Author Topic: Stainless steel can contaminate the solution?  (Read 943 times)

Offline leogomide07

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Stainless steel can contaminate the solution?
« on: April 09, 2021, 06:19:03 AM »
Greetings everyone!

Im planning to automate the production of the colloidal silver, so i want to use stainless steel equipment (used in home-made beer production) to achieve this.

But i have some questions about it:

1 - Can the stainless steel react with the solution in some way? Contaminating it and messing with the reaction phase?

2 - What about food-grade plastic equipment (level sensors and stirring rod)? They can contaminate it too?

Im designing the setup, and if there is no problem in using stainless steel, i will use the diagram in attachment.

Offline kephra

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Re: Stainless steel can contaminate the solution?
« Reply #1 on: April 09, 2021, 01:31:11 PM »
If you use a stainless container, it will become a 3 electrode system, and can add the elements in stainless steel to your Colloidal Silver.  Thats not a good idea.
There is the unknown and the unknowable.  It's a wise man who knows the difference.

Offline leogomide07

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Re: Stainless steel can contaminate the solution?
« Reply #2 on: April 09, 2021, 02:50:55 PM »
Ok, i imagined thet will be some problems with metal containers too.

So, discarding that possibility, comes some other questions:

1 - What about food-grade plastic (HDPE)? if i use the stirring rod made from it, it can contaminates the solution too?
2 - Or a silicon hose imerse in the solution while the reaction goes, will be contamination too?
3 - The final solution (after reduction), there is some problem to use the pump to move it?
4 - Can the stainless steel react with the final solution?
5 - Can i store the final product in PET vessels, or need to be glass vessels?

Adapted setup to use glass in attchment.

Offline kephra

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Re: Stainless steel can contaminate the solution?
« Reply #3 on: April 09, 2021, 06:02:21 PM »
Ok, i imagined thet will be some problems with metal containers too.

So, discarding that possibility, comes some other questions:

1 - What about food-grade plastic (HDPE)? if i use the stirring rod made from it, it can contaminates the solution too?
2 - Or a silicon hose imerse in the solution while the reaction goes, will be contamination too?
3 - The final solution (after reduction), there is some problem to use the pump to move it?
4 - Can the stainless steel react with the final solution?
5 - Can i store the final product in PET vessels, or need to be glass vessels?

Adapted setup to use glass in attchment.
If its safe for food, and non metallic, its safe to use for processing.
Once made (Current turned off) and reduced,  stainless is ok, but not necessary, so why use it?  If its safe for food, its safe to store Colloidal Silver in it.
There is the unknown and the unknowable.  It's a wise man who knows the difference.

Offline leogomide07

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Re: Stainless steel can contaminate the solution?
« Reply #4 on: April 09, 2021, 08:21:07 PM »
Awesome! Big thanks for your attention master!

I have found some low cost and effective components to build this automation, once completed i will post the full process here.

 ;D

Offline Gene

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Re: Stainless steel can contaminate the solution?
« Reply #5 on: April 09, 2021, 08:33:49 PM »
The only issue you'd have with an HDPE container for manufacture is that you could only manufacture cold (or warm).  But there'd be no way to heat it unless you immersed it in a double boiler and that would be problematic.

Glass is usually the best bet.  Even a mason jar and yes you can big "big-uns".  The only issue being, since the bottom is domed with a stipled contact rim around the bottom for what its sitting on (to minimize breakage if you put it on something cold while whats it it is hot enough to cause enough of a temperature gradient to break it, otherwise), heating it is interesting.

I use an industrial hot plate but to keep a 1 quart jar full of water hot (150F), I'm having to set the hot plate to MUCH hotter.  Thats how slow the heat transpiration is due to the tiny surface contact area. Think about it.  A thin rim that contacts the plate.  The surface of that rim is like a bunch of little glass balls. The contact area for each glass ball is tangential, point contact. There's nearly NO surface area to move heat from the plate to the jar.

A pickle jar or similar? They work too but being made out of thinner glass than a mason jar, if you're heating you have to be a bit more careful as to where you put the hot jar so it doesn't break.  Simply enough, a nice thick pot-holder on a table or counter is usually sufficient to prevent the jar from breaking as it cools.  And here too, they also have that domed, stippled bottom ring thats point contact like mason jars for the same reason. During manufacture, the filled jars are pressure cooked in a huge one (they can get thousands of jars in there for one batch - that kind of big) so necessarily, their wanting to move them out as soon as the cycle is done to start the next, they need to ensure the jars don't break as they cool.  Thats under much more controlled conditions than you'd normally have in a kitchen so you just need to be a bit more careful is all.  From a hot plate onto a wooden table works, even better onto a nice, thick cloth pot-holder or kitchen towel but folded several times to get it nice and thick for good insulation.  I'm sure you'll find something that works well for you.

The one thing this slow heat transipration does do though which is good, is that the inside bottom rim of the jar is hotter a little than the average water temp so you do get a good convection current to keep the cell stirred where I don't find the need for a stirrer (as long as you're not running large currents - I'm running 10ma).

I don't get why you need a pump.  Most of us make it in the jar we're going to use to store it or if not, all it requires is another jar, a funnel and letting it cool enough that you don't crack what you're pouring it into (meaning you reduce in the container you manufactured in).

