It's probably metallic silver
embedded in a gelatine matrix.

I'd imagine recovery involves something like stripping the gelatine from the cellulose using hot alkali, then adding nitric acid to form silver nitrate, which can then be precipitated as silver chloride or something by addition of a suitable salt.

Then recover the solid precipitate by filtration, and reduce to metallic silver somehow, Formaldehyde, citric acid or ascorbic acid might do. I'm not sure. Silver refining is big business and processes are guarded fiercely.

But to an industrial chemist - and I'm not one - the process is a piece of piss (albeit a tightly controlled one!)
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Sun 25 Oct 2009, 22:26, 1 reply, 16 years ago)

sounds alright to me
but how much would you actually get out of an x-ray?
(bamboozled Can hear you getting fatter, Sun 25 Oct 2009, 23:52, Reply)

probably sod all for one
but if you were to multiply that by the millions that were taken annually it adds up to a sum worth getting out of bed for.
(turtles head is touching cloth poked a dwarf on the forehead at, Mon 26 Oct 2009, 7:49, Reply)