Turner
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Selling Silver Nitrate?
I have an excess of materials and equipment to produce Silver Nitrate from silver.
Silver Nitrate is very expensive on Ebay (60$ for 50 grams of Silver Nitrate), but these are from sophisticated sellers that sell a big variety of
chemicals with high ratings etc.
I have pure, clean silver on hand, and pure Nitric Acid, I see no reason why this would be any lower than 99% purity, even without recrystalization
etc. Even if I end up buying silver at market value, I could sell Silver Nitrate at a very competitive price, the question is whether there is enough
demand to sell this in varying quantities (5-50 grams)
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BromicAcid
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Silver is 'cheap' right now, within the last few years it topped out near $50. 50 grams of silver nitrate is 63.5% silver by weight. That's almost
exactly 1 troy ounce (31.74 g vs. 31.10 grams). So when silver was expensive that 50 grams of silver nitrate for $60 would have included $50 just in
silver. Currently silver is sitting closer to $20, which means if the remaining $40 of the price would be enough to cover your acid, labor,
mechanical/chemical loses, packaging, etc. then it might make sense to give it a try. People might be more reluctant to purchase from you however
because you are less established than the 'sophisticated' sellers. Also, that being said remember small amounts of impurities (specifically halides)
cause silver nitrate to appear off-colored when exposed to light and of course there are the lasting stains. Still, you mention demand, I would
hardly expect you to be producing this in large batches/bulk quantities. You could produce 50 grams simply enough using a 1 troy ounce silver coin.
But of course even after you make it, dry it, package it, you still have to ship it and silver nitrate does ship as a hazardous chemical (5.1
oxidizing substance) so if you don't know what you are doing in shipping you could be breaking some laws.
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Turner
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Thank you for your reply.
I have the Nitric Acid, which itself is expensive, I have no other use for it, and it is not contained in such a way that it can be sold, so I could
make silver nitrate low cost.
I may give it a shot, although I did buy 3lbs of KNO3 once over Ebay and it came USPS in a Ziploc bag with no labels as far as I could see as it being
an oxidizing agent or anything.
Now I have to be able to guarantee the purity of the product. It has to be at least 99% and the way I was going to go about this (in addition to very
clean silver and nitric acid to begin with, as well as clean glassware) is to crystalize from the hot Nitric Acid by very slow cooling to get big
crystals precipitated.
[Edited on 9-12-2013 by Turner]
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Fleaker
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If you use commercially pure silver, you can just crystallize to dryness and then heat until it melts. It can then be poured (as molten AgNO3) into a
stainless tray, covered, and allowed to crack up.
If you want to confirm the purity at a high level, you will need to use AA or ICP to determine the purity.
A simple titration can be used to 99,95% Ag, presuming no Pd/Pb/Hg is present (this is called Volhard's titration--it is done with potassium
thiocyanate as titrant, ferric ammonium alum as indicator, and silver nitrate).
Neither flask nor beaker.
"Kid, you don't even know just what you don't know. "
--The Dark Lord Sauron
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hyfalcon
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I can BUY 1kg of silver nitrate from India for $650.00 US. I get spammed all the time from this one chemical company, Alpha Chemika.
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Turner
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Would the process of melting and pouring into a tray at all increase the purity over the silver Nitrate that is just allowed to crystalize out of
HNO3/H2O and then dried?
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Fleaker
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Yes, because any other metal nitrate that would form would decompose the oxide (if that happens, you then pour it all into distilled water,
flocculate, and let settle) and nitrogen oxides.
Some of the larger producers of silver nitrate that are doing 100,000 oz batches will skip the molten salt step and crystallize the AgNO3 vis-a-vis
the common ion effect, by adding a gross excess of nitric acid. All done in big stainless steel 304 kettles (SS-316 isn't suitable).
Crystallizes in large lamellae.
Neither flask nor beaker.
"Kid, you don't even know just what you don't know. "
--The Dark Lord Sauron
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