Retreiving silver from fixer - Darkroom Techniques Forum

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Q. Retreiving silver from fixer

Asked by CorrieLynn Jacobsen (K=9882) on 12/27/2005

I've heard of people doing this, and im curious how its done. Is it a simple process? or one of those things that is so hard to do that its just not worth it...Curious. I do develop a lot of black and white-so i'd like to know more about this.
Thanks.

Helen Bach (K=2331) - Comment Date 12/27/2005

The simplest way is to put some steel wool, as used for household cleaning, into your used fixer, in a plastic container. The silver in solution will 'swap places' with the iron and form a black sludge in the bottom of the container.

If you are using two-bath fixing, your discarded fixer might contain 3 g/L silver - after fixing about 20 rolls in that litre. My quick estimate shows that if you get 80% of the bullion value (currently around USD 9 per Troy ounce, which is about 31 g), that's worth about 60 cents, so that's three cents a roll. I'm not certain that you would get 80% for silver recovered that way. Better quality recovery can be done by electrolysis.

Best,
Helen

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