I am constantly looking for new processes and substances to use for making colloidal silver.\u00a0 Here are my latest thoughts. The electrolytic process for making colloidal silver requires an electrolyte to work.\u00a0 Even pure distilled water with nothing added to it acts as a weak electrolyte because a very small amount of pure water disassociates into H+ and OH- ions.\u00a0 \u00a0You might say that a certain amount of water dissolves in itself as hydrogen hydroxide.\u00a0 A liter of pure water will contain 10-7<\/sup> moles1<\/sup>\u00a0 of hydrogen ions, and 10-7<\/sup> moles of hydroxide ions.\u00a0 This amounts to 0.00018 milligrams of hydroxide ions, but this tiny amount is enough to make silver hydroxide when you put silver electrodes in the water and connect them to a battery.\u00a0 These hydrogen ions and hydroxide ions are the current carriers which allows current flow through the electrolysis cell, but so few carriers result in a very weak current.\u00a0 A weak current results in a long process time.<\/p>\n Aside from the long process time, using the hydroxide inherent in pure water as the electrolyte has another problem.\u00a0 The amount of hydroxide is not constant, but increases as the amount of silver hydroxide increases.\u00a0 This creates a run-away process that gets faster with time, and therefore is difficult to control as anyone who has used this simple process can attest.<\/p>\n We can solve these problems by adding an appropriate electrolyte to our water.\u00a0 A useable electrolyte must have certain characteristics.\u00a0 It must be non-toxic above all else.\u00a0 It must not form any toxic byproducts.\u00a0 It must form a soluble compound with the anode metal.\u00a0 It must dissociate in water (ionize). Its positive ion should not plate out onto the cathode.\u00a0 It should be inexpensive, and readily available.\u00a0 These requirements reduce the number of choices considerably.<\/p>\n In choosing the specific compound to use, toxicity is paramount.\u00a0 Luckily substances normally found in human physiology are good candidates.\u00a0 Chlorides, citrates, gluconates and hydroxides and carbonates are all non-toxic anions3<\/sup> especially in the low concentrations we need.\u00a0 Chlorides are everywhere in the body, and citrates are an integral part of the citric acid cycle which provides our energy.\u00a0 Gluconates are commonly found in foods.\u00a0 Hydroxide is a natural constituent of water.\u00a0 \u00a0The body is very adept at handling these substances.\u00a0 However, gluconates are not readily available for most people, so I take them out of the list.\u00a0 Citrate is a good choice if the goal is to make ionic silver, as it is more soluble than silver hydroxide or chloride.<\/p>\n There are only two very common bio-compatible cationic substances which will not plate out onto a cathode.\u00a0 They are sodium and potassium.\u00a0 Both of these ions react strongly with water as soon as they are reduced to metal at the cathode, and create hydroxides which are water soluble.\u00a0 So, the sodium or potassium stays in solution as ions.\u00a0 Because of this, a sodium or potassium salt would be ideal for making colloidal silver electrolytically.\u00a0 An added benefit of using sodium salts is that it is self replenishing.\u00a0 The sodium ions that contact the cathode are immediately reduced to sodium metal, and then react with the water to become sodium hydroxide.\u00a0 \u00a0 The net result is that the electrolyte is never used up.<\/p>\n For these reasons, my first choice of an electrolyte is sodium carbonate, commonly known as washing soda.\u00a0 It is cheap, readily available, and it works extremely well for making colloidal silver.\u00a0 It is also safe to handle.\u00a0 Everyone has consumed sodium carbonate, it is what results from heating baking soda, so is a common ingredient in baked goods.<\/p>\n When using sodium carbonate as an electrolyte, the MINIMUM theoretical voltage needed is 3.5 volts.\u00a0 Below this there is not enough voltage to reduce the sodium at the cathode and oxidize the silver at the anode.\u00a0 This comes from the electrochemical series which describes the voltage a metal creates when used with a different metal in an electrolytic cell (battery).\u00a0 Experiments I have conducted seem to confirm this.\u00a0 The sodium ion requires -2.71 volts to force an electron to it, and the silver atom requires 0.8 volts to remove an electron from it.\u00a0 So the total is 3.51 volts.\u00a0 In practice, a higher voltage is necessary because voltage is lost in the bulk fluid between the electrodes.\u00a0 In practice, the voltage should be several times this minimum to account for the voltage lost in the electrolyte.\u00a0 I have demonstrated making CS with only 7.5 volts on the electrodes with satisfactory results, but I have found that higher voltage is always better. However, the improvement is not linear.