# Different Electrolyte Setup But it Works. Why?



## jedrickj (Feb 19, 2010)

Hey all,

As I've stated here before I'm using a Shor silver cell. (Its a vertical cell) I'll cut to the point. The recommended chemistry with this system is to dissolve 250grams of fine silver in 1 liter of Nitric and 3 liters of water to start. Then once dissolved to add 9 more liters of water for a total of 13 liters volume. In doing the math on this, its less than 20 gram's/liter silver to start. So I drop in my first dore bar (cemented silver) and get the system going. Of course not all of the nitric has reacted with the silver as a full liter can dissolve up to 420 grams from what I've read here. Either way, I make crystals from the go. If I let the cell sit idle some of the crystals will go back into solution as you might expect until the nitric is used up. Okay so for the sake of argument lets start with the 420 grams in solution that still only about 32 grams/liter of silver in the electrolyte. Nearly half the 60 grams/liter recommended in posts here. Yet the cell seems to produce silver at the cathode just fine. Why go to 60 grams/liter if I can get away with 32 grams in solution and cut the amount of silver in solution? 

I feel like I'm missing something. From what I'm reading on the forum, this shouldn't work worth a damn, and my crystals will be crappy because of little or no copper in solution. Which is not the case. 

What I'm finding with the rectifier is that I can run the cell pretty hard with a big enough cathode, but then I have to deal with heat issues. I had my electrolyte at almost 100 degrees F and had to back it off a bit, it was actually starting to darken the anode bag as well, but it was producing silver like a bitch  

Another interesting side effect is that I don't bother harvesting crystals until I'm done with a run of bars. The crystals just fall to the bottom of the tank on their own. They largely just slide off of the cathode. As these pile up I let the cathode plate sit in them and it makes the cathode surface area even bigger and of course I can crank up the current more if I wanted. It seems to plate all over the bottom of the tank even though most of the crystals deposit on the cathode itself.

Finally some other stuff I have noticed and don't know if it matters or not....

Distance between anode and cathode doesn't seem to matter much at all. Close or far it runs at the same current. Also I can let the cathode go all the way to the bottom of the tank and sit in the crystals without affecting things, in fact it seems to help with surface area on the cathode.

So am I really messing up here? Should I adjust the chemistry to 60 g/l and 30 g/l copper, maintain 5 inch spacing and 4 inch from bottom etc. etc...? And If so why? I'm willing to do it of course if there are really good reasons for doing so. Its just what I've got is working or so it seems.


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## Oz (Feb 19, 2010)

jedrickj said:


> Why go to 60 grams/liter if I can get away with 32 grams in solution and cut the amount of silver in solution?



If you start with only 32 grams per liter Ag, then you can only add about 4 grams per liter Cu before you will get copper contamination with your silver, and that is only if you started with no copper in your electrolyte.


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## jedrickj (Feb 20, 2010)

Oz said:


> jedrickj said:
> 
> 
> > Why go to 60 grams/liter if I can get away with 32 grams in solution and cut the amount of silver in solution?
> ...



What is your math here Oz? How are you calculating this?


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## Oz (Feb 20, 2010)

1 gram of copper will displace 3.4 grams of silver in a nitric solution. If you get much below 20 grams per liter silver in a cell you will start getting co-disposition of copper.


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## goldsilverpro (Feb 20, 2010)

Look at it in this very simplistic way. There is a finite amount of nitrate in the solution and it is most all associated with the copper and silver in the solution. When the copper dissolves, it requires extra nitrate ion. This nitrate ion is robbed from what is associated with the silver and the silver plates out. Therefore, the copper increases in the solution and the silver decreases, at the ratio of 1:3.4, weightwise. There is only so much nitrate ion to go around.


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