Excellent work. Very pleasant to watch your progress and results.
To the overheating issue, I just add one thing. Amperage = electrons make the silver crystals. Not the voltage. It is very easy to calculate the power consumption. Just multiply voltage with current - and you have the result. There is only certain voltage needed to free silver as silver cations, which will flow through the electrolyte and deposite on the cathode. All "excess voltage" will dissipate as heat.
We try to push the cell to the maximum working speed by forcing the voltage up, causing amps to also ramp up. This inevitably lead to the excessive power consumption, and you can clearly see it as rise in operation temperature of cell. It eventually stabilize at certain temperature - as heat is dissipated from the cell to the enviroment/room etc.
Because there is limited ammount of ions in solution, for shorter period of time we can see conductivity as constant. You can push more amps by ramping the voltage up, but this also cause unwanted overheating and also low current efficiency = bigger electricity bill
As you figured out, simplest way how to get better current density and efficiency is to enlarge the surface area of the electrodes. Sreetips goes with shot - and this obviously help to increase surface area. You can go with casting "plate-like" electrodes. Just don´t fill the mold to the top. Cast for example two 0,5kg bars instead of one 1 kg bar. And then stack these thinner plates bit "diagonally" in the basket, leaving spaces in between them.
Another option would be to cool down the setup somehow. Mount small electric fan to the side of the setup, or put the whole container to the bigger vessel with water - to enlarge heat dissipation surface.
Thanks Orvi, the casting .5kg bars is a good idea, i must confess i hadnt even thought about it. But it would definitely work really well in my setup.
Its funny that you mention the cooling setup, i was thinking of that very thing this weekend. Get a larger container and fill it with water to act as a heat sink.
This opens up interesting ideas and experiments. We know that increasing the temperature creates quick growth just not dense. I was thinking what would happen if you lower the temperature, to say 60 , 50, or 40, maybe 30 degrees. Wouldnt be that difficult with a small freezer, small radiator and a pump. Maybe you would get denser crystal or larger crystal. Im really wondering here, what do you think?
