28 - Sunday, January 20, 1391 - North Shore News

BUSINESS

Photographic fixer is a regular silver mine

EVERY BATCH of photographic fixer solution has a silver lining for a North Vancouver company holding the B.C. distribu- tion rights for a new pro- cess to rejuvenate and recy- cle fixer solutions used to develop black and white film.

Silrec Technology Inc. president Donald Esplen said the solution to fixer pollution — an estimated six million litres of the chemicals are dumped annually down B.C. drains — was invented at the University of Alberta and devel- oped by Transfer Technology Inc. of Edmonton.

Medical X-ray labs, dentists, newspapers, graphic artists and industrial X-ray testing companies process black and white film and pour their way through about 75 per cent of the fixer solution market.

The waste product, ammonium thiosulphate and silver, is harmful

SILREC TECHNOLOGY Inc. president Donald C. Esplen stands by the Continu-Fix process he is marketing to recycle and re- juvenate spent black and white photographic fixer.

BC. Tel staff donates $1m

IN A year that was filled with gloomy economic predictions, the B.C. Tel Group employees dug deeper into their pockets than ever before and raised more than $1.1 million in charitable donations. The figure surpassed donations raised by any other employee trust fund in the province and is still growing, according to B.C Tel. The annual campaign by the Telephone Employees Community Fund (TECF) began in September. More than 9,000 B.C. Tel Group employees, or 63 per cent, do- nated an average of $112 each. ““Not only did more employees give this year than ever before, they also gave more generously,’’ said TECF spokesman Hope Cumming. The TECF will donate the larg- est portion of the funds raised, some $220,000, to the intensive

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to salmon and trout. The GVRD tegional sewer-use bylaw states that wastes containing more than 1.0 mg/L of silver are classified as restricted wastes and may only be discharged in compliance with a waste discharge permit.

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Silver becomes suspended in photographic fixer after film that has been exposed to light passes through it. The fixer solution hardens silver emulsion on those areas of the negative not exposed to light and strips away silver from areas exposed to light.

Recovered silver means more money in the pocket.

Silrec’s Continu-Fix process nets silver in filters after a secret ‘‘re- agent’’ rejuvenates the fixer and causes silver to settle.

Said Esplen, a retired stock broker, ‘‘Two scientists at the University of Alberta spent 10 years developing this chemical agent. The big trick was not so much to turn the silver into an in- soluble precipitant. The major problem was to do it in such a way that you didn’t affect the chemistry of the fixer.’’

Silrec began marketing the reagent and Continu-Fix equip- ment (which i is rented to clients) in mid-1

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