Author Topic: 1g bullion vs usual flat ribon style annode. Considerations?  (Read 867 times)

Offline Turbidaceous

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1g bullion vs usual flat ribon style annode. Considerations?
« on: February 11, 2020, 08:21:42 PM »
Are there any changes or things I have to be careful of if I move away from using my usual 3mm wide flat silver contacts to using a 1 gram bullion bar instead? I saw things on here about surface area and soo much silver being released causing precipitation, but I could not discern if this meant that special conciderations needed to be taken. Normally I let my 3mm wide flat silver go into the water as much as I can without touching the negative contact which in my case is a stainless steel bowl. But it would be all-round cheaper for me to buy 1 gram bullion bars. I have spent about £2.50 as a test ordering a single 1 gram bar but I am looking for some guidance on if I need to do anything differently since it will have more surface area than my usual 3mm wide flat 3 inch long silver strips.

Offline SaltyCornflakes

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Re: 1g bullion vs usual flat ribon style annode. Considerations?
« Reply #1 on: February 11, 2020, 08:51:46 PM »
No serious considerations. Try to eyeball the surface area and you should be good. With Colloidal Silver, you want a large silver anode and small cathode, which means using the whole bowl as cathode is a bad idea. Try a piece of pure copper wire instead.

Offline Turbidaceous

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Re: 1g bullion vs usual flat ribon style annode. Considerations?
« Reply #2 on: February 12, 2020, 05:08:09 AM »
The steel bowl thing is from the instructions which came with the very basic setup I bought from America. Seems to work fine, though I have ordered a 1.5L glass jar and plan on experimenting with the usual 2 electrode thing dipped into the water. I always see people on YouTube with 2 silver rods, so I am not sure of the benefits or what to use as the cathode?

I get that it is the current which pushes the silver out into the water, but I don't understand yet the surface area thing.  If the current is the thing which does the pushing, how does annode size effect things?

Offline Neofizz

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Re: 1g bullion vs usual flat ribon style annode. Considerations?
« Reply #3 on: February 12, 2020, 04:23:50 PM »
The bigger the anode is in surface area the more current it can handle at once.
"Be kinder than necessary, for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle."

Offline Turbidaceous

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Re: 1g bullion vs usual flat ribon style annode. Considerations?
« Reply #4 on: February 12, 2020, 09:05:21 PM »
I have not been having a 3 electrode system. The instructions were to use the bowl as the cathode and the silver for the annode. I've not had any problems but in time I shall experiment by having 2 "regular" electrodes as seen in most people's setups.

Here is an image of my current setup. I have a 30v 500mAh power supply, I stripped the ends of the wire and connected crocodile leads and since I currently do not have the potentiometer that I want to be able to customise the current, I am making use of the positive lead of my first setup which came with a 10k resistor inline. So that way I can get 3ma current which works out at 2.77ma in the circuit when I measure it.



My goal is to be able to get perhaps 5ma in the actual circuit when I test it with this current setup and then in time investigate the best safest way for me to make it in glass using electrodes dipped in via the top ensuring that they can't connect when my fan is flowing into the water.

Offline Gene

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Re: 1g bullion vs usual flat ribon style annode. Considerations?
« Reply #5 on: February 13, 2020, 08:59:17 PM »
I agree.

Just as an example, if you have a silver wire submerged say 3.5" into solution, you need to use a FINE wire cathode (I use 24 gauge - wire out of an old, broken CAT3 ethernet cable) and even at this, that copper wire may not even be submerged 3/4" to raise the cell voltage to 10V+ which is where you want to be. Its all surface area - the more surface area of the cathode IN the water, the lower the cell voltage.

Some here used copper house wiring wire (Romex) but the normal stuff is 14 gauge. I tried and could barely glance the surface of the water with the wire before it was difficult to keep the voltage up over 10V and then any mechanical motion or a tiny bit of evaporation and the cathode disconnected from the water and now I had no clue what I made. At least with the 24 gauge wire, there is some reasonable adjustability where when you get the cell to the required minimum 10V, there's still at least 1/2" of it in solution so evaporation and mechanical vibration don't cause the cell to stop functioning for the cathode no longer being in solution if either happens.

How much more surface area does your mongo stainless bowl have compared to a short length of very thin copper wire? Right?

Are you actually measuring the voltage across your cell and if so, is it 10V+?  You need to measure the voltage and adjust the CATHODE to set it to 10+V before you start the run. I don't see how this is possible using a stainless bowl as a cathode.

Offline Turbidaceous

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Re: 1g bullion vs usual flat ribon style annode. Considerations?
« Reply #6 on: February 14, 2020, 07:37:52 PM »
To Gene and Liam, I am aware it is not ideal and yes I have seen a lot of articles. Some of which I get and some which lose me. The part where it is explaining the distance to voltage thing lost me. I am going with the rule of thumb that people tend to give out of 10v or better.

I am upgrading my system gradually and if all goes well tomorrow will be my first batch in glass with 2 proper electrodes. With  my stainless steel bowl, the voltage if filled too far up is about 5 volts. However when I made a batch using only 250ml of water (and using the right amount of sodium carbonate) I was able to get 10-15 volts and it produced a more crystal clear liquid compared to the usual which is still transparent but has a faint haze to it.

I doubt I will get my 10g bullion tomorrow, so I will likely have to settle for using my existing silver flat wire stuff or the tiny 1g bullion bar and do some experimenting until I get the miliamps of 4 or less and the voltage of 10v or more.

If I use my meter to get the miliamps right, when I then measure voltage instead while altering the cathode height, will the miliamps stay the same or will I need to put my meter back in to test the miliamps and then re-adjust using my potentiometer?

Offline Turbidaceous

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Re: 1g bullion vs usual flat ribon style annode. Considerations?
« Reply #7 on: February 15, 2020, 02:26:25 PM »
This is what I have going at the moment. A fan for a bit of movement (cannot afford a mag stirrer yet), 1.6L DW with sodium carbonate calculated based on a recommendation on here of 106mg per L, running at 3ma with a voltage between the electrodes of about 14v. The copper cathode is barely dipped in the water. So I am going to likely get thinner copper wire for the purpose of using it as a cathode to make it easier to fine-tune things.







I will post or edit this post with how it all turns out.

EDIT:

This is my final result. First batch in glass with 2 classic style electrodes.



It is even more transparent and less turbid as my last one which was already pretty transparent generally speaking. But this has worked out really well.
« Last Edit: February 15, 2020, 04:45:33 PM by Turbidaceous »

Offline cfnisbet

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Re: 1g bullion vs usual flat ribon style annode. Considerations?
« Reply #8 on: February 15, 2020, 08:00:53 PM »
Very good. If you don't have a stirrer, then use a hotplate, which will stir the DW via the convection currents (from the heat).

Offline Turbidaceous

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Re: 1g bullion vs usual flat ribon style annode. Considerations?
« Reply #9 on: February 15, 2020, 08:15:24 PM »
Thanks. I do not have one yet, but I do plan on getting a stirer. I would get a hotplate one but I would feel much safer with a srirrer konking out on me than something which purposefully gets very very hot.