Question for the Teeming Millions, hoping one or more of you ha the Straight Dope on products like the Water Imp/Elf.
We have particularly hard water and have had mineral deposits in our dishwasher. A neighbor indicated that their mineral issue seem to have abated since they installed something that seems to be bogus to my initial impression. This product is a wire that is wrapped around the incoming water pipe that is supposed to generate “powerful low frequency signals” that “asynchronously via an aerial create a strong magnetic field” that is to act on the minerals in the water preventing “hard crystalline deposits inside pipes, boilers and domestic appliances”.
I’d love it, if it worked, but it seems (to my eye) to be bogus tech.
In 15 years in the water treatment business, I’ve never seen convincing data that any of the hundreds of magnetic gadgets sold for water treatment work. Bogus Tech.
Is that the one that uses quantum harmonic vibrations from the Earth’s Schuman resonance? Yeah, that works real well. It exerts a powerful force upon your wallet.
Stationary Engineer here. I remember about 15 to 20 years ago there were some companies out there selling some sort of magnetic for cooling towers in place of chemical treatments. Their litature did not add up to me and I have not heard of it years so I assume they were taken out.
the minerals that cause hardness are not magnetic. anyway where would the minerals do after being exposed to the magnet but either plug up the pipe right there or continue to flow in the water. short term exposure to a weal magnetic field does not change the chemical behavior of those minerals.
Like others have said, completely bogus technology.
When I first heard about them my first thought was “Okay, so you have a magent wrapped around the pipe that pulls magnetic minerals to it. What then? They are stuck to the inside wall of the pipe where the magent is? How long till your pipe is clogged?”
No, no! The magnet changes the negative polar crystaline structure of the water molecules, making them smaller, more metaphysical and slipperyer. Or something.
There have been magnetic water conditioners sold in industry for years, and I always wondered what they could be doing. A default assumption could be that they are bogus. However, I would have denounced scanning tunneling microscopy as an obvious hoax if I had the chance, so I’m eager to hear some kind of evidence about a longstanding product like magnetic water treaters being bogus before I’m sure.
Magnets are weird. They push on water and bismuth and pyrolytic graphite. In fact, a neodymium iron boron magnet can push hard enough on a postage-stamp sized plate of pyrolytic graphite to stably levitate it, without any control system or cryogenics. I’ve certainly heard reasonable sounding and common statements turn out to be wrong about these things. So, my best guess is that magnetic water treatment is a hoax, but I don’t think I know.
FWIW the Mcmaster-Carr company used to sell them in their famous and huge catalog, and I just looked and couldn’t find them now.
They are in fact tremendously effective in their designed function, which is to precipitate a steady stream of money out of its suspension in the wallets of the innocent and gullible.
Yep, any hard water treatment system that uses a coil wrapped round a wire is bogus. However, a magnetic trap can be a great idea for the heating side of the boiler system. This is a strong magnet in the circulating loop which traps any rust particles that have flaked off the inside of the radiators, preventing sludge settling in the lower sections of the pipework. When ours gets cleaned each year, it is a real surprise to see how much it has collected.
Hmmm. Just to play devil’s advocate, if you wrap a wire around the supply pipe, and pass enough current through the wire to make the pipe nice and hot, won’t calcium carbonate (whose solubility oddly decreases with increasing temperature) come out of solution onto the pipe wall, and leave the water less hard?
I looked into them in the past and didn’t find any evidence that they work. I did find the following that indicates that they don’t.
he following info can be seen at this Site.
“The Consumer Reports in 1996 tested an over $500 magnet water treatment device. Two water heaters, over a two-year period, had over 10,000 gallons heated. One was “treated” with the magnetic treatment and one was not. The water heaters were cut open, and the tanks were found to contain the same quantity and texture of scale. There was no difference according to Consumers Reports.
Note: Those who claim any product will solve all water problems used to be called a “snake oil salesman.” You, the consumer, must do your homework … and “buyer beware.” We repeat … we have NOT actually seen physical evidence, “proof,” that any brand of magnetic water conditioner works.”
And here
Tests of non chemical scale control devices in a once-through system. G.J.C. Limpert and J.L. Raber. Materials Performance, Vol. 24, No. 10, 40-45, (1985), Oct.
The abstract of this 10-year study at the 3M Corporation reads as follows:
"Experiments were conducted in a test heat exchanger system to evaluate 10 nonchemical scale and corrosion control devices. These devices may perform either by electrostatic, magnetic, electronic, or catalytic mechanisms. Chemical tests also compared results with non-chemical systems to insure the test conditions were not so severe that scale prevention was impossible. Water from a single deep well known to cause calcium carbonate scale when heated was used in all tests. The test heat exchanger was a two-tube shell and tube with steam applied to the shell side. Water flow was either in series or parallel through the two tubes,depending on the desired test conditions. No device tested significantly reduced the amount of scale formed, compared to the controls. Proprietary chemicals containing phosphorous reduced scale formation almost completely."
An internal report (PDF format) (OSTI.GOV | U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) by a group of engineers at the U.S. Dept of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore Laboratory describes a carefully-done series of experiments that failed to reveal any beneficial effects of MWT at one of their water treatment facilities.
We got a free sample of one of these things at work. I installed it a few weeks ago, because - hey, it was free. I have yet to notice any difference.
BTW, the claim is not that the calcium ions are magnetic, nor that they will stick to the pipe (that would be Bad). Supposedly they become polarised in such a way that they are less attracted to the tanks, pipes, heating elements etc, so rather than being deposited they stay in solution and get flushed away with the water. The manufacturer even says that the treated water will help to soften and remove existing scale!
As a chemist, I find that this all trips my bogometer (bogosimeter?) somewhat. I shall let you know if I notice anything (you’re supposed to wait three to four months before giving it up as a bad job).
"Scalewizard is a small, electronic unit which is easily connected to the rising main and a suitable power source. Once connected, it emits a computer modulated signal which actually changes the properties of the calcium crystals which normally form scale.
The electronic disturbance of these crystals stops build up of scale by preventing them from adhering to each other. Water solubility is increased and therefore, existing scale dissolves back into the water and is gradually removed.
There are no chemical changes to the water content which will retain beneficial minerals and taste the same."
As a chemist I don’t see how this is possible, but like I said, it was free and I was curious.
Now that sounds like something that could be tested. Do they have any “in vitro” tests to prove that?
I’m not a chemist, and the “computer modulated signal” is nicely ambiguous (RF?), but do you know of any non-metallic crystals whose properties can be altered by radio frequency signals?
It would also be interesting to find out if this device emits anything in the RF range, and at what frequency and strength. Not too difficult to do. I don’t know what newfangled gadgets are used nowadays, but in my time we’d grab a grid-dip meter from the toolbox.
The same companies that sell these water-treatment magnets are also claim that a similar device attached to a car’s fuel line will improve fuel efficiency. Once again, despite all the hype, there is no scientific proof that it works:- pseudoscience. (The second half of the article deals with “fuel savers”)