited on one of the carbon rods (cathode, I think).

Got anything that needs silver plated? It seems to me that silver nitrate is the electrolyte used in silver plating. Way back when, I read about silver plating fishing lures. You use an OLD silver dollar (pure silver) as a silver source, silver nitrate solution, and the item to be plated, and a DC source to power the process (like a battery charger).

It was a good 20 years ago, and I don't remember any details beyond this, but it might be worth investigating.

Bill

The safest way is to desolve the AgNo3 in water, then take a small bar of copper, solid copper wire will also do - sand it with fine sandpaper to remove any corrosion and insert it into the solution. pure silver will soon percipitate out onto the copper. The matalic silver can then be scrapped off and melted down into bars.

--Good luck with it.