Hello list, long time listener, first time caller. Ive read many posts here regarding calculating ppm of CS. I can help you figure out the ppm of the CS you're brewing at home, or help you determine how long you need to brew in order to get any desired ppm.
There are several ways of knowing the PPM of your homemade CS. One way that doesnt require an expensive PWT meter is to use Faradays equation for electrolytic deposition. If you know how much current is flowing through your electrodes, you can calculate the PPM being produced. If youre not up on electrochemistry, Ive written a spreadsheet that will calculate it for you. The spreadsheet (for MS Excel) and instructions for using it can be downloaded for free at: http://briefcase.yahoo.com/cs_share/ In order to use it, you need four things: 1. A registered copy of Microsoft Excel (version 4.0 or later). 2. Know the amount of current flowing through your electrodes. Youll need to have a multimeter with a scale that reads current in increments of one milliamp or less. 3. Know the amount of time (in minutes) your current flows. 4. Know the volume of distilled water your electrodes are immersed in. If you dont have constant current (I suspect this applies to most home CS brewers), the calculator will let you take periodic current readings, and it will calculate the average current for you and give you a running total of ppm. The calculator lets you chose the intervals youll read the current. For gallon jugs, I recommend every 10 minutes. For smaller containers, 5 minutes or less is probably better. One advantage of this method is that it takes into account both the ionic and particulate Ag being deposited into the DW, so it should be more accurate than methods like PWT meters, which only measure one but not the other. Faradays equation calculates the mass of a metal (in this case, silver) being liberated from the anode, based on the amount of current and the duration of current flow. Once you know the mass of the silver deposited into the distilled water, its a simple matter to calculate the ratio of the mass of the Ag to the mass of the DW, and convert this ratio into parts per million (ppm). The spreadsheet I wrote does all this for you. Id appreciate feedback from anyone who tries it. Id also like to hear from CS veterans who may not need it themselves but are willing to test it and compare its results to the compensated results from their PWT meters, or to more sophisticated laboratory methods. Some folks at the Yahoo CS club have tested it and found it to be accurate within an acceptable margin of error. Feedback and questions may be sent to: cs_share (at [spam stinks]) yahoo (I hate spam [dot]) com (thats an underline character there) I cant check this email every day, but I promise all questions will receive a reply eventually. Just give me a few days. The eScribe Silver List has been a valuable resource to me since I first started brewing CS about 6 months ago, and I would like to offer this calculator for free as my way of saying thank you. PS: Mike, thanks for the important job you do here. By the way (from another recent thread), the moon doesnt pull at the oceans, it pulls at the earth as a whole, and the oceans (tides) sort of slosh about as a side effect. Actually, the earth and moon rotate around a common center of gravity which is a few hundred miles from the center of the earth. This common center of gravity orbits the sun. Tidal effects are the result of the oceans inertia its similar to water sloshing in a glass as you move the glass. So I dont think that lunar tides have much effect on a CS vessel measured in milliliters. But Im willing to be proven wrong. Its been done before! __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Find a job, post your resume. http://careers.yahoo.com -- The silver-list is a moderated forum for discussion of colloidal silver. To join or quit silver-list or silver-digest send an e-mail message to: [email protected] -or- [email protected] with the word subscribe or unsubscribe in the SUBJECT line. To post, address your message to: [email protected] Silver-list archive: http://escribe.com/health/thesilverlist/index.html List maintainer: Mike Devour <[email protected]>
