Norway Approves Ionization In Lieu of Chlorine for Public Pools.
ECOsmarte’s Norway Representative:
I have been in meeting with the director of public health in Norway and he is open for approving ECOsmarte in Norway if we can document the health-bringing with this system. They require documents from a third-party company with a detailed chemical explanation for both ionization and oxidation. They focus on killing bacteria outside copper, because copper alone not killing all relevant bacteria. He try to understand the oxidation process but he argument that there are none statement of production long-time oxidation with this system. The systems seems to only produce short-time oxidation like Ozone not stuffs like adding the chemical peroxomonosulphate. He also argument that this systems is not chlorine free because there always been some salt in water after bathing people. This salt will then generate very small dosis of chlorine when passing the titan electrodes. This side-effects maybe help the systems to function without mean it. Did you have some test documents from third-party?
ECOsmarte:
Are we looking for a commercial approval or residential as we beleive in the Candian/EU where trace chlorine is used for public pools, as well as the count for total swimmers.
ECOsmarte’s Norway Representative:
The system is intended to approve for both installations; Commercial/Public and residential. To get this approved we have to do it first for commercial use, then they accept it of course for private pools.
In Norway they have recently changed the national requirements for commercial pool regarding the earlier min contents of 0.5ppm chlorine. They accept other chemicals and methods if we secure as chlorine to the pipe system, buffer tank, pumps, filter and pool.
We need then to verify the function of the oxidation. Copper are all ready very known.
ECOsmarte:
Has Norway looked at copper only with active oxygen?
The potassium peroxymonopersulphate is nothing but active oxygen. It leaves no residual other than higher Dissolved Oxygen (DO) levels which ECOsmarte accomplishes with the titanium/platinum anodes. It clearly looks like Norway wishes to set standards not involving chlorine residual. It is likely an ECOsmarte pool has 3.0 DO in the source water and 6.0 to 7.0 after running the oxygen for about a week, both residentially and commercially. The maximum DO I have ever seen with the potassium based non-chlorine shocking is 7.5 which I also see on some ECOsmarte pools. 6.5 is our absolutely crystal clear happy pool owner. At 8.0 the pool is cloudy with micro bubbles typically.
The silver is a regulated toxic and not desired by the EU, US, Canada, Australia or Germany which all have restrictions on free and total chlorine and offer dispensation for copper ppm, nothing for silver ppb which is the outcome on a 90/10 or 96/4 copper silver anode. Silver is only of benefit in out of control microbe environments where it inactivates reproduction only, does not really kill. By stopping reproduction it allows the copper to catch-up on the microbe killing. We have not found a single microbe in sixteen years that silver kills in parts per BILLION that is not killed by copper in parts per MILLION.
Normally if any ionization system is approved we go thru easy and I am looking for the best science package we can put together. We are obviously compatible with the potassium peroxymonopersulphate standard, probably needed on commercial pools with high bather loads anyway. I think the answer is to allow approval without the silver which is the current (or last eight years) ionization world class build platform. The copper/silver has simply been out there longer and it stains the pool with a photographic reaction, silver oxide as with photography. It is also highly restricted in backwash or discharge, particularly as water is exchanged at 35 liters per swimmer per day in the EU, Germany, Canada and Australian standards or 5 per cent every day with ignorant regulators that don’t count swimmers in the US and Asia.
Feel free to re-circulate this info. We haven’t made a copper/silver anode for ten years or so but could do so for public pools in Norway only if needed. We do have a new public pools discussion to the EU model at www.ecosmarte.com/publicpools.html. We only install US public pools willing to count swimmers and operate on the EU standards which require .4ppm, .5ppm free chlorine and total chlorine cannot exceed 1.5. Maximum swimmers are regulated and 35 liters of water per swimmer per day are exchanged. Canada, Australia and Germany have slightly more restrictive and lower total chlorine tolerances.
One other key point on public pools. Conventional sand will filter at 50 Microns typically with human skin and blood cells averaging 9 micron. Each 30 minute swimmer ex foliates 1 BILLION Skin Cells. The only way human cells predictably leave a sand filtered pool is with a shock or a floc. With the ECOsmarte Glass Media filters the micron outcome is 2 to 5 microns -- pulling the cells (alive or dead) out of the pools without shock or flocculent. In May or June our Glasspack will receive the NSF 50 rating to go in all sand filters globally.
We are hopeful it will also receive the NSF 61 for drinking water approval just to demonstrate efficacy. This is a big deal for ECOsmarte and for public safety. We put over 1,000 metric tons out in 2010, representing 6,000 to 7,000 pools we believe.
