I JUST finished production of a 1L batch of 320 . It came out GREAT. I am red/green partially color blind, so I JUST had the wife verify colors - She concurs: Diluted to 20ppm it is amber. As 320 as seen in a 32oz clear boston bottle, it is very deep red and almost opaque. We look through it up to my dual 4ft LED ceiling light AND outside to the sun.
This time I did it, the color never turned yellow. It started to look more like a light brown (like dirty water) and slowly went to dark brown as expected.
Every time I make it, I get a short period of yellowish. Contaminated DW? Maybe something NOT ionic? I have seen several others who also say they never get the yellow
My electrolyte and reducing agent are the ones I had first made some months ago but have always been stored in the fridge.
I use dry electrolyte. Lately it has been 180mg/L of Sodium Carb for 8.5 PH - THAT deviates. Most times I use exactly 106mg
I also see big deposits on my cathode. A lot more than other times.
DW PH could be off. Also, re-clean your cath to smooth and DON"T flame it. I too have had funk in the water (in the past) but I fixed it by not touching the cath during production and MOST importantly, ensuring that I am PRODUCING slower than reduction. The only thing I do is rinse it each time I flame the anode. I generally halt production a few times early in the process to give the solution a chance to reduce when I'm running 15ma. I also keep the voltage across the cell at 10v. The other way would be to use less current. My experience has been that once you get close to the halfway point, the necessity for cleaning and re-flaming the anode goes down dramatically. In fact, today I went to bed at 2am, woke up at 530am and the anode was NOT super blackened at all. When I look through the 32oz bottle it is now in, it is very nearly opaque and has a super deep red color. I restarted the production at the end of the 320 cycle for a additional 5 min to compensate for the loss in the gelatin collected on the anode/cath and the wee bit more that I put in the flask so I have enough to draw off 15ml for color testing in 7.5 oz of water (20ppm)