Getting Technical
Furthermore, as many protagonists of NCWT have been claiming
since simple permanent magnets were first used in the early
1900s, calcium carbonate crystals resulting from applied or
induced magnetic fields tend to appear as the ‘aragonite’ type
rather than the normal calcite type which precipitates from
untreated water.
Examples of these two types of crystals are shown in
Figures 1 and 2 (courtesy of i-Cool Africa, suppliers of Enigma
NCWT products).
A claimed secondary effect of this increased crystallising rate
is an increase in the ‘solvency strength’ of the water because it
has become less saturated and therefore it now has additional
solubilising capacity to dissolve and remove existing deposits
of scale. Re-dissolving and removal of existing scale has been
demonstrated in many field applications of NCWT units.
However, curiously, there have been no accompanying water
chemistry tests confirming that increased dissolving capacity of
the water was, in fact, the mechanism which occurred.
Two further aspects which Cho et. al have investigated are
the applied AC electrical characteristics which produce the
electromagnetic fields and the time spent by flowing water
volumes exposed to the fields. These parameters cannot be
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accurately determined to cover all water qualities, but the
optimum AC voltages appear to be relatively low, ranging
between 12 and 24 volts at frequencies varying over a wide range
from kilohertz to megahertz. Also, ‘sharp’ alternating pulse
configurations modulating across a wide range of amplitudes are
more effective than smoother sine wave type conformations.
It has not been possible to quantify optimum time periods
for exposure of flowing water to alternating electromagnetic
fields, but experimental results have consistently indicated
that less than one second is sufficient provided that all water
flow is perpendicular to a section of the induced magnetic field
vectors. Increasing the exposure time does not appear to be
more effective. However, on some larger volume water circuits,
installing additional NCWT units at different points in the circuits
has been shown to provide more uniform effects throughout the
circulating water volume.
Cho et. al would seem to have addressed most of the major
concerns of critics of NCWT including considerations of variances
in water flow rates. The British NCWT product, Scalewatcher now
designated as ‘Enigma’, is a direct derivation from Cho’s work
Continued on page 49
RACA Journal I February 2020
47