Silver metallurgy

Ores of silver native silver, argentite, cerargyrite (horn silver). Metallurgy of silver cyanide process, amalgamation process, Parkes process. O mpoimds of silver silver oxide, silver chloride, silver bromide, silver iodide, silver ammonia complex, silver cyanide complex, silver thiosulfate complex, silver nitrate. 

This was treated in a gentle water flow on wooden tables. The water carried the light mineral particles with it while the heavy gold grains remained. For gold refining the cupellation process (described in Chapter 6 Silver) was probably adopted from silver metallurgy, in which it had been used some centuries earlier. 

Gale, N.H. and Stos-Gale, Z.A. (1981) Cycladic lead and silver metallurgy. Ann. Br. School Athens, 76, 169-224. 

Sodium cyanide, NaCN, is extremely poisonous, but it has very useful applications in gold and silver metallurgy and in the electroplating of metals. Aqueous solutions of cyanides are especially hazardous if they become acidified, because toxic hydrogen cyanide gas, HCN(g), is released. Are NaCN(aq) solutions normally acidic, basic, or pH neutral What is the pH of 0.50 M NaCN(aq)7 Note that solutions containing cyanide ion must be handled with extreme caution. They should be handled only in a fume hood by an operator wearing protective clothing. 

The abundance of indium in the earth s cmst is probably about 0.1 ppm, similat to that of silver. It is found in trace amounts in many minerals, particulady in the sulfide ores of zinc and to a lesser extent in association with sulfides of copper, tin, and lead. Indium follows zinc through flotation concentration, and commercial recovery of the metal is achieved by treating residues, flue dusts, slags, and metallic intermediates in zinc smelting and associated lead (qv) and copper (qv) smelting (see Metallurgy, EXTRACTIVE Zinc and zinc alloys). 

A. Butts, Silver Economies, Metallurgy, and Use, Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., Inc., New York, 1967. A comprehensive study of silver. 

Sodium cyanide [143-33-9] NaCN, is a white cubic crystalline soHd commonly called white cyanide. It was first prepared in 1834 by heating Pmssian blue, a mixture of cyanogen compounds of iron, and sodium carbonate and extracting sodium cyanide from the cooled mixture using alcohol. Sodium cyanide remained a laboratory curiosity until 1887, when a process was patented for the extraction of gold and silver from ores by means of a dilute solution of cyanide (see Metallurgy, extractive). A mixture of sodium and potassium cyanides, produced by Edenmeyer s improvement of the Rodgers process, was marketed in 1890. 

M. C. Euerstenau andj. L. Hendrix, eds.,Mdvances in Gold and Silver Processing Proceedings, Society for Mining, Metallurgy, Exploration, Inc.,... 

Abe, Y. Flett, D. S. Solvent extraction of silver from chloride solutions by Cyanex 471X. Process Metallurgy 1992, 7B, 1127-1132. 

Barrett, K. R. and Knight, R. R, Silver-Exploration, Mining and Treatment. The Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, London, 1988. 

Jacobsen, R. H. and Murphy, J. W., Silver—Exploration, Mining and Treatment, Institute of Mining Metallurgy, London, 1988, 283. 

Percy, J. (1875). Metallurgy. Volume IV Silver Gold. Murray, London. 

Father Jose de Acosta describes the metallurgy of silver and mercury in the New World. 

It may seem strange from today s perspective that several of the substances recognized today as elements - the metals gold, silver, iron, copper, lead, tin, and mercury - were not classed as such in antiquity, even though they could be prepared in an impressively pure state. Metallurgy is one of the most ancient of technical arts, and yet it impinged relatively little on the theories of the elements until after the Renaissance. Metals, with the exception of fluid mercury, were considered simply forms of Aristotelian earth . 

Metallurgy of Silver.—With reference to their metallurgical treatment, the minerals of silver ore divided into four classes —... 

T1he elemental composition of ancient silver objects is a potential source of information on the kind of ores used to produce silver, the location of these ores, the ancient metallurgy used to extract the silver, and the trade routes through which they passed. As part of a comprehensive study on Sasanian silver at the Metropolitan Museum of Art we used thermal neutron activation to analyze small samples from silver objects... 

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