I'm working with a refiner in Michigan who wanted to run silver cells. I got him up and running with 6, 45 gallon Moebius cells and we're making fine silver to beat the band. Now he wants to change the rules. Originally it was fine to run 3 shifts and shut down on Sunday but now he wants to only staff it for 1 shift. The crystals grow too fast to go un-scraped for that long without shorting out. At 200 amps per cell we're making 18 kilo's of fine silver from each cell per day and 5 cells are always running and 1 waiting to run. Every cell has to be broken down after 5 days running due to the copper buildup.
My thought was a slow ( 1 rpm) rotating stainless cylinder with a permanently mounted scraper which will dislodge the silver into a funnel below the cathode to collect what falls. A funnel will allow the fine crystals to collect at one central point where I figure we could build an archemedes screw to constantly empty the funnel over the side of the bath.
We seem to have quite a collection of mechanical minds on this forum, has anyone done this? I'm fishing for opinions here.
My thought was a slow ( 1 rpm) rotating stainless cylinder with a permanently mounted scraper which will dislodge the silver into a funnel below the cathode to collect what falls. A funnel will allow the fine crystals to collect at one central point where I figure we could build an archemedes screw to constantly empty the funnel over the side of the bath.
We seem to have quite a collection of mechanical minds on this forum, has anyone done this? I'm fishing for opinions here.