What materials are O3 resistant & what type of O3 generators are there?
Message: 3
Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2000 12:06:35 -0800
From: "Saul Pressman"
Subject: Re: New to the list
Dear Carl,
Oxygen is the only gas that will pick up and hold electrical energy for a time. In doing so, it becomes tremendously active and seeks to combine with all other substances, and return to a lower energy state. The list of substances that are inert to ozone is very short, and includes glass, Teflon, Kynar, Viton, Lexan and silicone. Therefore any ozone generator and auxiliary equipment must be composed of these substances only.
There are several different techniques used to produce medical grade ozone, where freedom from contamination is critical. One type of generator uses an ultraviolet lamp as its source. It produces a very small amount of ozone and is suited to air purification, because UV at the wavelength of 185 nanometers reacts only with oxygen, but it is too weak for medical purposes. A UV lamp degrades over time and eventually burns out.
The second method of ozone production is corona discharge, where a tube with a hot or cold cathode is surrounded by a metal anode. Most modern ones are called dual dielectric, because they have a layer of glass separating each metal component from the gas stream. This prevents contamination of the ozone, but heat is produced due to the heavy current draw, and heat destroys ozone. To compensate for the loss of ozone due to heat, more current is used, producing more heat, in a vicious circle. To dump the heat, fan cooling is critical. The more current used, the greater the chance of electrical arcing and burnout.
Lack of durability has always plagued the ozone generator industry, and was one of the major reasons for doctors mostly abandoning ozone therapy in the US during the Thirties and Forties, in the face of increasing pressure from the FDA and the AMA. I have spoken to doctors who have used ozone for over thirty years and have gone through half a dozen generators in that time, due to the lack of a durable generator. Since most parts in ozone generators are not available off the shelf, if the company goes out of business, there is no way to repair an arced generator, and it sits in the corner collecting dust.
Fortunately, there is a third method of producing clean, medical grade ozone. That method is called cold plasma. It uses glass rods filled with noble gases, excited by high voltage. The voltage jumps between the rods, forming an electrostatic plasma field which turns some of the oxygen into ozone. Since there is no appreciable current, no heat is produced, and there is no possibility of arcing and burnout. Thus the generator will last a very long time, limited only by the quality of the power supply. No cooling fan is required.
The original cold plasma generators were invented by Nikola Tesla in 1898 and manufactured under license in Canada in the 1920s, and they still work 75 years later. Tesla did not patent the idea, but instead gave it freely to mankind for medical therapy.
Cold plasma generators are more expensive to manufacture, and are therefore more expensive to buy. However, due to their inherent longevity, they are the only ones that come with a Lifetime Warranty. Most corona discharge generators come with only a 1 - 3 year warranty.
Another factor to consider is the ozone sauna. If you are going to use ozone in a sauna cabinet, a certain flow rate is necessary to fill the large cabinet. Usually 1/2 l/m is used, and even 3/4 l/m. It is necessary to have a generator that produces a sufficient output at those flow rates. Generally, it is accepted that the therapeutic threshold for ozone concentration is 20 ug/ml (except in some injection protocols). Therefore, make sure that the generator you look at can produce considerably more than this threshold level, because the heat in the sauna will destroy some of the ozone. Many of the corona discharge units have high outputs at 1/32 l/m, but they drop off rapidly at higher flow rates, because they use short ozone tubes. Cold plasma generators generally have a long oxygen/ozone pathway, and so hold up better at higher flow rates, typically producing 50% more ozone concentration at 1/2 l/m than corona discharge. So, they cost more, but you get more, too.
Best of Health
Dr. Saul Pressman, DCh
http://www.plasmafire.com
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