Reaction in the silver zinc cell

An adiabatic calorimeter was used to measure the thermodynamics of the silver zinc cell. The charge and discharge reactions were shown to take place in two stages involving the production of argentous oxide and argentic oxide respectively. No thermal evidence was found to suggest the existence of a higher oxide of silver. The cell reactions were (1) $$2{\text{Ag + ZnO}} \leftrightharpoons {\text{Ag}}_{\text{2}} {\text{O + Zn, }}\Delta {\text{H = 158}} \cdot {\text{7 kJF}}^{ - {\text{1}}}$$ (2) $${\text{Ag}}_{\text{2}} {\text{O + ZnO}} \leftrightharpoons {\text{Ag}}_{\text{2}} {\text{O}}_{\text{2}} {\text{ + Zn, }}\Delta {\text{H = 176}} \cdot 1{\text{ kJF}}^{ - {\text{1}}}$$ If the cell was left on open circuit for a long period, or the positive electrodes heated, reaction (2) was suppressed and the discharge took place via reaction (1), without any reduction in capacity.