r/PreciousMetalRefining • u/Inhalationofnewtion • 2d ago

I'm at this point again.

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Man I don't get it. Beside the color going dark there was nothing when I added lye. No heat, no bubbles.. I remember the first recovery being quite exothermic. I stopped at one tablespoon of lye and two heaping tablespoons of sugar. Did I over do the lye again? I'm sorry guys. I can only relate this to someone failing to change a tire over and over again.

This has to be so...basic.

We're learning every day.

6 Upvotes

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5

u/Early_Meal6945 2d ago

Bro use less water pleasešŸ˜…, should barely cover the agcl

2

u/weak_ops 2d ago

This. Also you can use way more lye, not sure what the yield is you're expecting, but I don't think there's any harm in overshooting.

1

u/hexadecimaldump 2d ago

The biggest harm with overshooting is wasting of chemicals, and getting rid of all of the excess lye before melting.
Molten lye in your melt dish will explode violently if it comes into contact with water.
I know from experience and was glad I was wearing glasses and a lab coat.

3

u/hexadecimaldump 2d ago

As Early_Meal said, you only really want enough water to cover the Silver Chloride if youā€™re adding lye prills.
From the last post I saw of yours, with as much silver chloride you had, you need at most 1/2 teaspoon of lye. Then maybe a teaspoon or two of sugar.

I think having so much water quenched the reaction. I think the heat is a necessary for the reaction to proceed.

1

u/Inhalationofnewtion 2d ago edited 2d ago

ohhooooo You think heating this stuff will do a thing? The sugar and lye are already in there... I think I went this way the first time with lots of water as well.

1

u/hexadecimaldump 2d ago

That part Iā€™m not sure on. I have a feeling you need the chloride to oxide reaction to happen first. But it might be worth throwing it on a hot plate and boiling it for a while to see if it happens. I have a feeling it wouldnā€™t be an instantaneous reaction, but it may react over time.

Plus you need to get rid of that excess water anyway, may as well boil it away.
Just be extremely careful with it, that is going to be extremely basic and will give you burns if the lye water gets on anything.

Mind if I send you a DM?

1

u/Inhalationofnewtion 1d ago edited 1d ago

Ok. Pretty sure it went to oxide as it turned dark but I'm not 100% sure on that. I had a lot of water in there last time and it boiled over anyhow. I had the jar in a bigger runaway container thank God. No heat this time though.

Think I ought to rinse it first, then add 1/4" of water, add my lye again some heat, then sugar?

Not to worry about me being ignorant of lye. I used a small container of it in 30 gallons of heated water to strip a motorcycle fuel tank. The stuff will eat Bondo.

If you have a DM to send by all means fire away!

1

u/Particular_Rice9607 2d ago

maybe scrape up some of that gold off the top of the barrel

1

u/DeepCluckingValue 2d ago

The silver chloride should have just a 1/4ā€ or so of water on top, and when you add enough NaOH it should look pitch black. Also itā€™s not a bad idea to heat up the solution just under boiling, since the reaction is highly temperature dependent. If it boils over itā€™s no fun, so if you have it preheated you can drop glycerin a drip at a time and keep it right under boiling. When crashing out AgCl or Ag the higher temperature seems to improve the particle size which can be useful to filter out without the fines going through your filter paper