Electro refining ingot made from melting silver plated items

[LazyScrapper]

Has anyone tried to melt silver plated, silverware, flatware, etc. into ingots to be used in an electro refining cell?
I know the base metals are often brass or copper. Would it be a way to recover the copper, zinc ( from brass ), and the process slimes for the silver?
In my mind seems like it would be less manual labor, less chemicals but longer time to process large lots of silver plated items. Maybe I’m way off with this assumption. Your input would be greatly appreciated!

 

[nickvc]

All electro refining need a high percentage of the target metal , at least 95% to operate without too many problems such as fouling your electrolyte and bear in mind the slimes are nearly all base metal with a little amount of values which although concentrated still need further processing to get those values.

 

[Martijn]

Has anyone tried to melt silver plated, silverware, flatware, etc. into ingots to be used in an electro refining cell?
I know the base metals are often brass or copper. Would it be a way to recover the copper, zinc ( from brass ), and the process slimes for the silver?
In my mind seems like it would be less manual labor, less chemicals but longer time to process large lots of silver plated items. Maybe I’m way off with this assumption. Your input would be greatly appreciated!

@lazersteve has developed a way to even make a silver cell electrolyte from copper nitrate. So yes, it can be done.
Silver plate needs a different approach. But sterling goes in, no problem. and you can always do a second refine with lesser polluted electrolyte after a first run.
The thread: https://goldrefiningforum.com/posts/343346/ has some great info.

edited: sorry, wrong link. this is the correct one.
https://goldrefiningforum.com/threads/processing-sterling-silver-without-nitric-acid.2868/

 

[Shark]

Run silver plated items in an H2O cell. Save the acids for the actual refining.

 

[Xing]

Has anyone tried to melt silver plated, silverware, flatware, etc. into ingots to be used in an electro refining cell?
I know the base metals are often brass or copper. Would it be a way to recover the copper, zinc ( from brass ), and the process slimes for the silver?
In my mind seems like it would be less manual labor, less chemicals but longer time to process large lots of silver plated items. Maybe I’m way off with this assumption. Your input would be greatly appreciated!

it depend on the content of Silver, if more than 95%,it is easy to refining, then the copper is recovered from the electrolyte and anode slimes.