A Novel Method for Analyzing Silver Sediment With High Precision.

A technique has been devised which is sufficiently accurate to aid in an electrochemical determination of the Faraday constant using the silver coulometer. The technique is used to recover the silver residue which falls from the anode during operation of the silver coulometer. In contrast to previous efforts at recovery, which involved weighing of the silver residue, the method here described is to convert the silver atoms to ions and then to plate the silver onto a cathode held at constant potential with respect to a reference electrode. The current involved in the electrolysis is integrated electronically. An overall standard deviation of 5 g is achieved for samples ranging in size from 400 g to 1.8 mg.