Process
Copper-silver ionization is a dispersive process that introduces long-lived, stable, positively charged copper and silver ions into the water system. The ions bond electrostatically with negative sites on bacterial cell walls and denature proteins. Over the long term, ionization thus disperses and destroys biofilms and slimes that can harbor Legionella, the bacteria responsible for legionellosis (Legionnaires' disease). Complete control of a water system can take 30 to 45 days. Flow cells should be cleaned periodically to maintain the system; in a hospital, this task can be delegated to the facility's utility engineers.
Forensic scientist Randy Fornshell of the Sedgwick County Regional Forensic Science Center explains that copper-silver ionization is a modern implementation of the ancient Greek practice of reducing bacteria in wine vessels by lining them with silver, and controlling algae and fungi with copper. Fornshell notes that copper-silver ionization has been effective in swimming pools (it is an alternative to chlorine) and is becoming adopted by larger municipalities.
Replacing chlorination with copper-silver ionization to keep water safe was one response of Frederick Memorial Hospital, Frederick, Maryland, to new requirements in the 2001 Guidelines for Design and Construction of Hospital and Healthcare Facilities, issued by the American Institute of Architects. Ionization is in many cases installed because more convenient and cost-effective than other approaches.
Read more about this topic: Copper-silver Ionization
Famous quotes containing the word process:
“Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
“[Wellesley College] is about as meaningful to the educational process in America as a perfume factory is to the national economy.”
—Nora Ephron (b. 1941)
“The moralist and the revolutionary are constantly undermining one another. Marx exploded a hundred tons of dynamite beneath the moralist position, and we are still living in the echo of that tremendous crash. But already, somewhere or other, the sappers are at work and fresh dynamite is being tamped in place to blow Marx at the moon. Then Marx, or somebody like him, will come back with yet more dynamite, and so the process continues, to an end we cannot foresee.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)