There's nastiness in stainless.  Usually chromium (which is VERY toxic), nickel, which is uber toxic stuff,...  As an alloy which is what stainless is, those things STAY part of the stainless and don't leach out.  If you're running an electrolysis cell and pulling metallic ions off the stainless container, oh yeah they do. Your best bet is "Don't!" (wink)

Its OK to use a stainless rod or wire as a cathode because nothing can be  pulled off it into solution but why? A thin piece of bare copper wire is VERY easy to find, usually as scrap you have lying around the home.

Yes, copper in the body over trace is toxic but again too, NOTHING comes off the cathode so its safe.

Offline Bobby

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Re: Stainless steel can contaminate the solution?
« Reply #6 on: April 11, 2021, 02:52:00 PM »
Hi guys!

  I have been meaning to ask this question for quite some time.

Is there a heat transfer device that could be used under the curved bottom of the mason jars? Maybe a gel pack, or a clay or metal bead bag?

Just seems to be a simple device to help reduce the power needed to control the temperature   

Bobby
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power"  Abraham Lincoln

Offline Argentum

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Re: Stainless steel can contaminate the solution?
« Reply #7 on: April 11, 2021, 05:16:07 PM »
Use a small flat bottom cooking pot with some water in it.

Argentum

Offline Bobby

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Re: Stainless steel can contaminate the solution?
« Reply #8 on: April 13, 2021, 12:42:14 AM »
Argentum,

 Thanks, now I feel like a dumb...   :-[   A very good point indeed.  Use the mason jars as they were designed.

 I guess I should have mentioned this is while using a heated stir plate. But I will give it a try and see if the spinning magnet works as it should. I don’t see why not.  It does seem like my OCD is getting the best of me again!  :o

  As Kephra has told me before...don’t freak out on the tiny stuff...or something like that.

  I hope you don’t take this as sarcastic reply either.  I really hadn’t thought of that.  That’s why I ask these questions.  I get real answers.

Bobby
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power"  Abraham Lincoln

Offline Gene

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Re: Stainless steel can contaminate the solution?
« Reply #9 on: April 14, 2021, 05:13:58 AM »
If the magnets in the heated stir plate are strong enough and you use an aluminum pot (NOT steel), there should be enough magnetic force to still get the stir bar to rotate but it would need to be tried.

Offline Bobby

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Re: Stainless steel can contaminate the solution?
« Reply #10 on: April 16, 2021, 06:14:25 PM »
Gene, I’ll give it a shot just so we know

Results to follow.

Bobby
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power"  Abraham Lincoln

Offline Argentum

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Re: Stainless steel can contaminate the solution?
« Reply #11 on: April 18, 2021, 05:36:42 PM »
Stainless steel is generally non-magnetic. Cold working it can change this property into being magnetic. If a magnet doesn't stick to the pot (or even a mixing bowl, they are thin), then it should work.

The problem with a magnetic pot is that the spinning magnet(s) set up eddy currents. Which produces a magnetic field working against the rotating magnets.

Argentum

Offline Gene

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Re: Stainless steel can contaminate the solution?
« Reply #12 on: April 18, 2021, 06:09:13 PM »
Usually, cooking pots are what they refer to as 18-8 stainless (a 300 series stainless, perhaps 304 or something close - might be the same thing like glucose/dextrose - same steel,  2 different numbers with different classification systems - Austenitic stainless).

300 series stainless is non-magnetic. There's too much nickel I believe, in the alloy to cause the magnetic domains to align. Also, all stainless (as far as I know, certainly 18-8 and 300 series) contain chromium.  In an electrolysis cell, the nickel and chromium will be pulled into solution and that stuff is damn toxic (not as the alloy but when the cell starts to pull the individual metallic ions out, it can become toxic).  I don't know how much could get pulled out but nonethless, even though a metallic container will cause issues of and by itself in an electrolysis cell, the compounds in stainless are not things you want in your body as individual elements.

400 series stainless (knife steel) IS magnetic but thats generally not used for cooking pots.

"Stainless" also doesn't mean it doesn't rust.  It somewhat depends on the grade of stainless but in the presence of strongly acidic or alkaline solutions (straight bleach as an example), some grades of stainless WILL rust (but just little pit marks). This is usually due to tiny impurities in the source materials they used to make the alloy.

Surgical stainless steel (don't recall the alloy number) is VERY pure and won't generally rust but boy oh boy are things made with that stuff pricey.

Offline Argentum

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Re: Stainless steel can contaminate the solution?
« Reply #13 on: April 19, 2021, 02:43:08 AM »
Stainless steel is generally non-magnetic. Cold working it can change this property into being magnetic. If a magnet doesn't stick to the pot (or even a mixing bowl, they are thin), then it should work.

The problem with a magnetic pot is that the spinning magnet(s) set up eddy currents. Which produces a magnetic field working against the rotating magnets.

Argentum

I don't like to quote my own post, but I don't believe I am correct here.

Even though a metal is non-magnetic doesn't mean it can't be set up with eddy currents due to a moving magnet. Copper is used along with a magnet for damping on a beam scale.

Letting a strong magnet run down a 999 silver bar at a 45° angle results in a slow movement of the magnet. But a magnet wont stick to a silver bar.

Hate to post wrong info without a correction...

Argentum

Offline kephra

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Re: Stainless steel can contaminate the solution?
« Reply #14 on: April 19, 2021, 02:51:11 AM »
Quote
Even though a metal is non-magnetic doesn't mean it can't be set up with eddy currents due to a moving magnet. Copper is used along with a magnet for damping on a beam scale.
Its also the way a speedometer in an older car works, and the power meter on a home.

There is the unknown and the unknowable.  It's a wise man who knows the difference.