HOW TO REFINE SILVER, PART II

摘要

Chemical refining consumes a lot of acid that is discarded once the silver is removed as silver chloride. Chemical refining also requires an extra step to reduce the silver chloride to silver metal. If this acid could be used to make the electrolyte used in electrolytic silver refining, acid use could be decreased by at least half. Electrolytic refining is an electrochemical procedure whereby impure silver is electrically dissolved or corroded at an anode into a solution composed of silver nitrate, copper nitrate and free nitric acid, and deposited in pure form at a cathode. This solution is referred to as electrolyte.