Get your Geek on and control your grow room with Arduino!

ChiefRunningPhist

Well-Known Member
After reviewing the literature from the links posted and some googling, it seems that the mA flowed during the CS generation determines the time of electrolysis (15mA × 1min = 1mg Ag, thus 3mA × 5min = 1mg Ag, or 15mA·min = 1mg Ag; I'm not sure how true or accurate this rate is), and this mA setting is also loosely dependent on how well the solution is stirred during the process. A higher stir rate keeps solution concentration more uniform and if a higher current is used the solution could have a greater local concentration between the electrodes compared to the rest of the solution, which could result in bigger particle size than wanted (<-- why they say to increase stirring at higher currents I'm hypothesizing?).


Ag particle size seems to be of interest by the majority of amateurs, but whether the size needs to be large, small, or ionic seems to be majority contended. The academic studies show that ionic Ag is actually the most anti-microbial form of Ag. They also seem to suggest that the AgNP (silver nano-particles) mode of action is very similar to the ionic Ag and that this is due to the AgNP's transforming into Ionic with time ect. I've not been able to find any academic studies on Ag and plants. So perhaps a larger Ag particle size is wanted for MJ hermaphoditism, but all I could find on the topic was forum based and only MJ forums. The academic world points to ionic as the main beneficial form, but that's with humans and antimicrobial in mind, so I can't really give an opinion on Ag particle size when it comes to forcing female plants to hermaphrodite. (See link below)


I did read up that the most common method described is not creating a pure AgNP mixture, but it seems it's some sort of bro-science. This is the adding of Sodium Carbonate and Corn Syrup method. (See link below)




It looks like maybe you could repurpose and recalibrate your pH pens to determine Ag ionic ppm. You could use your TDS meter but you'd have to deduce the EC reading from the ppm (EC = ppm ÷ 500, or EC = ppm ÷ 700) and multiply this by 1.1, and best case scenario would be 10% - 25% off. But as far as AgNP or suspended Ag particles, a laser with a photodiode measuring the intensity of the Tyndall effect would be a pretty accurate way to determine size of suspended Ag, or AgNP size, and a ppm of AgNP's, or suspended Ag particles, could be deduced from subtracting the ionic ppm from the total ppm derived from a Nitric acid wash followed by a HCl wash and filter process described in the link @timezone added. (See links below)
1. 2.
 
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ChiefRunningPhist

Well-Known Member
A few pages ago, I posted photos of my controlled boxes, the black box with the sensors, and

View attachment 4460128
the Node-Red dashboard. If you noticed in the Status column, the "aircool" and "soilsolenoid2" were turned on. The "aircool" turns on a relay in one of the controlled boxes, that's pretty straight forward. The "soilsolenoid2" does things a little different as I had to separate the mains power from the water contact components.

View attachment 4460176
I did this by filling two boxes with stuff. ;) Stuff like a 12Vdc pump and 7 solenoids in the larger box, and the power supply and all the controls in the smaller box, with an umbilical cord between them. Here're some details in photos.

View attachment 4460193
I chose a pump and manifold and started by drawing up models of components, which I then manipulated to fit into this box.

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A bit of aluminum with holes for aerodynamics, gives me a platform I can build something on.

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On the bottom go the terminal strips for all the wiring,

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and on the top are the pump and solenoids.

View attachment 4460251
The wiring is almost finished. Notice the diodes connected to the solenoids. That keeps them from causing arcing at the contacts in the relays.

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The plumbing is beginning. I'm using this tubing.

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Big box is finished for now.

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This is the business end with a pickup tube, feeding the self priming pump, and discharge tubes feeding the plants. The electrical cable delivers 12Vdc to each solenoid and the pump.

More later as I have hit a "photo limit" for this post...
Nice looking setup. :bigjoint:
 

Timezone

Well-Known Member
Probably lots of things I'm not aware of yet. Spent the last few hours getting Win10 fixed up and 3 of those hours were getting my bookmarks moved over into FireFox on Win10. Got 'er done!

Still have to install the Arduino software and a few more.

