Greenish CS

[silverFalcon]

Thank you Kephra. I will pay attention to the electrodes, even though I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary.

[Kephra]

I wish I could watch you make a batch of CS.  It would be educational for us both I think.  I think I learn more from the members of this forum than they learn from me

[inocentforever]

SilverFalcon,

Can you give me more details?
Did you clean the anode between batches?
Was the water up to temperature when you started the second batch?

I find it unnecessary to wash my flask between batches, but I do clean my anode. 


Naropa,

Distilled water does not go bad.  It can become contaminated though if not stored properly (clean, sealed jug).

Kephra how do you clean your silver anode?

[Kephra]

I hold it in pliers and heat it in a gas flame (my kitchen stove).  It will turn white as the impurities are driven off, and the silver oxide is converted to silver metal again. 

[mraluma415]

Ok, to beat the topic to death, here is the current color after few additional days. I didn't know that sunlight can affect CS so much. In the bottom corner is the original color...Do you think that the size of particles changed?

I leave my colloidal silver in direct sunlight everyday in the window ledge in the kitchen.  I keep them in lab cleaned certified bottles. its been a month and no color change at all has occurred. If a color change does occur I will post results later. 

I wonder if different reducing agents render different shelf lives or have different effects from the sun?? I use corn syrup as a reducing agent about to start the cinnamon extract process, cant wait

[cfnisbet]

I got a greenish hue from only one batch, and I think it was from contamiants in the cardboard I was using to hold the electrodes. When I threw the cardboard away and started to hold my electrodes by pushing them through a plastic mesh, I never got a repeat.

The green colour on that batch then slowly disappeared and a grey powder coated the bottom of the jar. I assume that something caused the oxide to settle out. I chucked mine away, but my mother used the remains of a bottle which went grey, on a burn on her palm, and she said it seemed to work better. Perhaps it was more concentrated oxide powder. Those were the only times we got any colour apart from shades of yellow.

Since then, we have always got golden yellow now. Or crystal clear if I don't let it run long enough and want to make ionic CSO. Most of my early experimentation was with the clear stuff, but I can't see much point in making that any more, thanks to this forum.

[cfnisbet]

Just got another greenish bottle. I made three litres in a batch, of which one has turned greenish (looks like previous photos on this thread) the other two are perfect. I store all the batches in clear glass bottles in the dark and in the same cupboard. I am assuming contaminants in the bottle. I will clean those "contaminated" bottles very thoroghly before reusing them.

P.S. I have just cleaned a bottle with distilled water with two wash-outs, then added some of the same batch of CS to the empty bottle from a bottle that has kept it's colour correctly for over a month. I will post what happens. My best guess is something has contaminated the bottle and is causing the silver to agglomerate, as the bottle had a slight residue (oxide?) in the bottom. I used the green CS in my waterbed as an anti-bacterial.

[cfnisbet]

Just looked at the bottle yesterday. The heat treated CS had gone clear and some oxide dust had settled out. I put cinnamon-stabilised CS in it and replaced it in the cupboard. Today it was still ok.

Bizarre. I have decided to use "weird" bottles for the cinnamon-reduced stuff for now. It has to be some form of contamination, but as it seems to result in the CS oxidising (?) back to CSO, then using the bottles for the stabilised CS is an easy fix (and a cop-out).

[Kephra]

Just looked at the bottle yesterday. The heat treated CS had gone clear and some oxide dust had settled out. I put cinnamon-stabilised CS in it and replaced it in the cupboard. Today it was still ok.

Bizarre. I have decided to use "weird" bottles for the cinnamon-reduced stuff for now. It has to be some form of contamination, but as it seems to result in the CS oxidising (?) back to CSO, then using the bottles for the stabilised CS is an easy fix (and a cop-out).

I use plastic bottles and have not had a problem.  The bottles I use are marked with a "1" recycling symbol which means they are Polyethylene terephthalate (PET or PETE).  I wash them with soap and water, rinse them with RO water, and then give them a final rinse with distilled before I store CS in them.

[cfnisbet]

Thanks for the advice. I seem only to have problems with heat-reduced CS and it will be simple enough to keep a few bottles that are very clean, for this purpose. I fortunately have access to lots of PET plastic bottles, so I'll use them too.

I also suspect that my systems are not running with a high enough amperage, or not leaving the batches long enough. That will be my next test, to increase amperage to 15mA and use run-times a bit longer.