I'm kind of new here, but I figured I'd share this commonly used method of making "True Colloidal Silver Nanoparticles" easily, and relatively safely at home. This is Woo-Free.
You're not going to have to buy any (pure) silver wire, a piece of bullion that you might have to give your ID to buy, no electrical transformers using deadly, or at least harmful (.1 to .2 amps WILL kill you, while more will usually only burn you and/or knock you the f**k right out, requiring artificial respiration to avoid death) amperage or voltages.
Straight up, you're going to need silver nitrate (yeah, that stuff again), distilled water, plain old food grade (or better) citric acid (trisodium citrate)... and a transparent (so you can see a faint color change), heat resistant beaker or vessel.
I want to stress that this is true colloidal silver, as compared to ionic silver. This has a zero charge on the silver atom, and is truly made of real nanoparticles that you won't see, unlike the ionic method using STS, or the "flaky" silver electrolytic method. Electrolytically-derived silver is actually a mixture of ionic and colloidal silver. When people talk about the effectiveness of "colloidal silver", and they're using electricity to make it, are they half telling the truth, or are they half lying? I don't know, I always use the STS method myself, but so many people swear up and down on colloidal silver that I just wanted to introduce this easy method of producing true silver nanoparticles of colloidal silver used in materials labs worldwide. Being true nanoparticles, take care and use the usual safety precautions associated with nanotechnology.
The basic idea, the reaction behind it, is as follows:
4Ag(+) + C6H5O7Na3 + 2H2O → 4Ag(0) + C6H5O7H3 + 3Na(+) + H(+)+ O2↑
The sign in parentheses indicates the charge, or lack of, on the ion or atom.
The nitrate is in the water, and not necessary in the reaction, it does match up (the 3Na(+) and the H(+))with the equation, though. Don't worry about the possible variance in the sodium ions in the equation due to using the various (mono, di, or trisodium) salts of citric acid.
That all taken care of, here is the generally safe and easy procedure. Avoid breathing in any dust from the silver nitrate, wear gloves while handling it, and don't burn yourself on the boiling water. Why not go all "chem lab", and wear some (safety) glasses, too.
1.a) Make a solution of 0.25 grams of the silver nitrate and enough distilled water to make a 500mL volume of solution. (This is a .003M solution, given that the mole weight of silver is ~108.87g.)
b) Make a separate solution of .25 grams of citric acid in enough distilled water to make a 250mL volume of solution. (a simple 1% solution, basically)
2.) Bring the silver nitrate solution to boiling.
3.) Add, drop by drop, 50mL of the citrate solution to the boiling solution while stirring or mixing the boiling solution.
4.) continue heating the solution until it appears a faint or pale yellow color.
5.) Let it cool until appropriate for use (spraying).
Yup, that is WAY easy.
The hardest part will probably be getting the silver nitrate, which you can usually find on ebuy, or wherever. It's not controlled, watched, or even suspected. There are MANY uses for it, even at home, that you could give any (nosy) person that might want to know what you want it for. You can get citric acid in most grocery stores, let alone most likely where you found the Silver nitrate. If you really want to get specific, get "trisodium citrate", food grade, analytical grade, or tech grade, whatever...
Now, at a roughly (yes, it is in fact a bit less, but...) .003M solution (approximately 3000 micromoles/L), this amount of silver is considerably (exponentially) larger than the STS concentrations of something under 150 micrograms per plant needed to effect sex reversal (as reported in the literature), you could dilute it (with distilled water, of course) to one-tenth or one-twentieth strength (or to whatever, even smaller if you might use mulitiple applications - if you're smart enough to play with chemicals, you can do all the math yourself, as you're reading this on a computer with a calculator, or can find an online one... I ain't going there), or just make a much smaller amount, according to your needs, assuming that colloidal silver is as effective as ionic silver...
...Which I really don't care about, as I have a near-lifetime supply of STS at my disposal.
Hopefully, if your inspired to try to use this method in sex reversal/feminization, and colloidal silver does in fact work as good as so many say it does, then post some results here, I'm interested to see... even though I'm sticking with the STS method myself.
