url: http://escribe.com/health/thesilverlist/m63187.html Re: CS>Measuring very high ppms From: Ode Coyote Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2003 10:39:19
> Colloidal Copper is said to be more effective on molds and fungi. Yes, I find it much more effective. But it doesn't last long, maybe a day or less. It's a constant battle, but I can now get brief periods with no headaches. How glorious this is, I can't tell you. > Copper sulphates have been used for that for ages, I believe. How > did you make your collidal copper? Each electrode is 3 feet of 12 ga house wiring folded into a W. The wetted area is about 5.5 sq.in. I tried different current densities and am now running at 144 uA/sq.in. > I've copper electrodes for hours on end and never got a TE or > conductivity rise to go over 3 uS [But I did get a blue grey > precipitate] Same with zinc ... without the precipitate. Yes, I monitor the cell voltage and calculate the ppm. As soon as it hits 3 ppm calculated, the cathode starts turning dark and the cell voltage flattens out. This indicates all the copper leaving the anode is plating out on the cathode, which limits the maximum ppm that can be achieved. When I try to push it beyond this point, the fun starts. I started with rods made from ordinary 1/2 inch dia. water pipe. This produced very thin black streamers from the bottom edge of the cathode. They branched out like miniature trees. When I switched to a lower current, the trees would droop down. When I went to higher current, the trees would stand out horizontally and point directly to the anode. Sometimes a piece would break off. It would jerk sideways fairly rapidly, then reattach itself to a branch. This seems to indicate the black material is conductive, which means it might be pure copper, and not some kind of copper oxide. I switched to the 12 ga W-shaped electrodes. When I went beyond the 3 ppm point, the cathode was covered with dark material. But instead of black trees, the entire solution started turning brown. H2O2 has little or no effect on the color. The latest batch of dw does something completely different. The cathode gets covered with a soft dark brown material that forms horizontal wrinkles about 1/16 inch apart. The solution remains clear until I shake the stuff off the cathode, then I see many tiny bits floating around in the water. An hour later, the bits have disappeared and the solution has a slight brown tint. So 3 ppm calculated seem to be a hard limit for copper electrolysis. What happens after that depends on the current density, the shape of the electrodes, any sharp edges, and trace contaminants in the dw. It's not surprising the dw has much greater influence than with cs. Since the ppm is so low, the trace contaminants are a much larger ratio. It's like trying to make cs with very bad dw. > No essentail disagreement but the problem with PWTs [that read > right] and PPM is this. Conductivity and 'ionic' content are > essentailly at 1 to 1 unity. Bingo! Thanks, Ken. I have seen such confusion on the conversion factor - 1.6 uS/ppm, double the uS reading, cut it in half, or no correlation between them whatsoever. [... skip stuff on TE] > Referring to Reids problem, Ionic content can probably be 10% of > the total rather than 90% Yes, he is trying to do the opposite:) > Deviating: > BTW I'm having a bit of problem with the terminology of "oxides" > suspended in the water, or production of oxides etc. Perhaps it > has to do with including unstable silver hydroxides or hydrated > silver metal particles..the white stuff [is it?] in with the > catagory of stable silver dioxides and trioxides. [the black and > brown stuff] Reid's question "Where do the electrons go?" leads to a simple experiment. Heat 1 or 2 inches of water at 140F to 160F until the water evaporates. You are left with black stuff on the sides and bottom of the glass. Use Avogadro's number and the Atomic Mass of silver to figure out how many ions were in the original volume of cs. This tells how many electrons are needed. Average the number of electrons by the time it took to evaporate the water. This tells how much current is needed. In the example I posted, it came out to 46 uA. This current cannot come through the glass or through the air. Both are excellent insulators. The only other source of electrons in the cs is the hydroxyl ion, OH-, that is formed at the cathode when hydrogen gas is generated. So it's simple. When the water evaporates, the concentration of ions increases. At some point, the Ag+ and OH- ions start combining to form silver hydroxide and silver oxide. I posted the equations earlier. Now the fun starts. If you add a small amount of H2O2 to the glass, you get a very strong reaction. It bubbles and fizzes. When the bubbles disappear, the solution is clear. This shows the H2O2 acts as a catalyst to convert silver hydroxide and silver oxide back into ions. I posted the equations earlier. The salt test confirms it. The dispersion is so strong you can actually see the silver chloride particles under a microscope. But when you put H2O2 on plain silver, the reaction is very slow. For example, you get a gray sludge on the cathode at low current density. As you explained, this is pure silver covering small hydrogen bubbles. When you shake it off into the water, the bits fall to the bottom. If you add H2O2 to the cs, bubbles start appearing and the tiny bits start rising to the surface. When the bubble breaks, the bits fall back down. This will go on for days. So the reaction of H2O2 on pure silver is completely different than on silver oxides. The H2O2 breaks down to water instead of acting as a catalyst. I posted the equations earlier. Now, when you get a yellow tint to the cs and add a tiny bit of H2O2, the tint disappears and the solution remains clear indefinitely. Richard Harris uses 1 teaspoonful (5cc) H202 per quart, I use 1/2 tsp per litre, and you mentioned just a few drops will do it. So this confirms what we learned by evaporating cs and adding H2O2 to the black stuff. The reason for the yellow tint is silver oxides, and not elemental silver particles. It also confirms the main biological activity of cs is due to the ions. If you can show the particles have been converted to ions, and there are no particles left, and the cs works even better, then it's doubtful the particles have any biological effect in the first place. But other reactions can occur with bad dw. I was having problems with Wallmart dw. It put a hard black coat on the anode that was impossible to remove. The dw had a strong yellow tint, and when I added H2O2, the entire solution instantly turned a strong yellow, then immediately a white cloud covered everything. It was like a miniature atomic explosion. It took a lot of H2O2 to make the cs clear again, and it took several days. I think the cs may have contained pure silver particles or other silver compounds, but I have no clue how they might have formed. So I think we are extremely vulnerable to trace contaminants in the dw, and this contributes to repeatability problems, especially when you are trying to make high ppm cs. [...] > Incidently, your salt test may be OK to accompany intuition with > some sort of idea of PPM but it still only reacts with the ionic > portion. That's why I believe it is so valuable. If the particles have no biological effect, why bother trying to measure them. Just get the process to minimize them. Sorry, Ken. The headaches are coming back and I gotta stop here and go kill some spores. I hope we continue this conversation. You bring up many interesting points. And you make me think. I like that very much. Best Regards, Mike Monett -- The silver-list is a moderated forum for discussion of colloidal silver. 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