Metal Colloids

103

[ Types of Colloidal Generators ]

(Basic Generator Types)

The 2 basic types:

1. Electrolysis Cell

2. Electric Arc

The Electrolysis Cell:

Any liquid media that is conductive can be used for an electrolysis cell but we must consider that whatever media we use the end product must be safe to ingest.

The source metal should be one that is going to make a nice metal ion cleanly, that is without the addition of acids or other ingredients that might alter the metal ion and make it a metal compound.

For this reason we tend to use Distilled water of a very high quality.  If you have a TDS or WPM (Total Dissolved Solids, Water Purity Meter) this is the one job that they are most useful for.  Check to see that your distilled water is of the highest quality.  The end result of your process, how the electrolysis cell runs keys heavily on the purity of your water.

You can use a battery or DC (Direct Current) power source of anywhere from 2 volts to 24 for most applications.

The metal you want to ionize and distribute into your cell should be the (+) side of your Dc power source, the (-) side can be any inert metal such as Copper, Stainless steel, silver.. truly just about anything (don't use regular steel, it likes to rust)

The 2 metals that tend to work well with this process are Silver and Copper.

Electric Arc:

The actual hardware to is often much more complex than the basic idea which is to take 2 pieces of your source metal, submerge them underwater (distilled water, sometimes with an additive to help hydration, more on that later) and ensure they draw an arc underwater.

The simplest embodiment of this is to use a Neon Sign Transformer (NST)

 With very well insulated wires that terminate in some type of clamp or wire holder the two wires ends are held some small distance apart in a glass of water.

1.  Very high voltages make it easy to draw an arc under water as pure water is very high in resistance to electrical flow, much more so than air.

2.  The other advantage to this basic setup is the ease of obtaining a neon sign transformer and the fact that you do not need any additives to help the metals hydrate and evenly disperse in the water.

3.  The only proper reason why this basic setup is not very viable is that the process is slow, very slow. (1-3mg of gold vapor per hour)

Even though you succeed in drawing an arc across the two wire ends, the rate of metal vapor output is very low and will not go over 1mg per hour without being so close as to pass a human hair between the two wire ends.

Very high voltage also heats water rapidly while being difficult to prevent skin travel (the effect where a very high voltage will seek the least path of resistance and travel over the surface of the water rather than between the two wire ends).

To help prevent this skin travel effect the use of thick glass insulators is often used to direct most of the current that exchanges through the arc, between the two wire ends and not the water surface.

MOT (Microwave Oven Transformer) based:

The next type of arc vapor system is based on a very easy to obtain component (the micro wave oven transformer) that in general has a step up advantage of 1/20 for 120vac power (North, Central, South America) while the rest of the world has a microwave oven transformer with a step up of 1/10 for 220-240vac power.

You have a range of power at your disposal as MOTs can run between 600-1300W (according to the microwave manufacture).

You can pair that MOT with a wide range of Ac transformers that are fixed or variable to get a wide range of outputs to drive your electrodes.

The power supply for this type of system is reasonably easy to build but offers power outputs that while using much lower voltages than a Neon Sign Transformer (NST) deliver much higher current.

A person can get zapped by an NST once in a while without much harm (unless you hurt yourself when you jerk your arm away from the shock and knock over a glass or break something) but your heart will not stop.

With a MOT based system the current capacity can easily stop a persons heart if they came into contact with the output in a way that the current traveled through your chest.

For this reason, the complexity of a MOT based system is not in the power supply so much as the electrode holders.  It must be that a person can safely adjust the gap between the two wires without ever risking contact with the power circuit.

Properly built, your electrode array will make this a completely safe system and equally important your vapor rates will increase, anywhere from 20-160mg per minute.  You read that right, vapor rates go exponential (or nearly so) with this type of a system as compared to the basic NST setup.

What is called 'Electrode Geometry' is the key to matching your power output with the right surface area and thermal flow to allow for this much higher vapor temperature while not deforming the source electrodes as they will soften and be pulled together and fuse.

I will cover all of these systems in much greater detail, this is just the 100 primer series on metallic colloids.

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