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Jeff Wisnia
 
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fancy nospam tunes wrote:

If anybody knows where I can buy an anti-electrolysis circuit (or
perhaps, how to build one) for a house and apartment building? Kindly
advise.

I'm thinking that copper pipe "wear" can be stopped.

I understand that cruise ships' propellers have an anti-electrolysis
device to prevent the props from thinning.

Cheers!



Sounds like your thinking about an impressed current galvanic protection
system using an active DC power supply.

http://www.sea-landdistributors.com/...rotection.html

Those kind of systems are used to protect underwater and buried metal
objects. I know they are used on buried gas lines still using metal
pipe, but are being phased out as plastic pipe gets used more and more.

I've never heard of those systems being used to protect the insides of
copper pipes, but if there is such a system, probably the folks at
Sea-Land Distributors, LLC could point you to it.

Bear in mind that copper plumbing in buildings has to be connected to an
electrical ground, per code so that an accidental insulation failure in
some appliance connected to the piping does not turn every faucet handle
in the place into a death trap. That grounding does make galvanic
isolation of the copper piping near impossible, but there are plastic
lined nipples which can increase the liquid path between copper and
other metals (usually steel) and help retard galvanic corrosion at those
joints.

Chemical corrosion of copper pipes "from the inside out" caused by
impurities in the water supply is something I hear about, but don't have
any information on how to practically prevent it.

HTH,

Jeff

--
Jeffry Wisnia

(W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)

"As long as there are final exams, there will be prayer in public
schools"