AgCl to Ag I watched your AgCl to Ag conversion video, with interest, and would like to mak e a few comments.

Please don't take offence, but I feel that your technique will not usually convert all of the chloride to metal. It might work sometimes but o thertimes it won't. I think that most of the problem lies in the understanding o f what is really happening. Have you tried melting any of this metal? Have you n oticed a tenacious, milky, iridescent layer on top of the cooled metal. If so, t his is unconverted silver chloride. Probably the best way to prove your process would be to dissolve a weighed amount of silver in nitric, salt it out, convert it, melt it, remove any coating, reweigh it, and compare the weights. You will p robably lose a little silver in a torch melt but it shouldn't exceed 1 or 2%. About 30 years, I spent some time in a lab determining exactly how much Karo syr up and sodium hydroxide (caustic soda, lye) it would take to convert a known qua ntity of silver chloride to silver. Since then, I have processed at least 10,000 ozs of silver using this method. This is what I found: 1) If you don't crush all of the dried silver chloride to a very fine powder, yo u won't get complete conversion. I noticed a few chunks in the video. When you t ry to convert these chunks, a layer of silver oxide or silver metal forms on the surface and blocks the chemicals from penetrating to the center of the chunk. I would suggest grinding in a mortar and pestle. Actually, the best way is to nev er dry the silver chloride. Keep it submerged in water, cover it when in storage to keep the light out, and stir it good before adding and while adding the chem icals. You're going to need water, anyway, in the process. 2) The purpose of the sodium hydroxide is to convert the silver chloride to silv er oxide. The silver oxide is then converted to silver metal by the Karo syrup ( corn sugar). The purpose of the Karo syrup is not to act as a flocculating agent . It is actually what produces the silver metal. Theoretically, you don't really need the syrup. You could easily flux melt the silver oxide directly to convert it to metal. However, it is a bear to filter silver oxide and it is, therefore, best to use the syrup. 3) When I did the lab experiments, I used 31.1 grams of silver chloride, which c ontains 23.4 grams of silver metal. This took 15 grams of sodium hydroxide, 10 m L (cc's) of light Karo syrup, and 100mL of water for complete conversion. In pra ctice, I use about 10% extra chemicals. 4) If the process is being used to semi-purify items ch as sterling silver, keep track of how much silver amount of needed chemicals. If the silver amount is gia residues, you'll have to make a guess. Just make le extra won't hurt. of known you have unknown, sure you silver content, su so you'll know the such as in aqua re add enough. A litt

5) To test for complete conversion: Put a small sample, about a half gram, of th e converted solids into a beaker and cover with distilled water. Stir and then a llow the solids to settle. Carefully pour out the rinse water without disturbing the solids. Repeat several times until the rinse water runs perfectly clear. Ad d a small amount of good nitric acid and an equal amount of distilled water. Thi s will dissolve the silver metal. When the silver has dissolved, add distilled w ater to about an inch depth. If a white cloud (silver chloride) forms, the conve rsion is not complete and, either you need more chemicals or, the chunks weren't completely broken up.