\u00a0 IE: 10 times the voltage does not provide a ten fold increase in quality or efficiency.\u00a0 Anything over 20 volts is probably not very beneficial.\u00a0 Of course, the optimum results also depends on the temperature and geometry of the electrodes.\u00a0 What is optimum for my setup probably won’t be for someone else’s.\u00a0 As a minimum the voltage should be at least 10 volts.\u00a0 However minimum voltage depends on the spacing of the electrodes and 10 volts is for a spacing of 1.5 inches.<\/p>\n Using sufficient sodium based electrolyte keeps most of the silver from plating onto the cathode.\u00a0 The cation with the lowest redox potential from the electrochemical series will selectively plate out.\u00a0 Since sodium’s redox potential is 2.71 and silvers is .8, the sodium ions keep the silver from plating onto the cathode.<\/p>\n Reducing Agents:<\/strong><\/p>\n Reducing agents are necessary if one wishes to make non-ionic colloidal silver.\u00a0 While heat alone can accomplish this, the process is slow, and not always complete.\u00a0 Also, it is very difficult to make higher ppm concentrations of silver using heat alone.<\/p>\n As with electrolytes, the non-toxicity of a reducing agent is the first consideration.\u00a0 I pondered this for a long time until I realized that any food we eat will undergo chemical oxidation by the body.\u00a0 The body knows quite well how to handle the oxidized byproducts of metabolism.\u00a0 \u00a0This means that if the food is non-toxic, so will be its reduction\/oxidation products.\u00a0 Luckily, there are many sugar based and other food products which are reducing agents and work with silver.\u00a0 The quality of the product differs with choice of reducing agents in that some produce more consistent particle sizes, some work faster, and some produce more stable product. Agents which have shown to work are glucose, fructose, corn syrup, invert sugar, maltodextrin, honey, and cinnamon.\u00a0 Tea is also a reducing agent, and has been shown to reduce gold.\u00a0 So far, the best I have found is cinnamon extract, with my second choice being clear corn syrup, and honey being my least favorite because of all the foreign matter it contains.\u00a0 Lactose and maltose may also work, but I have not tested them.\u00a0 Ordinary table sugar (sucrose) does not work, nor does ordinary starch. One common food item I would like to try is coffee.\u00a0 Yes, coffee.\u00a0 Amateur photographers who experiment with their chemistry know that coffee2<\/sup> will develop film, and that means it will reduce silver.<\/p>\n When the process is complete, and all of the silver ions are reduced, the solution will contain nothing toxic.<\/p>\n For any of these agents to work, the pH of the solution must be basic (above pH 7).\u00a0 Otherwise, the reducing agent will be expended reducing hydrogen ions.\u00a0 Using sodium carbonate as an electrolyte automatically raises the pH sufficiently to activate the reducing agent.\u00a0 \u00a0This requirement would seem to put a lower limit on the current used for the electrolysis, as the voltage minimum would not be reached if very low currents were used.\u00a0 \u00a0This limit would also depend on the electrode geometry, as decreasing the electrode area will have the effect of raising the cell resistance, therefore requiring a higher voltage for a given current.<\/p>\n 1)\u00a0 \u00a0A mole of any substance contains approximately 6 x 1023<\/sup> molecules, and weighs the sum of its atomic weights in grams. Copyright \u00a9 2011 cgcsforum.com \/ W.G.Peters — Nov 27, 2011 — updated 6\/24\/2012 I am constantly looking for new processes and substances to use for making colloidal silver.\u00a0 Here are my latest thoughts. Electrolytes: The electrolytic process for making colloidal …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1249","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wgpeters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wgpeters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wgpeters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wgpeters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.wgpeters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1249"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.wgpeters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1413,"href":"http:\/\/www.wgpeters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1249\/revisions\/1413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.wgpeters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n
\nElectrolytes:<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n2)\u00a0 \u00a0Coffenol developer contains Folgers instant coffee, vitamin C, and baking soda.
\n3)\u00a0 \u00a0Anions are\u00a0 ions which are more negative than the anode.\u00a0 Cations are ions which are more positive than the cathode.
\n4)\u00a0 \u00a0It gives the salt and vinegar flavor to certain brands of potato chips.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"