Recovery of silver and other valuable constituents from polyester based photographic film

A process for recovery of the silver content of photographic film scrap containing more than one non-water soluble polymeric material at least a portion of which is polyester, said film scrap comprising a non-water soluble polymeric base selected from the group consisting of polyesters and cellulose acetate;

• a non-water soluble polymeric subbing layer including a chlorine containing polymer and a gelatine layer containing metallic silver or silver halide;
• 1. contacting the photographic film scrap with a first solvent for the non-water soluble polymeric material at a temperature above that at which said non-water soluble polymeric material dissolves;
• 2. filtering the resulting hot solution for removal of silver and contaminants in the photographic film scrap which are insoluble in said first solvent;
• 3. calcining the insoluble materials separated in Step 2 in order to recover the silver values therein;
• 4. cooling the hot filtrate derived from Step 2, thereby precipitating the polyester contained therein and recovering the polyester in powdered form by filtration of the cooled filtrate;
• 5. treating the cooled filtrate from Step 4 with a second solvent in which the polyester is insoluble, said first solvent is soluble and the other non-water soluble polymeric materials are also soluble, and removing any residual polyester which precipitates by filtration;
• 6. partitioning the filtrate by addition of a third solvent in which the chlorine containing polymers originally present in said scrap are insoluble and in which the non-chlorine containing polymers originally present in said scrap are soluble and removing precipitated polymers by filtration;
• 7. recovering said non-chlorine containing polymers by adding a fourth solvent in which said non-chlorine containing polymers are insoluble;
• and
• 8. filtering the product of Step 7 and recovering the precipitated polymers.