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testing arctic silver for silver?

M

Maverick2002

Diamond Member
I'm curious to see how much silver is in Arctic Silver 5. What's the cheapest/easiest way to do so? The more precise the better, but even indication that there's silver will suffice.

Someone suggested submitting a sample to a lab for atomic absorption testing.

And another thing: a while back several sites argued about the lack of silver in AS products and I want to know how much there actually is, since it's not mentioned on the site.
 
You can get a guess if you can accurately measure the volume and weight of a sample. Pure silver should weigh about 10.5 g/ml. link

Theproblem is, what are the other things in there? If it's other metals (lead or whatever), this approach won't be helpful at all...

Anyway, supposing it's some sort of liquid, mineral oil is about 0.8g/ml, water is 1g/ml and silicone grease I think is about 2g/ml (not sure on that at all). Plug those values in and you can do a very crude guesstimation of silver content from that, assuming you guess right about what what other ingredients are in it.

 
Well that's the thing, I have no idea what else is in there. According to the website there are also ceramic pieces and polysynthetic oils. They also make no mention of exactly what % by volume is silver.
 
find a college chemistry lab book... iremember doing several precipitate tests involving silver precipitate reactions, simply decant and measure the weight of the precipitate and then do the equations to find the amount of silver. the other ingredients, oils, ceramic would be inert... i'll try to find my old lab book if i can.
 
i think nitric acid would do the trick for turning the silver into silver nitrate... then you can mix the silver nitrate with sodium chloride in solution... then measure the amount of silver chloride precipitate. do the proper stoichiometry before and after and you'll have your answer.

been a long time since i've had chemistry... if someone is more knowledgable please feel free to interject.

2HNO3 + 2Ag --> 2AgNO39 + H2
AgNO3(aq) + NaCl(aq) --> AgCl(s) + NaNO3(aq)

you'll need to thoroughly mix the acid with the AS5 since it's a paste... then you should be able to filter out the rest of the materials since the Silver nitrate will be aqueous. then mix the sodium chloride solution to precipitate the silver chloride. filter out the silver chloride precipitate and weigh. unfortunately you're talking about amounts so small that you would need a ultra fine scale for reliable measurements. ~.001g acc.
 
Originally posted by: Maverick2002
Well that's the thing, I have no idea what else is in there. According to the website there are also ceramic pieces and polysynthetic oils. They also make no mention of exactly what % by volume is silver.
Click to expand...

Try searching bench jeweler sites for precious metal testing kits (touchstoning). It's the cheaper way to test it accurately (otherwise you'll need a spectro-analysis of the sample - $$$).

An interesting article to read....
http://www.ganoksin.com/borisat/nenam/testing-Metals-and-alloys.htm

Look for one just for silver (and make sure to keep the keys and trays clean. Don't want contamination as it'll give you false-positives. Jewellers learn to never use the same equipment/tools in working with different metals, for that reason).
 
what they said...

But, since there are oils and things, I'd do some more separating before nitrating the silver... Some ether would work well to help separate the oils and most other organic compounds... Separate the precipitate from ether... then separate the precipitate from water... Then, dissolve any silver with nitric acid, and finally precipitate the silver choride out. That doesn't guarantee, however, that there isn't another substance in there whose nitrate is soluble and chloride isn't.
 
only other common metal chlorides are lead and mercury... I highly doubt they would use either in AS5 for obvious reasons. but i guess you never know.
 
Originally posted by: flamingelephant
how about you just ask them for their msds sheet. It will say what % of silver is in it. The law says this has to be accurate
Click to expand...

:thumbsup:

hmmm i may have over thought that one 😕
 
the idea of taking the silver out as a percipitate will only work if it is not bonded with another metal that is a non-reactant. the only true way to tell would be some serious gas chromatography.....if you have access to a college lab this isn't too hard to do. Besides that, you could send an e-mail to AS and see if they will just tell you

alex
 
according to their msds the silver is not bonded and the other metals in it will not form chloride precipitates.
gas chromatography would be easier for discerning if it was just present... but those other metallic compuonds zinc oxide, aluminium oxide would make it a PITA. unless you have access to a spectrum analyzer, but you might have a hard time with that unless your in good with the chemistry department already.
 
Originally posted by: flamingelephant
how about you just ask them for their msds sheet. It will say what % of silver is in it. The law says this has to be accurate
Click to expand...

Didn't work with Coolermaster's silver thermal compound. One online review site did some testing (spectro -- put the money down to confirm it), and discovered it's product didn't contain silver. Coolermaster pulled it from the market, but it took an intrepet tester to do so.

The law isn't good until folks test the product.

 
Originally posted by: TStep
overclockers
Their testing indicated 90-100 %.

Edit: I claim to know nothing about the validity of the testing methods, but did remember the article.
Click to expand...

:thumbsup:

nice link. the testing solution they use is probably what you're looking for.
 
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