Production of H-minus Ion Enriched-Water by Electrolysis and answers to some commonly-asked questions site located at http://h-minus-ion.vpinf.com Introduction First,
for a recap, the term ERW stands
for "electrolyzed reduced water", or water which has been
electrochemically
modified by electrolysis to enrich it with the h-minus ion (in a caged,
protected form, of course, given its incredibly short mean free
lifetime
in many environments!) Further, the term "RW" stands for the
broader
category of "reduced water", which includes water which has had it's
ORP
shifted into the reducing region by any of a number means, only a small
percentage of which might involve electricity or
electrolysis. Therefore,
while the category of RW includes ERW, it also includes water which
exhibits
a high concentration of H-minus ions, but which was not produced by any
electrical means (such as electrolysis). Donations and Support for this Website This freely-offered educational website has been totally self-supported by the author, Vinny Pinto, since its inception (and many of my websites were started between August 2000 and June 2003). While I offer the content on this website freely, as a gift to all from my heart, it is quite obvious that not only did my research in these realms (and also my training, including formal education, that allowed me to offer this material in the first place) incur costs, but there are also monthly and yearly costs associated with web hosting, domain registration, etc. As you have likely noticed, I have chosen not to accept any advertising on any of my websites. As a result of all of these factors, any funds that you might choose to donate toward supporting my research work and this site will be very much appreciated. Thus, I am seeking donations to help me to support this site -- even two dollars helps! If you wish to donate, you may do so by using your credit card, ATM card, debit card, or transfer from your bank account, via fully secure means. To make a donation, please go to the Donations and Support page ! All transactions are secure; in all cases, you get to choose the donation amount! Thank you very much! Vinny Over the past year, I have received number of e-mails, at the rate of about 3 per week, asking me questions about:
Notes on "Poor Results" Obtained With Kitchen Countertop Ionizers In response to many inquiries: an ORP of about -150 using tap water from a Jupiter Technos or other counter-top ionizer is perfectly normal, and appropriate for the entire class of countertop tapwater ionizers, since the water is moving past the electrodes at a fairly fast rate, and since most tap water has little in the way of Ca, Mg or Na ions to increase conductivity. I do have a souped-up Technos Jupiter which produces "alkaline" water with an ORP of about -820 mv, but it does not run on direct-supply tap water, but rather pre-treated water (0.1 g/liter of NaCl added) from a 5 gallon reservoir the flow rate of which is controlled precisely by a digitally-controlled metering pump, usually at a flow rate of about 1.8 gallons per minute. However,
the
Technos Jupiter had to
be beefed up to handle the increased current flow in the electrolysis
chamber,
due to overheating of the power supply. I needed to drill the
case
with ventilation holes and add two muffin fans to force air through the
device and especially over the circuit boards. Notes on Batch Water Ionizers, Electrodes, Electrode Size, and Membranes I have never heard of anyone successfully using porous cotton as a "membrane", although it appears that one correspondent has not been entirely unsuccessful. Here is my own critique of common home-brew water ionizer designs... First,
what we
DO know about what does
work well: I tend to use large surface area electrodes and membranes so that run time is 15 minutes or less, and the commercial products seem to do the same. Yes, you will lose some of the H-minus at a 12-hour run time, due to light, heat, oxygen dissolving in the water and reacting with some free H, and also steady-state escape of H2 into the atmosphere, which will cause (vapor partial pressure and dielectric rules) more H-minus to come out of dielectric interstitial water "cages" and revert to being plain 'ole H2 gas, dissolved. For
the membrane, I find that most folks
use Gore-Tex or treated Gore-Tex, or some other off-brand substitute
PTFE
fabric with small pores. Gore-Tex is extremely pissy about
providing
even small samples measuring over 1" by 1" of their fabric; they claim
their refusal is due to contractual protections built into their
agreements
with their major customers. They are simply
uncooperative. I am told that one can go
to some well-supplied
fabric stores and purchase any of several varieties of nylon, PTFE or
"waterproof
but breathable synthetic" fabrics, and use these as the membranes,
backed
by some rigid screening to provide structural stability. My
own tests
indicate that several of these fabrics seem to work well. Of
course, some good lab supply houses
carry rolls of treated PTFE filter membrane fabric for ionic
separation,
but it is costly. Some Notes to Two Correspondents Regarding Home-brew Water Ionizers I suspect that you are seeing poor results because of all of the following factors:
Regarding your observations of your cell: Mineral buildup on cathode is not unusual, and this is why all commercial water ionizers use some form of self-cleaning after each cycle, which may involve either:
