Reid Harvey, i've been following your attempts at this ceramic watr purifier. it just dawned on me that you might get some good info from a company that i have been following.
Itronics, based in reno nevada, takes the waste from the photo processing industry, and thru their patented process, remove 99.9% of the silver from the goop. this goop had been dumped, usually ending up polluting the rivers around and killing off all the fish and whatever. it is very toxic, and local governments were quite happy to be able to dispose of this "haz matt" stuff. their process then took the left-over sludge, and made a superior grade of fertilizer, named "golden grow". itronics just announced that they now have a process to take the remaining slag, and can make fine glass, and ceramic tile. it might be worth a contact with them. http://www.itronics.com. good luck, jim -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ( reid harvey wrote:)Friends, I've just had a great success in microbiological testing for ten ceramic water purifiers that had been saturated with AgNO3. All but one purifier tested over 99% effective at removal of e coli, in highly contaminated water, with 9,500 bacteria colony units. (The other one was 97%, though the flow was a bit excessive.) Can anyone think of any reason why these silver nitrate filters would not be perfectly acceptable? >From previous experience I've found that the nitrate burns off at about 475oC, so by the time the ceramic is up to 900 to 1000 it would only make sense that the nitrate is history. Still, when I let people know about this I'll recommend an initial lab regime of testing for the presence of nitrate. Also I'm about to saturate with silver chloride. Anyone find this objectionable? One small doubt I have is that this may not be as good a disinfectant as is the silver oxide resulting from saturation with CS. I am also thinking that silver chloride is quite insoluable, so cannot imagine that there would be any deleterious effect. Still, I'm hoping the scientists here can chime in, positively or negatively. I am thinking that there may be no one proper form of silver for treatment, that several may be attractive, depending on a number of purifier variables. Among options should would be silver made by electrolysis, but now there appear to be some new choices. Reid
