Silver recovery from prepress film processing
 

So I work in the print industry, and while most of the work we do anymore goes direct-to-plate and no longer uses film, we do still have a film processor and a few customers that do film. One of the byproducts of film processing is of course, silver.

Just had the guy here from Hallmark Refining Co. out of Mt. Vernon, WA, to haul away our silver recovery tank and replace it with an empty. I asked him what happens to the silver that he takes back. He said they bake out all the gunk from the film processing, leaving them with pure silver, weigh it, and then write us a check for 90% of the total. He even knew that silver was currently "over $13 an ounce". I don't know how much silver was in that tank, but it was LOTS heavier than the empty!

Has anyone here ever recovered silver from film processing themselves, and if so, describe the methods that you used. I'm thinking CHA-CHING! I joked with the guy that he could just process it, pour it into 10 oz. bars, and send it back to me. He just laughed! (No, dude, I'm serious!)

Re: Silver recovery from prepress film processing
 

I owned a small pre-press shop from 78-88, all we did was strip to final film. Early on there was a huge amount of silver in film. Made vacation money from the refiner. When the price went up and film started to have less silver content the take was diminished but the price was high and when it tanked so did my return. It got so bad that people weren't even saving the sludge as the silver take was only about 35% and the price was in the 2's.

So I just saved it my self after the run-up. In the late 90's I had it refined and took the metal. But it was a good amount. As to the fact that I live on a fixed income, I usually sell off enough to pay my house taxes every year. It's been good to me so far.

m

PS. Way back when we did color separations on continuous tone film and then to screened positives (before scanners) the take was $$$$$$

Re: Silver recovery from prepress film processing
 

There is actually a business here in Reno that what they do is recover silver from spend developing solutions. They take the silver out and turn the rest into a fertilizer.

Chris