Enzymatic recovery of silver from waste radiographic film: Optimize with response surface methodology

Silver is one of the valuable materials exist freely on earth crust. Worldwide, massive demand in different purpose makes silver very valuable. On information nearly twenty percent of silver were collected from nonferrous metallurgical industry, locally generated scrap and photographic film. The toxicity of silver directly impact on surface and ground ecosystem. So it's compulsory to treat and recycle silver from waste material. To fulfil the demand of silver from waste, an enzyme from pineapple make of use. The aim of research work is to recover the silver metal from waste X-ray film by bromelain enzyme as biocatalyst. Response surface methodology full factorial design was used to optimize three operating parameters for maximum recovery of silver. The result shows silver recovery increases with increase in protein concentration, 5.4 mg of pure silver can be recovered from 600 mg of waste X-rays film at most favourable condition of protein concentration 0.2857 mg/ ml; temperature 45 degrees C, pH6.5 and stripping time 20 min. At same optimised parameters, papain biocatalyst shows 4.8 mg and sodium hydroxide shows 5.2 mg recovery of pure silver. The obtained silver powder (grain) having 91.12% purity and total silver recovered.