To All, Here are some of the design considerations for the MiniCell version of the SilverCell process:
My main concern is a single mom with hungry kids to feed. They probably go to DayCare or Kindergarten, where cold and flu pathogens rapidly spread, and the kids bring these germs home. So the mother is constantly bathed in a sea of germs at home. In addition, she is probably lucky to find work as a sales clerk, where she is constantly bombarded with cold and flu germs from dealing with the public. So she is constantly bathed in a sea of germs at work. But she cannot afford to get sick and lose her paycheck for two or three weeks while she recovers from a bad flu. And she certainly does not want to catch a flu and pass the virus on to her customers. But the only thing on the planet that can help protect her from the H1N1 flu virus is high-ionic cs. Antibiotics have no effect, and the popular cold remedies either have no effect, or they simply mask the symptoms. So my goal is to find a way to make the SilverCell process simple enough for her to be able to use it, even though she probably has no instruments like a dvm or a COM-100 pure water tester to monitor the process. There is probably no room in her budget for these items, and she probably doesn't have the time to learn how to use them effectively. This means the process must be easy to monitor and tell when it is functioning properly, and give a clear indication of when to stop the brew. In addition, it has to be tolerant of timing, when she is simply too busy to keep checking the brew to see if it is ready. It has to tolerate wide variations in attention without self-destruction, as the original 3 nines does if you go away and leave it running. It just turns the solution into mud. We don't want that to happen with our system. Another goal is to provide an inexpensive way to verify the results of the brew, and to ensure it has the desired silver ion concentration. A COM-100 PWT is out of the question for our struggling single mom. It is far too expensive, and is easily fooled by contamination. Also, the kids will probably chew on the sensor end, and contaminate the electrodes with their saliva. This will ruin the COM-100 and make it impossible to use. The solution is to find a simple, inexpensive test that responds only to silver ions, so it cannot be fooled by contamination. It doesn't have to be terribly accurate - we simply don't need three decimal digits of resolution in this application. All we need to know is are there enough silver ions to do the job. The answer is the simple Salt Test, which I proposed to the forum long ago in my first post. The mail archive scrambles email addresses, so please replace the (at) with @: http://www.mail-archive.com/silver-list(at)eskimo.com/msg17398.html I did not mention in the post that the salt must be pure canning salt, and not ordinary table salt. Table salt contains aluminum anti-caking compounds, which cloud the solution and ruin the test. You can find canning salt in most grocery or health food stores. In the US, look for "Morton Canning & Pickling Salt": http://www.mortonsalt.com/products/foodsalts/Canning_Pic_Salt.htm In Canada, find "Windsor Coarse Canning and Pickling Salt" http://www.windsorsalt.com/food_salts/coarse_salts.html.htm It turns out this works extremely well due to the high silver ion content of the SilverCell process. There is no question that the solution contains silver ions, and lots of them! Another goal is to make it simple to desulfurize the electrodes, and remove the silver sulfide tarnish and other anions and cations that tend to build up over time. These have a serious detrimental effect on the brewing process, and continue to degrade the cs when it is put in storage. We need every silver ion we can get, and can't afford to lose them due to contamination problems. So we need a simple way to decontaminate the electrodes, and to keep them from getting recontaminated when the unit is put in storage between brews. The system has to be as inexpensive as possible. There are systems on the market that charge $200 to $400 for what is basically a 3 nines setup with not much better performance. That is simply price gouging, but there is not enough good information available on the web to warn people about these systems, so they continue to be bought. So my goal is to keep the MiniCell generator as inexpensive as possible by using materials that perform well, and are either free or very inexpensive. This means it has to use a very inexpensive method to regulate the current during the brew. A fully-featured constant current source is out of the question. It is too expensive and far too complex for someone who has no training in electronics. It is also impossible to verify it is working properly without at least a digital voltmeter, and some knowledge of how to detect and prevent oscillation problems due to poor bypassing or bad circuit layout. There is a very simple way to regulate the current using a single resistor in series with the cell. This is called Resistive Stabilization, and it works well if you have a high voltage DC source to work with, such as 160V obtained from rectifying and filtering the 120VAC line voltage. The question was could this be made to work with a single 9 Volt battery, and the answer is a resounding YES! It works great!! The final goal was to find a low leakage glass jar with straight sides to use as the MiniCell container. The straight sides are needed so the electrodes can be placed as far apart as possible. This minimizes the dead space behind the electrodes, which normally dilutes the silver ion concentration when they diffuse throughout the container after the brew. Most systems use plain soda lime glass, which is inexpensive but probably the worst material to use due to contamination and leaching problems. An example is trying to store your cs in an old pickle jar. You will make this mistake only once. The glass absorbs the chemicals from the pickles, and then releases them into the high purity distilled water. The result is it tastes horrible, and there is no way to remove the contamination from the jar. A second mistake is to use Flint glass. This is basically lead crystal, which also leaches ions into the dw. In this case, the ions are lead, which is an accumulative poison. So we really don't want to even consider it. The final option is to use Type I borosilicate glass, which is among the lowest leaching glasses you can find. It is normally quite expensive, since the glass melts at a much higher temperature and is harder to work with. But it turns out there is a ready supply of standard glass shapes that are ideal for our application. And these are not expensive - often cheaper than an ordinary soda lime drinking glass, which we have already decided we don't want. The ideal product is available worldwide and can be shipped directly to you home. So you don't have to waste gas driving all over to try to find it. It is called a 400 mL Griffin Low Profile borosilicate glass beaker, and is available on eBay. Or you can probably call your local high school and speak to the chemistry professor. He may be happy to give you two brand new ones for free, which is what happened to me when I called. The same day, my eBay order finally arrived, so now I have two borosilicate beakers of the same style, but slightly different dimensions. I will have to take that into account when I document the construction details. So now we have solved all the problems and met all the requirements. The next phase is to document the construction and operation. This requires lots of pictures, so I will spend the next week or two assembling all the data and will post it to my new web site at silvercentral. More soon... Mike Monett SilverCell -- The Silver List is a moderated forum for discussing Colloidal Silver. Rules and Instructions: http://www.silverlist.org Unsubscribe: <mailto:silver-list-requ...@eskimo.com?subject=unsubscribe> Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/silver-list@eskimo.com/maillist.html Off-Topic discussions: <mailto:silver-off-topic-l...@eskimo.com> List Owner: Mike Devour <mailto:mdev...@eskimo.com>
