Fix: Silver Recovery

Hello,

 

I have a home darkroom and have accumulated well over a dozen gallons of fix over the years.

My questions is if it is worth it to do silver recovery and try to get some money out of the silver or best to just take it to my local hazardous waste drop off whom I am in contact with.

Not quite sure how to contact any venders who will buy such silver as well as any laws and regulations set on purchase/selling such silver.

 

Thank you,

Braden

Hello everyone. Braden you can reduce the volume of your stash by purchasing some steel wool at any DIY store, put a good sized pad of the wool into a plastic bucket and pour a gallon of the spent fixer into the bucket. Cover & wait about a week. The steel wool will turn black with silver from the fixer. Pick the sw out of the slurry & allow to dry. I use a non acid fixer so the liquid can be poured into the septic system. Ages ago an artist friend would smelt & use the silver in his work, but these days the small amount I recover is slipped into a zip lock bag & stashed in the garage. Some day I will find another artist friend & repeat the cycle. Use Google to find out about any recycling in your area should you not want to repeat the above. There still are Xray machines that are not digital, so they use film. Aloha, Bill

As well as I know, the actual amount of silver in a roll is pretty small. I suspect that you won't make up for the cost of taking it to the center, unless you run a production rate minilab.

 

We have paper, glass, and can recycling, and I try to get as much of those into the bin as I can. We don't get paid for them, but it is something good to do.

 

Recovering silver is good, even if you don't get paid for it. You can store it in a bag, and remember where it came from!

For EVERYONES info. Spent hypo contains about 0.25 oz of silver/gal & yes, it can be a real PITA to recover. In solution (fixer in this case) it is a Nasty Heavy Metal ! Get the silver out of it's ionic form and the liquid is "relatively" harmless. Hence, the steel wool capture. Bill

Back in the day when our local newspaper used film they had a silver recovery system. They'd get a nice check every so often. Never knew if that justified the cost of initial set up or not. With a home darkroom I wouldn't bother for the money, but it would make an interesting demo for a high school chemistry class.

I would think you would be able to use a very basic electroplating setup -- straight out of Boy Scientist. I have a beer mug I used long and hard, the plate well worn. I may have to give it a try (if I ever get the darkroom up and running again!)

I would think you would be able to use a very basic electroplating setup -- straight out of Boy Scientist. I have a beer mug I used long and hard, the plate well worn. I may have to give it a try

 

Sandy, don't. You'll probably put a smelly black coatings on your beer mug. I'd bet a lot of beer on it.

 

Problem with photographic fixer is that only a tiny proportion of the silver is available, at any moment, to be plated. If you run more plating current than there is silver immediately "available," then other (unwanted) reactions occur. And anyone working from a general knowledge of decorative plating is likely gonna start out with drastically too high a current.

 

Anyone who does processing for a hobby, and hopes to ever get cash from a refiner should probably pony up for a "Silver Magnet," one of the sometime posters here is a dealer. You'll have to be doing a pretty fair amount of processing to get past the breakeven point.

I figured that concentration would be an issue -- just thinking!

Yep, it's one thing to sulfide up a cathode (which can be scraped/scrubbed off), but a good beer mug? ... that's a whole different situation.

When I was a college student back in the 1970's my dad told me about the silver recovery being done at the local newspaper. I thought (with my limited chemistry experience [2 semesters of freshmen chemistry] ) that I could do electrolysis of the used fixer. Big mistake. I learned later that the foul smelling gas evolved was hydrogen sulfide.

(snip)

And anyone working from a general knowledge of decorative plating is likely gonna start out with drastically too high a current.

 

(snip)

 

 

Reminds me of my favorite story on the art of electroplating. It is supposed to be true, though I don't know of a reliable source.

 

The story is of an electroplating company, the kind with big vats of plating chemicals to dip things into.

 

Everything was going fine, until the head janitor went on vacation, at which point the nice shiny plating stopped.

 

When he returned from vacation, he was called to the boss' office, and asked what he did to the plating baths.

 

He was somewhat worried, until the boss told him that everything stopped working when he was gone.

 

Finally, he admitted to peeing in, and throwing cigar butts into, the bath. You never know what

makes a good plating bath.

I know when we contact copied offset plates with film, the company would get small amounts for used fixer from a recycling company picking it up. In East Germany you didn't legally own the silver in your fixer and could have 20l of fixer picked up free of charge.

Considering the amount of fixer Braden has at hand, I would try contacting recycling companies for a quote for it as is. Not much hassle and at least some money.

Most photo labs should willingly take your spent fixer, as they make money off the silver recovery. I just do the steel wool thing.