Hello, Ivan. You wrote: "I am not quite sure where the silver hydroxide remark comes form, but very little in the way of silver hydroxide is formed at pH less than 9. If you are referring to precipitation, AgOH solid is brown."
I meant as dissociated ions, ie Ag+ & OH-, not as a precipitate. The original issue here was to do with a claim that Eniva have come up with a superior product that is neither colloidal nor a salt. Well, what is it? You further wrote: "The definition of a dissolved salt requires both cations and anions. If Eniva can introduce Ag+ cations into the water, without adding anions, then this is not a dissolved salt. Eniva claim to do this by a vacuum plasma process." Conservation of charge is an issue here. Introducing just one charged species (Ag+) would generate electrostatic stresses of around 100 lbs/sq in in a typical one litre container when the concentration of Ag+ is approx 0.0003 PPM, and at 10 PPM the stresses would mount to around 1 billion times more! Obviously that can't happen. There must be anions simultaneously introduced, which means a dissolved salt. For instance, adding finely divided iron to water will initially give a coarse colloid of just iron in water, but soon the elemental iron will react with the water, dissociating some of the water into hydrogen gas and hydroxyl anions, and rusting the iron to Fe++ or Fe+++ cations in the process. regards, Kevin Nolan
