September 27, 1999 Hi Bob and Vikki, Here is my theory as to why one of my electrodes became much skinnier than the other one - while using a polarity switching CS generator without a stirrer.
This uneven electrode wear occurred while producing a bit less than 24 batches of 16 oz of DW with a starting current of approx .40 mA and running each batch for four hours. I think the uneven wear started due to my contaminating the one electrode more than the other by touching it more with my bare fingers before immersing it into the unit in the DW. The usual reason for my touching the electrodes was to straighten one of them or to modify the distance between the electrode tips, "just a hair." My presumption is that once one electrode is ever so slightly smaller than the other electrode it will have a higher current density and will then wear out faster than the other one. Thus begins an ever increasing faster rate of wear for the skinnier electrode. Once uneven wear starts, the process is irreversible and is also self accelerating. Polarity switching won't stop it, only slow it down. Agree or disagree? The running time of four hours was too long. The concluding amperage was over 8.0 mA. This speeded up the uneven wear process. And, remember, there was no stirring in this generator model I was using. I always had a bit of sludge below the electrodes and the amount of sludge under the skinnier electrode was always greater, unless I had touched the other electrode with my bare fingers just before beginning the batch. What do you two think? I'm posting this to the silver-list to invite further comment and in hope of helping others to avoid my mistakes. Spiroflex
