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TDS Meters Don’t Work For Colloidal Silver 2

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We have some users write to us asking questions like this:

I am writing to you with a huge concern. I use the Spooky2 to make colloidal silver, I use the calculator to adjust the information, 500 ml. would make 20 ppm. After I made my first batch after following the instructions verbatim,  I measure it and it gives me 5 ppm and not 20 ppm. After not reaching the 20 ppm (as well as understanding that it is my 1st time and I might have missed something) I left the program running for another 8 hours and then after that it gave me 9 ppm. Now I am on my second batch and following the same procedure and when it is done I measure it and it gave me 3 ppm. I am very concerned because the calculator in my program seems to not be accurate. I am also concerned because if I am having discrepancies with it making colloidal silver, if I try to make another remedy for something else, how can I trust the fidelity of the process if this is currently happening.

I have taken pictures to prove my point, please take a look and I am open to understand something that I might have misread or misinterpreted or missed.

Take a look at the pictures attached.

Please let me know if there are any adjustments I need to make on my end.

TDS Meters Don’t Work For Colloidal Silver

Most people are under the mistaken impression that they can read the concentration of silver in ppm in their colloidal silver with a Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) meter. To understand why it will not read correctly, it is necessary to understand how a TDS meter works.

Inside of a TDS meter is an electrical circuit which measures the resistance between its two electrodes when immersed in a liquid. This circuit applies an AC voltage to the electrodes, and then measures the AC current which flows between the two electrodes. This reading is then corrected for temperature (if its a high quality instrument), and electrode geometry. The result is a measure of Total Ionic Content. The name Total Dissolved Solids is actually a misnomer, as a lot of dissolved solids will not read at all on a TDS meter since they do not ionize when they dissolve. Sugar is such a substance. If you were to dissolve a tablespoon of table sugar in a cup of distilled water and read it with a TDS meter, the resulting reading would be zero.

The reason AC is used instead of DC voltage on the electrodes is to keep the metals in the solution from plating onto the electrodes. With AC, anything that plates onto the negative electrode will in theory come off when the polarity reverses. AC also keeps the ions from migrating from one electrode to the other, thereby keeping the solution homogeneous.

Another thing which must be understood is the actual meaning of parts per million (ppm). PPM means the weight of one substance contained in a given weight of another different substance. For example, if a million pounds of bread flour contained 1 pound of dirt, it would be 1 ppm dirt in the flour. We are not interested in flour though, we are interested in silver ions in water. For silver, one PPM means 1 gram of silver in 1 million grams of water, which is equivalent to 1 milligram of silver in 1 kilogram of water. Since water weighs 1 gram per milliliter, this is equivalent to 1 milligram of silver per liter of water.

The problem with measuring silver ions goes back to the what the TDS meter actually measures – electrical current (conductivity). In a solution, electrical current (charge) is carried by ions moving through the solution, and current is actually ions moving per time. It doesn’t matter whether it is a silver ion, or a sodium ion etc. However, not all ions are equal, each kind of ion has a different weight. For example, a single sodium ion weighs 23, while a silver ion weighs 108, or 4.7 times as much as a sodium ion. Yet, the TDS meter cannot distinguish between the two.

Another source of error is that ionic silver is not just silver, it is a silver oxide, or silver chloride or some other silver salt. Therefore, the ppm of the colloidal silver will have a different value for the same amount of silver depending on the silver salt present. It is not possible to just have silver ions, there will always be a matching anion present, like hydroxide, chloride, nitrate, etc.

Most TDS meters are calibrated to read a mix of ions normally found in ground and drinking water. This is done by adjusting the circuitry to get a specific reading while the TDS meter electrodes are immersed in a standardized solution of salt. The salt solution is just used as a repeatable reference, and the TDS meter is not calibrated to read the actual ppm of the salt solution.

The result of these considerations is that the only TDS reading that is accurate for silver is ZERO, and any other reading will be incorrect. A TDS meter is not very useful for measuring silver but is useful for measuring the purity of the water used to make colloidal silver.

Then, how do we know colloidal silver has been successfully made?

You could test it with a laser light. Shine the laser through the beaker, and you will see clearly the path of a ray of light passing through it visible.

Just as the video below:

To learn how to make colloidal silver step by step, pls check: https://www.spooky2-mall.com/blog/step-by-step-instruction-of-making-colloidal-silver/

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2 Comments

  1. is there an instrument / tool that we can use to measure the ppm silver content in the CS we make with Spooky2?

    1. It’s hard to find the strength of CS. People often use a TDS meter. However, colloidal silver is silver particles that are suspended in solution – only silver ions are dissolved. So TDS meters will only measure the ionic silver strength, not the colloidal strength.

      For more details, please check the link:
      https://www.spooky2-mall.com/blog/how-to-find-the-strength-of-colloidal-silver/

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