How are silver-containing jewelry sweeps processed?

Jewelry sweeps—the fine dust collected during the polishing and grinding of precious metals—are processed through smelting to produce impure silver. This resulting material is then purified using electrolytic refining.1

During the electrolytic process, the impure silver is cast into a slab that serves as the anode in an electrolytic cell. As a direct current is applied, silver ions dissolve from the anode and deposit as high-purity metal at the cathode. Any valuable by-product metals that remain as insoluble sludge in the cell are subsequently treated for recovery.2