Every year, thousands of dollars in silver recovery from X-ray film is wasted in Windsor because industrial surplus film is not properly recycled. The losses that Windsor businesses incur from not consulting with an experienced professional silver recycler are completely avoidable. Many kinds of Industrial Surplus film including dental x-ray film, NDT film and other medical film ends up being simply discarded in landfills or other waste disposal sites.Not only is this a detriment to the environment, it’s a lost opportunity to recoup some of the cost of the original film and processing.
X-ray film recycling in Windsor is a fairly consistent procedure. Recovery companies utilize a standardized process to remove silver from your waste film and pass some of that profit back to you. First the film is unloaded at the silver recycler and weighed. The gross weight of the film is documented for the customer at this stage, as it will serve as a basis of comparison to later silver recovery weight.
The X-ray film is separated from any paper it might be attached to and then sent into a grinding machine to be chopped up into one-inch chips. This serves two purposes in x-ray recycling. First, it makes any readable information or images on the film illegible in order to meet government standards for identity protection. It also makes the film easier to process. After grinding, the recovery companies will issue official Certificates of Destruction to the customer to verify the process.
The film is then randomly sampled for assay purposes to get a general idea of the silver content and to retain an official sample of film for the customer’s records. All material is then put into a reactor washer at the x-ray film recycling company. These units wash the film at very high temperatures to strip the chemical coating from the film and wash off the silver emulsion. The film is then rinsed under high-pressure hot water and dried in high-velocity drying machines.
Silver slurry that is extracted from the washing process is sent through a treatment process to reduce it down to raw silver and water. The water from the slurry is purified for re-use in the processing sequence. The paste-like remains of the silver slurry is processed through a pressing machine that uses high pressure to force all the moisture out of the compound. The dried unprocessed silver product that remains is then carefully weighed and then sent to a refiner for later refinement into pure silver.