DVD and Blu-Ray burners working perfectly now! :)
Glad you "Got 'er done!", good luck with 10. I hope you've loaded all the patches and have it up to date, I've heard some things lately... you'll be done in no time now.
 

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
I started at the 5v and went through them all to 17.5. The PS I use to make the CS is 29.5v @ 460 mA.
That is a surprisingly high voltage difference. The actual electrochemistry can be driven by three volts or maybe less. Can you tell me what the benefit of the higher voltage is ? I may be missing something obvious for which my med-chem bias hasn’t set me up.

If you are interested, I can give you the recipe for making an ionic chelated silver solution that has proven efficacious for sex-changing female plants. My grow partner has done the bioassay on that solution. I like that starting with ionic components, I get known silver concentrations in the active ionic form. The laser test only gives you a yes/no read on the presence of nanoparticles. You’d need expensive analytical equipment to get the concentrations of the material of interest. The analytical need does not apply with ionic silver made from Amazon chemicals, and removes the can of worms implied by needing to manage nanoparticle size.
 

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
That is a surprisingly high voltage difference. The actual electrochemistry can be driven by three volts or maybe less. Can you tell me what the benefit of the higher voltage is ? I may be missing something obvious for which my med-chem bias hasn’t set me up.

If you are interested, I can give you the recipe for making an ionic chelated silver solution that has proven efficacious for sex-changing female plants. My grow partner has done the bioassay on that solution. I like that starting with ionic components, I get known silver concentrations in the active ionic form. The laser test only gives you a yes/no read on the presence of nanoparticles. You’d need expensive analytical equipment to get the concentrations of the material of interest. The analytical need does not apply with ionic silver made from Amazon chemicals, and removes the can of worms implied by needing to manage nanoparticle size.
I used that multi-voltage wall wart just to see what the different voltages put out through that circuit but will most likely just use the 29.5v one I have been using all along. Close to the output that people get using 3 - 9V batteries and from all the research I did to make my own system that range seemed best. Takes about 6 hours per batch.

I read about some chelated type silver on a forum I joined. They were really pushy about systems like mine not being any good and it was their way or the highway so I chose the highway. :)

Wouldn't mind seeing what you have tho.

:peace:
 

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
I used that multi-voltage wall wart just to see what the different voltages put out through that circuit but will most likely just use the 29.5v one I have been using all along. Close to the output that people get using 3 - 9V batteries and from all the research I did to make my own system that range seemed best. Takes about 6 hours per batch.

I read about some chelated type silver on a forum I joined. They were really pushy about systems like mine not being any good and it was their way or the highway so I chose the highway. :)

Wouldn't mind seeing what you have tho.

:peace:
I can totally see being turned off by a high-handed attitude. I dislike when a good message is shot by bad messengers.

My biggest worry with electrically-prepared colloidal silver is the several variables that matter and could yield very different concentrations of active silver despite identical protocol for each batch. This is a blue-sky guess on my part, but it could be one particle size where most of the activity resides. It could imaginable be much more potent than an equivalent weight of chelated ionic silver. I am daunted by the difficulty/expense of doing the analytical chemistry on so complex a system.

Would you like my recipe/procedure? I am not sure if you asked, and I don’t want to join the pushies.
 
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cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
I asked for it so you're not being pushy. :)
Here it is!
Water is distilled (preferred) or RO.

Two stock solutions:
Solution A is 2.00 g silver nitrate in 500 ml water.
Solution B is 12.9 g sodium thiosulfate pentahydrate in 500 ml water.
The stock solutions are stable in the dark.

To make the working solution, add 1 part stock A (silver) to 3 parts water.
Then add 1 part stock B (thiosulfate) to the above solution. Mix well and pour into a clean spray bottle.

This solution is the same silver strength every time, and the ready mix should last several months if stored in the dark.

I would be fascinated to see a potency comparison of ionic silver with different size fractions of the polyatomic silver nanoparticles.
I could see a botany master’s thesis coming of this work.
 
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OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
Here it is!
Water is distilled (preferred) or RO.

Two stock solutions:
Solution A is 2.00 g silver nitrate in 500 ml water.
Solution B is 12.9 g sodium thiosulfate pentahydrate in 500 ml water.
The stock solutions are stable in the dark.