I suspect that the main reason you noted so little increase in current flow with larger electrodes was the small effective surface area of the membrane. The ORP will eventually "fall off" (regress toward positive) after prolonged run times due to all the following:
Once your design is successful and stable, you should not need run times of more than 10 to 20 minutes per batch. I have several friends, each trained scientists with massive experiential background in electricity, electronics and engineering, who have built massive bulk generators of H-minus-ion charged water using large rectangular 30-gallon or 40-gallon (in one case, 200 gallon) plastic-walled wells, divided in the center by a commercial laboratory-quality PTFE fabric membrane on rigid plastic screening, and using massive parallel platinum/titanium electrodes, with up to 210 vDC as the ionizing current. Of course, this massive DC voltage could kill or maim someone in an instant, so massive and multi-layered automatic safety disconnects are needed to protect the operator during those "thoughtless" moments which we all experience. Example: I once, at age 13, grabbed a hot power supply wire (in my UHF radio research laboratory) carrying +1,400 vDC [at up to 1 ampere continuous] with my right hand, while holding a grounded metal bar with my left hand. It almost killed me. I simply was not paying attention! If you decide to use voltages over 24 vDC, please be CAREFUL! YES, PLEASE BE VERY CAREFUL! One above-mentioned friend who has built massive batch water ionizers almost died as a result of a massive shock received when he accidentally grabbed the two wet and HOT electrodes with his bare wet (salted water) hands, and spent months with painful burns as a result. Fortunately, he fell (was thrown) backwards by the convulsive effect on his arms, and the force pulled the DC power cables out of the power supplies, disconnecting the current as his head hit the floor and he was knocked unconscious (for 20 minutes). Now, 10 years later, he has some serious cardiac arrythmias as a result of damage to his heart from the current. The 0.35 grams of NaCl per gallon of H20: about 1/4 to 1/3 of a 1/8th teaspoon kitchen measuring spoon. I usually try to find something like a tiny spoon which holds about 350 mg, to make it easy to shovel out the salt. By the way, I was an EE at one time in my life, but have switched careers many times since then. The
above topic leads us to... . . . Notes on Some Commercial Laboratory Hydrogen Generators Which Use Electrolysis I have in my laboratory a commercial ($9,000 new) hydrogen generator which uses a pressurized electrolytic well (heavily-doped water in a special mesh polymer electrode, constantly refilled under high pressure via high-pressure pump from a water reservoir) to produce the pressurized hydrogen gas, and it uses for the electrolyzing current a 24-volt DC supply which can source 38 amperes continuously. Phew! This monster produces about 300 ml per minute of hydrogen gas, at up to 120 psi above ambient atmospheric pressure. I
have in my lab another ($11,000 new)
commercial hydrogen generator which uses pure platinum coaxial
electrodes
in a coaxial bath of heavily-doped (sodium hydroxide) water.
The
H gas percolates thru the central hollow negative platinum electrode to
escape into a central tube and, after filtering, supplies pressurized
hydrogen
gas at up to 100 psi above atmospheric. Runs 24 volts DC at about 17
amps. Some General Questions and Answers About Reduced Water and the Physics Thereof You asked: Could you tell me what does the H- ion looks like? To be negative it must have one proton and two electrons, right? How can it be stable? My answer: The H-minus ion is a proton with 2 electrons, and, as related on my website, it was previously thought that it primarily existed in stable form at high temperatures in plasmas (you know, super heated gases which are radiant) and in stars. It was thought that its half-life at STP on earth's surface was only on the order of femtoseconds, due to reactivity. However -- and there is more on my H-minus website about this -- it has been discovered that apparently singlet H and H-minus can indeed be stable at STP in the biosphere, in any of several ways (see my website). In the water, it appears that the H- forms clusters or cages of water around it, forming structured but amorphous water clusters, and that the cages protect it until a biological molecule wants the electron. In silica (as in MegaH, aka MegaH-™ ) and certain other molecules which are already in a particular amorphous crystalline configuration, H-minus can also exist and remain protected for a long time in stable form, forming a hydride known as a metallic dielectric interstitial hydride, whereas the really reactive and nasty hydrides such as LiH and CaH store H-minus as a metallic interstitial hydride. Question: As you generate high negative ORP what happens to the pH level in the alkaline water? Answer: Well, electrolysis of water is only one of several ways to create reduced water high in H-minus ions and their associated water cages or clusters, and with extremely negative ORP, and it is about the only method which might involve significant shift of pH to the strongly alkaline region due to concentration of alkaline mineral ions. (The other methods are largely proprietary, and I can reveal little further information about them. However, to tantalize you and perhaps tease your mind into making some intuitive shifts, I can tell you that I have in my kitchen (and more in my lab) an ordinary 1/2 gallon amber jug, with no