SILBER aus echtem SILBER-ERZ herstellen [𝟰𝗞] | JJChemistry

Today we are talking about the precious metal silver. Silver is 20 times more common than gold and 700 times less common than copper. Already 5000 BC silver was processed by the Egyptians, Romans and Germans and was used as a means of payment. Silver is not only considered precious in the worldly sense, but also in the chemical sense. In the periodic system silver is in the copper group, to which copper and gold also belong. The chemical element symbol Ag has it because of its Latin name agentum. All three metals, copper, silver and gold are excellent electric conductors. Silver is the best electric and also the best thermal conductor. Silver is obtained from different ores. Since it is considered precious in the chemical sense, it is also produced in pure form in nature, in contrast to non-precious metals such as aluminum and iron. There is an ore that consists of pure silver and is called cadmium silver. Silver has a decisive weak spot. It reacts incredibly well with sulfides. It is unintentionally easy to observe on silver cutlery. After some time, the silvery shine of the cutlery changes to a black tint. This black layer is the rust of the silver, chemically called silver sulfide. Silver sulfide is also formed in nature and is promoted with a silver content of 87% as the most important sulfide silver ore. Today we will go through a nice process to process contaminated silver ore into pure silver. In addition, I am interested in the question of how much silver you can expect from silver ore if you, for example, go for a walk in the ore field and find a silver-containing rock. To do this, I was able to organize a mixture of cadmium silver and the most important sulfide silver ore, acanthite. This ore was found by committed mineral collectors and passed on to me via their small online shop Micro Masterpieces. In this online shop there are the most diverse minerals, including silver-containing as in my case and very well-known representatives such as ruby, sapphire and smaragd. Also interesting are radioactive and luminous, i.e. fluorescing minerals. A very successful category is the Beautiful and Inexpensive category. In this category there are, as the name suggests, very beautiful and at the same time inexpensive albedo stones. In short, there is everything here that makes the heart of a stone collector beat faster. The ore weighs 29.55 grams and, in addition to black acanthite and light gray silver, also consists of something whitish. Probably the bright quartz, i.e. sodium dioxide or barium sulfate. My plan is to dissolve all silver-containing in acid in the first step. The quartz, or what is not silver-containing, will not dissolve in acid. Since silver is very noble, it needs an oxidizing acid and I use saltpeter acid for this. The calculation of the approximately required amount of saltpeter acid I assume from the worst-case scenario. The worst-case would look like this, that the whole ore consists of silver. Worst-case only refers to the amount of saltpeter acid consumed. Of course, the more silver, the better. The reaction equation for the dissolution of silver in saltpeter acid looks like this. 3 silver and 4 saltpeter acid react to silver nitrate, water and NO gas. According to my calculations, I need 28.46 milliliters of 60% saltpeter acid. During the reaction, brown gas is created, i.e. nitrogen dioxide. Nitrogen dioxide is extremely toxic and therefore poses an immense danger without a trigger. I have made attempts with silver several times and it is always the same problem. The expected amount of saltpeter acid is never enough. For this approach, I needed a total of 46 milliliters of acid and had to help with heating. My initial calculations were already very generous. After another round of research, I found a second reaction equation, which states that two parts of saltpeter acid must come to one silver. This reaction equation now presents a new worst-case and could be a possible explanation for the extraordinarily high surplus of the required acid. After a few hours, the reaction was finished and various powder-like solids remained. To filter out the base, it was sensible to dilute the solution. The filtrate still consists of a considerable amount of acid, so you have to be careful here too. The remaining solids are now the non-soluble components that adhered to the silver. In addition, sulphur has also formed. During the reaction between saltpeter acid and acanthite, silver nitrate, the brown gas nitrogen dioxide, water and sulphur are formed. The sulphur is relatively reactive and falls out as a base. After several washes and further dilution, the valuable, pink-shimmering silver solution remains. Because silver ions are so noble and have no desire to be as they are now, you can read from the so-called redox series, with which metals silver ions can be reduced to elementary, metallic, valuable silver. The next metal is copper. When the silver ions come into contact with elementary copper, beautiful crystals form. In contrast, the copper wire dissolves and replaces the silver ions in the liquid. The whole thing is an electrochemical process. In doing so, one copper transfers one electron to two silver ions, so that elementary silver is formed. The copper itself is oxidized to double positive copper ions. These ions color, depending on the coordination with water, the solution green and blue. Meanwhile, the silver then turns around the copper wire. To check whether the solution still contains silver ions, it is easiest to shake off the silver crystals and then observe whether new silver crystals form on the wire. In my case, silver is still to be extracted from the solution. The solution still contains sulphate acid. So it is possible that the sulphate acid dissolves the silver or copper wire again. When there is hardly any silver left in the copper and nitrogen dioxide is formed again, it is time to separate the silver from the liquid as quickly as possible. At the right time, one can observe the solution in the form of bubbles, i.e. gas development. The solution is filtered with a funnel and filter paper and washed again and again with fresh water, so that no acidic residues remain in the filter. The grayish-greenish powder is now pure silver and ready for drying. After two hours at over 100 ° C in the oven, the silver powder is dry. The silver powder weighs 12.97 grams. In order to make the silver look like silver, the plan is to melt it and pour it into a barrel. The melting point of silver is 962 ° C and this is not an easy task for my little melting oven. Moment of truth. For two hours, the silver has been in my melting oven. Let's see if the melting oven has reached a temperature that exceeds 960 ° C. And then we'll pour it into the barrel together. Oh yes, that looks good. Oh, that's bad now. This is what it looks like on the inside. It didn't get to temperature after all. Then we'll let it cool down like this. Lunch later, it should be cold now. Oh yes, the butter came out. Yes, now it also looks like silver. Silver-shiny. And on the front, I hope it's sharp, there is a slag on the front. But we can also solve that. But the main thing is that it is silver-shiny on one side. I think we'll weigh it right away. 11.61 grams. Perfect. Feels good. How much is it worth? 60 cents. 7 euros. It's worth about 7 euros. A kebab. I would say the attempt was successful. And now we know. From 29.55 grams of acanthite and molten silver and so on, we have now successfully won this coin. Mega. Many thanks to my channel members, without whom such long projects would hardly be possible. 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