Good comments from others on Fred's posting. My thoughts: On 30 Mar 98 at 10:12, fred wrote:
> ... I let it 'cook' until it reached 8 milliamps (per someone's > suggestion on this mailing list). This took around one hour. If the suggestion you're talking about was mine, that was when I just noticed the reaction *starts*! My electrodes are 12 gauge, about 3" wet length, and 3/4" apart. I heat to about 180-190 Farenheit. My power supply is a well filtered 30 volt DC unit that'll put out about 100ma. The output would stay at 30v no matter what the current is doing, up to the 100ma limit. In a quart jar of heated water, it took 30 minutes to get up to about 9 ma, at which time the first wisps of silver were visible coming off the positive electrode, and tiny bubbles from the negative. After another hour, the current (at 30VDC) topped out at about 40 ma and I stopped it. Using that batch for a starter -- 25% of each production batch -- I processed 4 more quarts. With starter, it took only about 2-3 minutes for the current to climb to 9 ma and visible activity to start, and it got to 40-50 ma after only 45 minutes. The actual current is dependent on how big the fluffy deposit on the negative electrode becomes! Wiggle the electrode a bit and the deposits collapse, causing the current to go down. Talk about precision science. (NOT!) > During operation, only one electrode produced bubbles. But both > electrodes had black stuff on them after I took them out of the > water. I thought only one electrode would have this stuff on it... > Any comments? The positive electrode seems to get a black sooty looking deposit on it that pretty much persists for the whole process. Before anybody gets upset, the color is probably just an optical effect of the microscopically rough surface, or as others have suggested, an oxide. The negative electrode goes through a similar phase *very early* in the process, before it gets covered up with the fluffy grey stuff. The upshot is, my guess, that you ran just until the process was getting started and shut down too soon. > What coffee filters/other filters are safe to use to filter out the > big chunks? Some filters are treated with chemicals, and I don't > want to use those... Any suggestions? Mr. Coffee filters were one of the ones specifically mentioned a few weeks back as having additives in them. The cheapest possible unbleached ones might be better! > The plans, for the CS generator that I built, included a 28 VDC 40 > milliamp light bulb, but none of the local electronics stored > carried one of these. Anyone who knows what they are talking about > know what would make a good replacement? Could I just use a normal > LED? How much current do these normally draw? There's one available from Radio Shack here in the states. Barring that, there's got to be a mail order electronics supply company somewhere in Canada, eh? LED's will take 20-30 ma okay, but will burn out if you push'em much farther. Also the voltage drop accross the diode is about fixed at .4 to .8 volts or so, whatever the particular type of diode's forward biased junction voltage is, so you really don't get current limiting in the same way. I think it's safe to do it without the bulb, but monitoring the current. If you don't try to push to really high ppm levels, I have a hunch the process remains pretty simple, and you can just make/take more to get the desired effect. Be well, Mike [Mike Devour, Citizen, Patriot, Libertarian] [[email protected] ] [Speaking only for myself... ] -- 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] List maintainer: Mike Devour <[email protected]>