electrical or electronic devices attached at all. I add tap water with an ORP of perhaps +390 to the jug, and the next morning, the water has an ORP of -220, and tests reveal that the water has strong reducing powers, which is really a better indicator of presence of the H-minus ion than is ORP alone.) To learn more about non-electrical means of producing RW, you may wish to see my page on this site entitled Means and Methods of Modifying the ORP and Particularly, the Reducing Potential, of Water Nonetheless, when performing electrolysis to produce "ionized" electrolyzed reduced water (ERW), the shift to alkaline pH of the reduced water is essentially an accidental corollary, and not inextricably linked to concentration of H-minus ions. Having said that, in general it is true that pH continues to increase as we drive the ORP of the reduced water more and more into the negative region when reducing water via electrolysis. For example, I have here several devices which produce electrolyzed reduced water (ERW) with an ORP of about -830 mv. (some even ranging to -920 mv.), and at an ORP of -830, the pH usually measures in the range of 11.2 to 12.2. However, see notes below for further information on this! Question: i.e. at -150mv the pH may be around 8.5 as the ORP increases; what is the correlation, i.e. does the pH just continue or does it stabilize? Answer: Increases only slowly. See text and examples above. Further, if this high pH were an issue of concern, one could find ways of scavenging the metal (Zn, Ca, Na, Mg, etc.) ions which are producing the high pH, if desired, or of neutralizing them. Question: If so how does the water reach a saturation point with the pH and continue to increase the ORP in the negative direction. I am missing the link between how the pH increases ( I believe it has to do with the mineral content in the water to start with ) and the ORP is splitting of OH- as more electrons are introduced into the water through the electrolysis process? Answer: In "traditional" electrolysis of water through a membrane to produce reduced water, it is commonly believed that the pH increases due to a concentration of the ions of certain minerals (Ca, Mg, Zn, etc.) which are produced and then trapped in the reducing cell by the membrane. Question: The reason I am asking this is that if the pH does increase with increasing negative ORP then it can't be beneficial to drink water with a very high pH, even though the ORP is highly negative. Answer: For most people, it does not seem to be an issue. The pH is really not that serious an issue, even for human consumption, as there are several factors to consider:
Question: I was reading about your souped-up Jupiter Technos ionizer and am interested in building a unit to produce some water with an ORP in the range of -700 to -900mv. We don't have any machines in the country that can do this that are available to buy. Those that we can import are far too expensive and out of our price range so we are going to have a go at making our own. Do you have any more notes on the finer detail of how you went about modifying the Jupiter. This will allow us to do some experimenting of our own. Then we can set the record straight in our own minds. Answer: What country are you in? In the USA, one can buy (see my website for the link to Ion and Light in SF) a Japanese Super Oxide Labo for about $1,600, and it will produce over 1/2 gallon each batch of highly reduced water with an ORP of -831. The smaller Super Oxide Mini sells for about $1,200. I recently sold one in slightly-used condition for $600. I souped up the Jupiter Technos (I have mentioned some of this on the website) and created a new system by:
With this device, I can produce strong ERW (ORP of -800 mv.) at the rate of about 2 gallons per minute. Unfortunately, if you read my description of what I did to the Jupiter Technos closely, you will see that the total cost is about $2,000, which is well more than the purchase price for a Super Oxide Labo commercial batch water ionizer (about $1,600). Further, it takes up a good part of my kitchen and kitchen wall, and looks like a Rube Goldberg invention. Question: Do you recommend any tests that we should have done with our blood etc prior to us testing the effects of ERW our health? Answer: Don't know anything about blood or anything, don't know about tests either. Question: Also what do you think of the "Ultra-Super Water Filter" on the market. They are trying to discredit the water ionizers on the market. Do they have any merit in what they are saying? Answer: Some of the folks pushing distilled water and hyper-clean water regularly knock tap water, well water and ionized water, and in fact, all water except their distilled water. That is their business. Use your mind, heart and intuition and make your own choices. I cannot and will not do this for you. Question: A question for you. If water contains Silica Hydride (as well as Potassium, Calcium and Magnesium) would this hide/disguise the true negative ORP potential of the water? Your answer would be appreciated. Answer: You have asked a fascinating question. Why? Well, here goes: First, when you say "silica hydride", do you mean: 1) the silica hydride which was know only to primarily industrial chemists until now, and which is a rather reactive gas, which is an interstitial metallic hydride Second, the only "silica hydride" of the latter type (2) above available to consumers is already "charged" with the negative hydrogen ion, and thus, when exposed to