You're not going to have to buy any (pure) silver wire, a piece of bullion that you might have to give your ID to buy, no electrical transformers using deadly, or at least harmful (.1 to .2 amps WILL kill you, while more will usually only burn you and/or knock you the f**k right out, requiring artificial respiration to avoid death) amperage or voltages.
Straight up, you're going to need silver nitrate (yeah, that stuff again), distilled water, plain old food grade (or better) citric acid (trisodium citrate)... and a transparent (so you can see a faint color change), heat resistant beaker or vessel.
I want to stress that this is true colloidal silver, as compared to ionic silver. This has a zero charge on the silver atom, and is truly made of real nanoparticles that you won't see, unlike the ionic method using STS, or the "flaky" silver electrolytic method. Electrolytically-derived silver is actually a mixture of ionic and colloidal silver. When people talk about the effectiveness of "colloidal silver", and they're using electricity to make it, are they half telling the truth, or are they half lying? I don't know, I always use the STS method myself, but so many people swear up and down on colloidal silver that I just wanted to introduce this easy method of producing true silver nanoparticles of colloidal silver used in materials labs worldwide. Being true nanoparticles, take care and use the usual safety precautions associated with nanotechnology.
The basic idea, the reaction behind it, is as follows:
4Ag(+) + C6H5O7Na3 + 2H2O → 4Ag(0) + C6H5O7H3 + 3Na(+) + H(+)+ O2↑
The sign in parentheses indicates the charge, or lack of, on the ion or atom.
The nitrate is in the water, and not necessary in the reaction, it does match up (the 3Na(+) and the H(+))with the equation, though. Don't worry about the possible variance in the sodium ions in the equation due to using the various (mono, di, or trisodium) salts of citric acid.
That all taken care of, here is the generally safe and easy procedure. Avoid breathing in any dust from the silver nitrate, wear gloves while handling it, and don't burn yourself on the boiling water. Why not go all "chem lab", and wear some (safety) glasses, too.
1.a) Make a solution of 0.25 grams of the silver nitrate and enough distilled water to make a 500mL volume of solution. (This is a .003M solution, given that the mole weight of silver is ~108.87g.)
b) Make a separate solution of .25 grams of citric acid in enough distilled water to make a 250mL volume of solution. (a simple 1% solution, basically)
2.) Bring the silver nitrate solution to boiling.
3.) Add, drop by drop, 50mL of the citrate solution to the boiling solution while stirring or mixing the boiling solution.
4.) continue heating the solution until it appears a faint or pale yellow color.
5.) Let it cool until appropriate for use (spraying).
Yup, that is WAY easy.
The hardest part will probably be getting the silver nitrate, which you can usually find on ebuy, or wherever. It's not controlled, watched, or even suspected. There are MANY uses for it, even at home, that you could give any (nosy) person that might want to know what you want it for. You can get citric acid in most grocery stores, let alone most likely where you found the Silver nitrate. If you really want to get specific, get "trisodium citrate", food grade, analytical grade, or tech grade, whatever...
Now, at a roughly (yes, it is in fact a bit less, but...) .003M solution (approximately 3000 micromoles/L), this amount of silver is considerably (exponentially) larger than the STS concentrations of something under 150 micrograms per plant needed to effect sex reversal (as reported in the literature), you could dilute it (with distilled water, of course) to one-tenth or one-twentieth strength (or to whatever, even smaller if you might use mulitiple applications - if you're smart enough to play with chemicals, you can do all the math yourself, as you're reading this on a computer with a calculator, or can find an online one... I ain't going there), or just make a much smaller amount, according to your needs, assuming that colloidal silver is as effective as ionic silver...
...Which I really don't care about, as I have a near-lifetime supply of STS at my disposal.
Hopefully, if your inspired to try to use this method in sex reversal/feminization, and colloidal silver does in fact work as good as so many say it does, then post some results here, I'm interested to see... even though I'm sticking with the STS method myself.
