recycling wash water as grey water?

Donald Qualls said:

First suggestion would be to contact a local mini-lab processor and ask them if they could add your silver to their recovered silver, which is picked up for them (often for free, the disposal paid for by the silver metal reclaimed).

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If you are going to go this route though, it makes more sense just to haul your spent fix to them and let them extract the silver themself. Many labs will do that for free, and then you are rid of the whole mess without the work.

Kino:

I'm interested. Let me know what you find.

Very interesting topic...I learned a buch, thanks guys!


Joe

Kino said:

Somewhere around here I have plans for a small silver reclamation unit scaled for a small darkroom that works a lot like the large rotary units we have at work.

It is a simple affair with flexible metal plates that you put the fix into and turn on the current. Minutes to an hour later, you remove the fix and find pure silver plated to the anodes, which can be recovered by flexing the metal plates and gathering up the flake silver.

The only possible problem is if you pass too high a current, you liberate sulfur compounds and ruin the fix.

I can have a look around if anyone is interested in the plans.

Frank

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I'd be interested in this -- if it's simple enough to run off a small (cheap) battery charger or similar, I'd probably start recovering my silver instead of one-shotting my fixer as I've been doing.

Of course, even removing the silver doesn't extend fixer life indefinitely; especially if you process T-Max or similar films, iodide buildup will reduce the effectiveness of your fixer about as fast as silver capacity is used up (which is why fixing T-max films reduces the fixer capacity -- no more silver, but lots more iodide compared to conventional films). But I wouldn't mind having a ready source of flake silver; in that form, it'd be pure enough to save up, then get some nitric acid and make my own silver nitrate solution for van Dykes or salt prints.

I think you already have my e-mail address...