Silver ion in used fixers

[59gilbert]

I would always make sure the silver ion in whatever fixers are pretty much precipitated before I dispose of the used solutions for the sake of the environment. My question today is:

Would the silver ion reduce itself under sunlight over time?

I have a few bottles of used Kodafix & RA4 blix (properly capped, and pretty full) placed at a corner of my bathroom for months and forgot to further process. The brown RA4 blix bottle seems to appear slightly reflective. I tried to shake the bottle and nothing peels off the inner surface. The Kodafix bottle is seen with grey precipitates. Are these metallic silver?

Thanks! Happy darkrooming

 

[sfaber17]

I think your precipitate is silver but sunlight would not be dependable to reduce your silver very quickly.
You could put in some steel wool.

 

[Ces1um]

I think your precipitate is silver but sunlight would not be dependable to reduce your silver very quickly.
You could put in some steel wool.

save it up and sell it to a refiner. That's what a lot of photography labs used to do back in the day.

 

[removed account4]

there are several ways of extracting silver ions from your spent fixer, sunlight is not one of them ...
pass electricity through it ( electrolytic ) and it will plate out on a cathode but leave a bunch of silver in your fixer still
plate the silver out using a reactive metal, but then you have a bath full of another metal to figure out what to do with THAT.
you also might have to worry about PH of your bleach-fix to get these systems to work to your liking.
evaporation might be useful, but then you have all that sludgeDUST..

do you have a mini lab/school near you? household chemical disposal day through your public works department ?
it might be as ez or easier to bring it to them ...

 

[59gilbert]

Thanks for your replies!
I have been using the sacrificial metal method in the past. I peeled off the plastic from a hanger and dipped it in. I know the iron gets dissolved into the solution, but what I think is, iron ion and precipitates are far less toxic than silver.