CJ Rumpolo wrote: > Also what exactly is silver recovery? I am guessing its a way to > remove silver from used developer, and is this done to save money or > to help reduce water pollution? Just wondering.
Silver recovery is done to remove metalic silver from spent fixer. It is done at commercial labs for both environmental and economic reasons. For a home darkroom (or a single class) you're not likely to produce enough waste to worry about recovery. It definitely won't be economical for you to recovery the silver because the amounts will be too small for anyone to buy it back from you. If you're worried, you can pour the spent fixer into a container and take it wherever your community handles toxic waste recovery (paint, thinners, etc.). If you want to try something in your class put a piece of steel wool in the container with the spent fixer. After a while the silver should plate out onto the steel wool. That's one way that silver recovery works. You might want to check out the pure-silver mailing list <http://www.tundraware.com/Photography/Lists/> or the USENET rec.photo.darkroom newsgroup for more darkroom information. -- Brian Reynolds | "But in the new approach, as you know, reyno...@panix.com | the important thing is to understand http://www.panix.com/~reynolds/ | what you're doing rather than to get NAR# 54438 | the right answer." -- Tom Lehrer