water, will slowly start releasing it to maintain ionic equilibrium and gas pressure equilibrium (basic laws of physics and chemistry). When silica hydride (type 2) is depleted of the h-minus ion, then it is no longer silica hydride, but silica in a colloidal form, with perhaps a small amount of calcium, magnesium and other trace substances present as well. So, if the silica hydride it truly the stuff mentioned as Type 2 above, then it will tend to DONATE H- ions to the surrounding aqueous environment (if any), unless the ORP of water, due to the H-minus ion and H-singlet forms, is WEAKER (smaller negative ORP) than the equilibrium point for "fresh" silica hydride, which is about -880 mv. However, if the ORP (due to H-minus ion and H-singlet forms) of a surrounding aqueous environment is STRONGER (larger negative ORP) than the equilibrium point of silica hydride, then conceivably the silica hydride might accumulate even more of the H-minus ion, thus depleting the ORP. Of course, if you put "depleted" silica hydride, which is really now only silica in colloidal form (in a special buckeyball state) in water which has a strongly negative ORP due to presence of H-ion and singlet atomic H (rather than a strongly negative ORP due to dissolved H2 gas, which is also a possibility), then the nano-colloidal silica , if certain other conditions are met, will start to "grab" some of the free H- ions and slowly, molecules of nano-colloidal silica will be converted to silica hydride (type 2). So,
FINALLY, the answer to your question,
bearing in mind the qualifications above, is: Question: (next,
the above writer asked.
. . . .) Answer: First, tell me what you mean by "our water product", and next, it is highly possible for water with even a high ORP to have strong clustering properties which would reduce the surface tension, although less likely than for water with a more reducing ORP. As far as the antioxidant possibilities of "your water product ", here are some points to consider:
2) On the other hand, ERW ionized water and water containing MegaH (aka MegaH-) not only show a strongly negative ORP, but also strong antioxidant effects in both chemical and biochemical (life-type) reactions 3) bear in mind that an ORP in the range of +50 to +150, as you cite, still indicates that there may be some a modest quantity of H-ions present (or, of course, dissolved H2 gas), and if so, will indeed be able to exhibit some antioxidant properties. If, on the other hand, the low positive ORP is due to dissolved H2 gas, then there will be little in the way of free H- ions, and little antioxidant activity.
Now, a teaser: there are actually NUMEROUS other ways of creating H-minus ions in water, and without electricity/electrolysis, and often without the artificial corollary of high alkalinity as well. These methods yield water commonly referred to as "reduced water", or RW. However, many of these methods really cannot get the H-minus concentration to a place where the resultant ORP is much stronger than -300 mv. There are a few that can go much further. If
you wish to know more about this
topic in general, you may wish to check out my page on this site
entitled Means and Methods
of Modifying the ORP and Particularly, the Reducing Potential, of Water
On Breathing Gas Enriched With the H-minus Ion I
created a
device a few years ago which
allowed me to breathe, as 8% of my air intake, a mixture of H2 and
H-minus
gas (the H-minus gas was stabilized in a gaseous cage via a proprietary
method.). If I breathed the mix for about 20 minutes, being
careful
to avoid sparks (coulda been an explosion!), the effects were very
interesting,
and included a sense of well-being. Three hours later, the ORP of my
urine
was in the -450 mv range. Ten hours later, it was still at
-380 mv.
I know only one other person who has been foolhardy enough to do this
experiment;
he is a fellow researcher and very wild. MegaH (aka MegaH-)™ is a registered trademark owned by Flantech Group. |
Return
to the Negative Hydrogen Ion Main Page at the Negative
Hydrogen Ion
Website You
may also
wish to check out the page
on this site entitled Means
and Methods of Modifying the ORP and Particularly, the Reducing
Potential,
of Water Donations and Support for this Website This freely-offered educational website has been totally self-supported by the author, Vinny Pinto, since its inception (and many of my websites were started between August 2000 and June 2003). While I offer the content on this website freely, as a gift to all from my heart, it is quite obvious that not only did my research in these realms (and also my training, including formal education, that allowed me to offer this material in the first place) incur costs, but there are also monthly and yearly costs associated with web hosting, domain registration, etc. As you have likely noticed, I have chosen not to accept any advertising on any of my websites. As a result of all of these factors, any funds that you might choose to donate toward supporting my research work and this site will be very much appreciated. Thus, I am seeking donations to help me to support this site -- even two dollars helps! If you wish to donate, you may do so by using your credit card, ATM card, debit card, or transfer from your bank account, via fully secure means. To make a donation, please go to the Donations and Support page! All transactions are secure; in all cases, you get to choose the donation amount! Thank you very much! Vinny |
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