Recovery of silver from spent Photographic Solutions Using Metallic Replacement Method.

Abstract

The recovery of silver from photographic effluent has been carried out. Photographic liquid wastes are collected from two photo laboratory labeled sample A and sample B. The recovery was done using metallic replacement method . The study was done b y varying the volume of liquid waste and the number of runs of each sample. The results obtained shows that an increase in the volume of sample and the number of runs lead to an increase in the amount of silver recovered. The highest amount of silver recovered for samples A and B are 0.58g/litre and 0.47g/litre respectively. The melting point of recovered silver which are 1115 and 1021 for sample A and B respectively point to the fact that they contain impurities which increases their melting points. The research shows that it is possible to recover silver from liquid photographic effluent which constitutes environmental pollutant.