To make the working solution, add 1 stock A (silver) to 3 parts water.
Then add 1 part stock B (thiosulfate) to the above solution. Mix well and pour into a clean spray bottle.

This solution is the same silver strength every time, and the ready mix should last several months if stored in the dark.

I would be fascinated to see a potency comparison of ionic silver with different size fractions of the polyatomic silver nanoparticles.
I could see a botany master’s thesis coming of this work.
Ok. That's STS which is what I'm going to use pretty soon here to make fem seeds with. Different recipe tho. 0.8g silver nitrate in 500ml for part A and 3.16g of anhydrous sodium thio in 500ml for Part B. My instructions say to mix A into B slowly with rapid stirring to make a stock sol'n which you dilute 9:1 so 100ml of the stock sol'n into 900ml of RO or distilled to make a litre of spray.

Rather than do that I'll keep A & B separate and use 50ml of each blended just before adding the 100ml to the 900 for a litre of spray as I need it. The two sol'ns should keep a lot longer if not mixed together. A very nice fellow who has been doing this for years sent me enough of both chem to make one batch as I couldn't get hold of the sodium thio. I just a few days ago found a chem company in Ontario that will sell to guys like me and ordered 500g of it. $22 for the chem and Purolator is charging me $69 to get it here. What a rip-off but stuff like that can't legally be sent through the PO. I made 12g of silver nitrate with a .9999 silver coin from the PO and conc nitric acid so I have lots of that and another coin and more acid too if I need more.

That's not a colloidal silver tho. Just a standard silver containing mineral salt. Totally different critters. :)
 

cannabineer

Ursus marijanus
Ok. That's STS which is what I'm going to use pretty soon here to make fem seeds with. Different recipe tho. 0.8g silver nitrate in 500ml for part A and 3.16g of anhydrous sodium thio in 500ml for Part B. My instructions say to mix A into B slowly with rapid stirring to make a stock sol'n which you dilute 9:1 so 100ml of the stock sol'n into 900ml of RO or distilled to make a litre of spray.

Rather than do that I'll keep A & B separate and use 50ml of each blended just before adding the 100ml to the 900 for a litre of spray as I need it. The two sol'ns should keep a lot longer if not mixed together. A very nice fellow who has been doing this for years sent me enough of both chem to make one batch as I couldn't get hold of the sodium thio. I just a few days ago found a chem company in Ontario that will sell to guys like me and ordered 500g of it. $22 for the chem and Purolator is charging me $69 to get it here. What a rip-off but stuff like that can't legally be sent through the PO. I made 12g of silver nitrate with a .9999 silver coin from the PO and conc nitric acid so I have lots of that and another coin and more acid too if I need more.

That's not a colloidal silver tho. Just a standard silver containing mineral salt. Totally different critters. :)
I made my silver nitrate also - from a silver eagle coin and ACS nitric acid.

I recommend the stronger spray based on Annie’s results. The original instructions were 1 part A, 1 part B and 18 parts water. It didn’t seem to do much.
Double strength 1:1:8 -same story.
Quadruple strength 1:1:3 - positive result.

So that is why I’m spec’ing such a high concentration of STS in the working solution.

I bought my sodium thiosulfate from Amazon. The pentahydrate comes as beautiful columnar crystals.
I do wonder if polysilver ions are more potent.
 

OldMedUser

Well-Known Member
There seems to be quite the discrepancy about how strong the sol'n should be. When I was looking into it I was surprised. This Sebring guy has been doing it for a long time and basically gives away his seeds for the price of postage. I got 4 strains of his creations for $15US. He uses a 1/8tsp measure for the seeds so I got from 17 - 37 seeds in the packs. Nice snap on lids on shallow plastic tubs with a pillow of cotton in each so they don't bounce around if the package gets shook. He's based in WA.

He says that stronger sol'ns can burn the plants pretty bad so I'll mix this first batch per his direction then when my chem gets here mix up a stronger batch and do a little comparison. Look for damage but also look for efficacy. I'm likely going to be spraying a half dozen different strains in the next little while.
 
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