Extract the Silver from my Steel (Or Iron I'm not sure) Wool Recovery tank

[MingMingPhoto]

Hi all. I'd like to know if I can extract the silver from my recovery tank myself, or if I really do have to pay a company to come pick it up and do it for me.

I already have the recovery tank, had it for about a year and I'm running a c41, bw lab (also I do e6 and ecn-2 can I extract sivler from those?)

 

[Donald Qualls]

Two conceptually simple ways: melt the silver off the steel (silver melts at a much lower temperature than steel does), or redissolve the silver with nitric acid (may not do a good job of separating the two; I don't offhand recall relative reactivities).

 

[mshchem]

This is a job for refinery. Main role of these things is to remove silver from waste stream.

 

[koraks]

if I really do have to pay a company to come pick it up and do it for me.

You *could* do it at home, but in terms of money, effort etc. it's probably a lot smarter to dispose of the stuff and have 'the industry' deal with it. The problem is mainly that in a small-scale operation as yours would be, it's very hard to be efficient enough to end up with clear waste streams that are cleaner and more responsible to get rid of than what you have now. To put it differently: you'd likely be doing more harm than good. Not to mention costs of course, because it's an operation that evidently won't recuperate the associated costs by a long shot, even with today's precious metal market prices.