Silver-Copper Electrode in Swimming Pool Application

Actually, you can use only silver or only copper even, because both metals have excellent bacteriocidal properties. You can simply hard solder or bolt the terminals together. You should have 2 sets of terminals: 1 for positive and 1 for negative. The unit itself is just a standard low voltage, low current electrolyzer unit.

I hope this helps.

You will probably find you need to reverse polarity at regular intervals, and even if you do this you may get build up of deposits on the plates.
You will probably also need to monitor the current and regulate it in some way, to cope with changes in plate condition.
Del

Instead of fiddling around with making an electrode, why not just use plain old granulated copper sulfide to control algae in your pool? You can buy it at any pool supply store or supplier.

That is a good idea but I think you mean copper sulfate. The copper portion of the electrode is meant to be sacrificial and thus copper enters the water. I am not sure of the advantage of the electrodes over just hand bombing the copper sulfate but my guess is the pool company makes more money with the electrodes. Or maybe it requires less hands on checking. The sacrificial electrode or copper electrode would have to be replaced at times (?) unknown. I do not know the ratio of metals needed.

I have used hydrogen peroxide as an fun experiment on a pool for a ten year period. The objective was to find a reasonable alternative to chlorine. Peroxide worked very effectively for controlling bacteria, algae, and to minimized vacuuming. Peroxide was synergistic with the sun (UV) to provide exceptional disinfection at the surface of the water. Vacuuming was minimized because the breakdown product of peroxide was oxygen and resulted in some oxygen bubbles attaching to debris that would then be skimmed out of the pool. The biggest disadvantage was ability to hold residual peroxide once the pool temperature exceeded 90 degrees F. The residual I tried to target was minimum of 20 ppm and max of 100 ppm as peroxide (there are good cheap test strips available). At or near 90 degrees, I would hand bomb peroxide to get a level of 100 and then check it daily till it reached 20 ppm and then add more. It would last anywhere from several days to 3 weeks. PH should be higher than using chlorine , >8 say. Filtration I used was DE or diatomaceous earth. If you use peroxide do not use metal ions like copper as they will destroy peroxide quickly. Oh by the way, you may have to like being blond. FYI

I have one of these in my 20,000 gal home pool;

LINK

I don't know if they tell you exactly what the electrode is made of (they do mention copper, and the test kit that comes with it measures copper ions), but I can tell you it looks like it's mostly copper. The device seems to work pretty good at reducing the need for chlorine and aleagicide. There's a couple of articles on the site that mention the concentration of copper ions, that may help to answer your questions about percentages. They do sell the electrode separately, as this is the only consumable part of the unit. Hope that helps.

Tom

Thank you very much for all the answers my fellow friends have provided.

Like many of my fellow friends have said that cu-ag electrode will not eliminate the bacteria and algae from the pool and hence it is always recommended to use 5-9% of chlorine to remove the haziness as well as dead bacteria and algae.

It is easy to form copper electrode alone and silver electrode alone. But the trouble starts when you try to combine silver and copper together to make one single electrode.(Anybody expert in metal engineering will vouch for this) There is tremendous amount of exothermic reaction accompanied sometimes by explosion with very high production of heat. Does any one know where can I get these electrode manufactured or how to manufacture the same at home in a small scale project?

Please help.