Anyone know of an inexpensive way to recover silver?

I go through about a gallon of fixer per week. Is there an inexpensive/effective device or way for me to extract the silver before dumping my fixer?

Thanks for your help

bob

Well, a lot of people pour it through steel wool and then turn it in as toxic waste, but with that high a volume, it would seem you could explore building a silver recovery unit and sell the silver flake for a small return on your chemical use.


You could also check out a resin system with ammonium thiosulfate fixer (http://www.rohmhaas.com/ionexchange/IP/silver_recovery.htm); it helps you regenerate the fix rather than dump it.

Steel wool.

I keep a few five gallon painters buckets on hand, dump the exhausted fix in there, put a pad of steel wool in. Next day... all the silver is at the bottom.

suzanne, then what do you do? How do you remove and dispose of the pad? Can you dump the bucket of remaining liquid down the drain without risking pipe corrosion or any adverse environmental effects?

Thanks again

bob

alternately if you don't want to handle the waste or recover silver at all, many local labs will dump the fixer into their own recovery systems for free. Obviously, you would lose the ability to retain the silver.

I've not done it, bt it seems to me that you could electroplate the silver out using a small DC power unit such as a trickle charger for batteries and a couple of chunks of stainless steel for electrodes?

That may work, but it really is a PIA (nasty, but feasible) chipping silver to reset the electrodes once they have been filled to capacity.

our electrodes are nickel plated steel drums; hit them with a rubber hammer and flake falls off easily...

yeah, that may have been an overreaction; recalling some horrors I wish I had forgotten with some silver recovery systems I've worked with. The actual chipping isn't that big of a deal as long as it's done carefully...it can get messy easily.

Dear Bob,

Check out: http://silverprofitphoto.com/products/index.htm

Neal Wydra

call your local waste hauler and get a iron core trickle tank.
it'll cost 30$, and last a long long time. you will be plating out the silver
and replacing it with iron ions. the difference between the copper core and the iron core tanks is copper core will "canyon" and unless you use it all the time, it will give you troubles. the iron core will not do that. the other way, is sure fire, get the hauler to give you a 30 gallon drum, and every 30 weeks have him take it away. you'll get all the silver out of the spent fixer, and a check in the mail.

if you want to do the electrolytic transfer, a photo store in california used to sell a "silver magnet" (inexpensive!) that you plug in and it plated silver out on an electrode. i have read some reports that it worked well, and others that it was a waste of money ..

good luck
john

bobbysandstrom said:

suzanne, then what do you do? How do you remove and dispose of the pad? Can you dump the bucket of remaining liquid down the drain without risking pipe corrosion or any adverse environmental effects?

Thanks again

bob

Click to expand...

Since I have a septic system I prefer not to dump the liquid down it. Don't think it's good for the bacteria in the septic. I drain off the liquid to a clean bucket, and once a year our town has a hazardous waste day. The fix does pile up quickly, especially in the winter when I do a lot of darkroom work! The bucket with all the silver just kinda stays here. Don't have enough to really worry about how to dump it! I suppose eventually I'll have to deal with that.

I've heard the liquid can be used as a fertilizer, so I suppose you could dump on the lawn!

This returns to a previously unaswered question .. just HOW MUCH silver can be expected to be recovered from one (1) roll of film? - or a sheet of paper?

I have heard (note: HEARSAY!!!) that the entire process was financially only marginally justifiable from a very high-volume commercial lab ... but I have nothing to back that up. Anyone know?

BTW ... If any reloader out there has smokeless powder that they wish to get dispose of, spreading it on your garden is very effective - it breaks down very quickly, and makes excellent fertilizer.

Ed Sukach said:

This returns to a previously unaswered question .. just HOW MUCH silver can be expected to be recovered from one (1) roll of film? - or a sheet of paper?

I have heard (note: HEARSAY!!!) that the entire process was financially only marginally justifiable from a very high-volume commercial lab ... but I have nothing to back that up. Anyone know?

Click to expand...

Maybe. But note that price of silver is up 50% compared to a year ago and has tripled compared to 5 years ago. Of course, some of that price is due to overheated market and a probably bubble.

If you put sheets of aluminum foil into a 5 gall bucket and put your used fixer into it the silver will attach itself to the aluminum foil the fixer that is left can be filtered and checked for reuse. There should be very pure silver in the bucket aftere the fixer is removed . There is a good possibiility that the fixer will continue to be useable. The aluminum will influence the fixer by becoming a part of it and it will add to the fixer's hardening properties. Every time the fixer is recycled it will gain a greater aluminum content and as such promote more hardening among other effects. It is for the individual who is using the fixer to determine when the fixer will no longer work well and to what extent they consider the hardening to be a good or bad feature.

Every choice has both good and bad features. Hardening makes the fixer more difficult to remove from the paper during washing. The hardening of the paper may have some advantages in terms of, for example, abrasion resistance. The removal of undesirable chemicals is aided by hypo clearing agent..or a simple 2% solution of sodium sulphite. A more effective method of removing fixer from fiber based paper is hypo eliminator which is normally compounded from hydrogen peroxide and household amonia but stinky when used indoors. This solution will certainly enhance the speed of fixer removal drastically. Research has shown hypo eliminator to weaken the fibers of the
paper. I do not know how much it does so. I do not know if it creates a weaker bond of emulsion to the paper. I use a hardening fixer and hypo eliminator on selenium toned fiber based prints. Then I follow up with ten 5 minute changes of water while shuffling the prints in a tray. I do this by going thru dumpimg and refilling cycles. The dried prints are drymounted to 4 ply matt board. Hopeful am I that drymounting offsets the weakened paper structure. Am I making a good choice? Don't know says I but time will tell.
We all pays our money in terms of capital investment, time, resource usage, enviromental contamination and convenience etc and end up with whatever happens as a result.. Having made these choices the mounted prints are put into boxes said to be archival with acid free sheets of paper used in between each print.

I only comment that this is the route I have taken. You will have to check your photographic guidebook and decide for yourself which path you wish to follow on your journey. May it be a very pleasant trip.

Ed Sukach said:

This returns to a previously unaswered question .. just HOW MUCH silver can be expected to be recovered from one (1) roll of film? - or a sheet of paper?

I have heard (note: HEARSAY!!!) that the entire process was financially only marginally justifiable from a very high-volume commercial lab ... but I have nothing to back that up. Anyone know?

Click to expand...

Consider that the silver is just a part of the cost of film or paper. What's the value of the film and paper you put through, say, a liter of fixer? That sets an upper bound on the value of the silver you can recover from it. In reality, it'll be much less than that upper bound value, of course.

call a local photo lab and ask if they will run it through their silver recovery unit.