Production Techniques and Chemistry > Colloidal Silver Production
How much is too much reducing agent
kephra:
pH makes a difference in how well the glucose works, but it will not account for batches that turn out too dark. There are only two things that make it too dark: Higher than normal amount of silver in the water, and contaminants.
Occasionally, I run out of colloidal silver for my dog, and I use some of my RO water which reads about 16 TDS. The colloidal silver made with the RO water is twice as dark once reduced. I have no idea what is in my well water, but at 16 TDS, the contaminants are on the same order of magnitude as the silver. Only silver has a yellow plasmon resonance though, so the darkening is caused by the contaminants. I still use it for the dog though.
RickinWI:
--- Quote from: Gene on October 30, 2014, 11:03:04 PM ---Just splitting hairs here but 75 minutes, 9.8ma, 2500ml is 19.6PPM.
--- End quote ---
I was figuring about 0.1 -- 0.5 PPM lost to plate out.
Gene:
You are being careful about not "tweaking" the electrolyte balance, stirring, waiting for things to stabilize while you have the cell running, aren't you?
If thats going to take more than a couple minutes to do, you'd be best to shut the current limiter off or at least unclip one of the leads from the cell during the period you're adding electrolyte, stirring, waiting for things to settle so you get a good reading and then clipping back on and taking a voltage reading and if its not right, unclip and do it again. If you're managing to get 10 minutes too long run time for futzing with the cell, thats an issue. But given where you're at, though that might push you close to or over the wire a bit by a hair (maybe 23PPM?) it sure doesn't sound like enough to account for the darker color.
Try a different brand of distilled water?
And you're sure your silver anode is at least 999 purity bullion?
RickinWI:
When I start the electrolysis I do not start timer until I get enough electrolyte to get up to about 50% of target, but that only takes a couple minutes. Then I start timer & within another couple minutes I am up to target mA so it should average out about right. After that I do not stop the count-up timer unless I unclip a lead. I can be almost certain that I am not over 20 PPM.
I used to be good about testing each new bottle of DW, but after 30 or 40 of them came up with a 000 on my TDS meter I dropped that procedure. I guess I should start doing that again though just to be certain. Meter is OK cuz my Culligan water comes up 001 or 002 and my city tap water always reads between 145 --- 155 PPM. Since my batches are usually 2.5 L or 3.0 L I use a new bottle for each batch. Use remainder of bottle for rinse water & other things.
I am very thorough when cleaning my electrolysis beaker but I usually only do that after 3 or 4 batches. Remainder of time I just rinse it with DW after use & before next use. (Do I need to thoroughly wash after each run?) I wouldn't think so. I put the IS into different beakers for reducting so electrolysis beaker & magnet are only used for that.
Probably about 95% of my batches have been same brand of DW.
Next time I go to store I think I might try a different brand of DW since it could come up 000 PPM TDS, but have a different pH.
Fire off anode to an orange glow before each run. Anode is made of Canadian Maples (.9999) & .9999 Ag wire.
cfnisbet:
The only thing I have seen that makes a difference with turbidity, is the pH of the DW after adding electrolyte, and then only with glucose-assisted reduction.
If there is not enough electrolyte in the solution, then when the glucose is added, the colloidal silver will go turbid. See the experiment on my blogpost:
http://blog.cgcsforum.org/?p=287
The amount of electrolyte is far less important (except in that you need it to allow accurate calculations of Silver ppm, and also to make my 7-litre colloidal silver batches complete before I die of boredom) if heat or cinnamon are used to reduce the silver.
I add the tiniest smear of syrup, but the electrolyte needs to be as given in Kephra's recipes in the Articles section. You know you have enough electrolyte when the Constant Current hold just kicks in and the current does not significantly alter during the electrolysis run.
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