Process for recovering silver from photographic solutions

摘要

Silver recovery from a silver-bearing spent photographic solution is achieved by reducing the silver ions to silver metal with an organic reducing agent, especially a photographic developer reagent; in particular a spent photographic developer solution provides a convenient source of reducing agent for the silver recovery; in this case the developer reagents which typically are phenol-type compounds are oxidized leading to a less toxic discharge effluent having a lower COD and BOD.