[Chireadan_PL]

Hi,

Sorry from my bad english but I'm from Poland.

I'm a metallurgist and some time ago i had been experimenting with jewelry making and photochemistry. I have collected (and bought) some quantity of silver-bearing scrap, mostly in alloys with copper and zinc. Using fume hood at my university I dissolved it all in HNO₃, and then added kitchen salt to precipitate Silver chloride. I've purified the silver chloride by washing it with excess of distilled water, and dried it under vacuum. Now I am left with about 600 grams of AgCl. Of course I want to reduce it to metallic silver, which I will then melt and cast into ingot. I don't have any idea how to reduce the chloride. I thought about:

- Reduction with gaseous hydrogen - impossible in home/garage environment, too dangerous.
- Reduction with hydrazine - same as above
- Pyrometallurgical process (sacrificial metal, smelting with lead, etc.) - my DIY induction furnace will not handle this, it will contaminate all the vacuum chamber.

I'm interested in dissolving the AgCl in ammonia solution and then performing electrolysis, but I'm worried that explosive silver compounds may form. Do you have any suggestions ?

Thanks in advance.

[Borek]

Electrolysis? Formaldehyde? I am more than sure I have seen some procedures on the web in the past (on photography fora), but no time to search for them at the moment.

If memory serves me well Sękowski (Galwanotechnika domowa) suggests using some kind of an iodide bath for electrolytic process.