METHODS OF SILVER PRODUCTION

Just like gold,silver can be won by amalgamation and cyanide leaching either.
But there are also lots of hut-technical procedures that were developed in the course of time, which helped to win the white metal out of different minerals ores.

Amalgamation

The amalgamation is a method to gain silver with the help of mercury.
Analog to the production of gold, mineral ores and mercury get mixed, too.
Then the mercury forms an alloy with silver.
This chemical compound gets heated, the mercury escapes, and silver is left over.

Hut-technical procedures

Roasting the mineral ores is a very old procedure. Silver ores and silver-containing galena (lead sulfite) were heated up in the open air and silver oxides developed. The roasted ore was melted with charcoal under additional air and under addition of lead, respectively lead oxide, in shaft furnaces. Here the silver enriched itself with lead. The lead was melted on the stove once again, whereby lead oxide developed on the surface.
After the last lead has oxidized, the grey skin tears up and the liquid silver lit up.
This chemical compound is now once again remelted to fine silver.
With the electrolysis of the copper from copper ores, which contain additional silver, the precious metal is left over in the anode mud. This mud is dried and treated with hot sulfuric acid, afterwards the silver is melted and separated by an electrolytic refining.
On smelting silver-containing lead ores with the help of the Parkes method, silver-containing lead comes into existence. This lead is mixed with zinc, to be able to bind the silver and skim it off. After that the zinc vaporizes, the lead-silver mixture gets heated and finally mixed with fresh air. Consequently the oxidized lead flows off, till the silver breakes through. In the end the silver gets cleaned up in an electrolysis.