Posted 3/31/2015 - making colloidal silver with distilled water and what is forming on the 2 silver wires

Here is a recent answer to an email I received, which should be very helpful in countering a lot of misinformation on the Internet about making colloidal silver. Mike

Subject: making colloidal silver
From: (name changed)@gmail.com
To: lifeforcecs@gmail.com

Hello I purchased a Barebones colloidal silver generator from Amazon with the name of LifeForce on it and I am using it for the first time. I have made colloidal silver before but only using three batteries as a generator.
I have never seen a reaction like this.  Is it normal? What is happening is on the red or positive electrode or wire I am getting a brown, smokey-like substance on the wire and on the negative or black terminal wire I am getting a greyish black substance on it. I have never experienced a reaction like this before.
Can you help me. This happened only 15 minutes into the making of the colloid.

Rick

3/25/15

To: Rick
Subject: Re: making colloidal silver

Rick, yes this is normal. I don't know how you have been making colloidal silver in the past, but due to the large amount of misinformation on the Internet, you were probably making ionic silver, because either a) you were using tap/well/spring/bottled/purified water or b) you were using an additive like salt or baking soda.

a) when using water with mineral content most or all of the silver expelled from the positive terminal becomes chemically bound to the dissolved minerals in the water. The product becomes cloudy with insoluble silver compounds. There is still some colloidal silver particles suspended in the product, if all the dissolved mineral content has reacted with the silver being expelled from the positive wire, which is unlikely, because these waters usually have 60 to 180 ppm of dissolved minerals in them. The wires stay very clean.

b) with additives like salt or baking soda, the ionic silver compounds silver chloride and silver carbonate are formed until all of the additives have reacted with the silver being expelled from the positive wire, which is unlikely, because the "pinch" of additives usually results in a concentration of 50 to 150 ppm. The wires stay very clean.

When making colloidal silver the correct way with distilled water, any silver ions produced react with the water (it is the only thing present) producing silver hydroxide on the positive wire (a tan/brown insoluble silver compound) and silver oxide on the negative wire (a gray/black insoluble silver compound). All the rest of the silver expelled from the positive wire becomes suspended nanoparticles of pure metallic silver. That's why the suspension tastes metallic. 

Ionic silver has virtually no metallic taste or a slight salty taste.

And the colloidal silver suspension is clear and colorless, until some of the suspended particles become large enough to scatter yellow/orange/red light when the concentration gets higher.

Therefore, wiping the wires off periodically with a tissue during processing is necessary. The Instructions call for stirring at 10 minutes and every 30 minutes thereafter and cleaning the wires off with a tissue when the unit is removed to do stirring. The brown or black insoluble compounds that fall off the wires and end up in the product can be filtered out with paper coffee filters.

I hope this clears everything up.

I also wonder if you would allow me to post this question and answer on my blog on my website lifeforcecolloidalsilver.com? It would be very helpful to a lot of people.

Mike