Frank Reiter said:

> I have been reading up on the benefits of beeswax candles and one claim I
> have come across is that burning beeswax candles produces "Negative ions"
> that "Clean your air" while paraffin candles do not.

> Can anybody here comment on the validity of that claim?

Sounds to me like someone promoting pure beeswax
candles needs to learn some basic chemistry, and quick.

First, a quick joke about ions:

  Two atoms meet, and they say:

  1st Atom:      "Ooops, I've lost an electron!"
  2nd Atom:     "Are you sure you lost it?"
  1st Atom:     "Yes, I'm Positive!"

The point is, one can have either positive or negative ions.
Positive ions are when you loose an electron, and negative
ions are when you gain an "extra" electron.

Combustion is very complex process when one is burning mixtures,
like "air" and "a candle".

Burning any mix of hydrocarbons (this would include both pure beeswax
and lower-cost candles) will produce a small number of ions, but this
is a VERY small fraction of the "products of combustion" (about
0.00000001th part of the total mass of the products of combustion).

To make these ions, Carbon and Hydrogen in the fuel and Oxygen
from the air combine as follows:

             CH + O = HCO+ + e-

The means that you get positive ions of HCO+, plus some left over
"free" electrons e-.  But not very often.

OK, so we have a very very tiny number of "ions".  But are these
the "negative ions" that are claimed to improve indoor air quality?
Nope, sorry.  HCO+ is a positive ion.

Can the "free electron" (e-) help?  Nope, it will get picked up by
something that "needs" an electron.  (Perhaps the atom in the
joke above who lost an electron.)  The free electron can combine
with a positive ion, which would then become "neutral", but to
add an "extra" electron to something, you need energy.

"Ionizers" that one buys to "clean the air" create NEGATIVE ions of
oxygen.  What we just made are POSITIVE ions.  The promotional
literature for ionizers claim that negative oxygen ions are "good" and
positive oxygen ions are "bad".

Also, people confuse "ozone" with "ions", since the smell of ozone is
the "thunderstorm smell" that most people like, and most "ionizers"
create both ozone and oxygen ions.

A "negative oxygen ion" is an oxygen atom with an extra electron.
They are odorless.

Ozone is an oxygen molecule consisting of three oxygen atoms rather
than the usual 2 oxygen atoms one finds most often.
You can smell ozone when concentrations are high enough.

But think about "air cleaning ionizers" for a moment, and recall that they
have metal plates that attract dust and dirt from the air.  Ionizers are "dust
magnets".  Leave one by a wall, and the wall will also soon be attracting
dust particles if the ionizer is powerful enough.  The trade-off here is a simple
application of entropy - you can't make something in one place cleaner without
making someplace else dirty in the process.  (Remember that the next time
you plug in your vacuum cleaner!)

On the other hand, if you make enough ozone, your house will smell
"springtime fresh", and some percentage of the bacteria in the house
will die when hit by the ozone.

So, if my goal is "cleaner indoor air", I'd rather make ozone than ions, but
I'm not going to try to make either by burning things.  Burning something
makes smoke and soot in greater quantity than anything else, and smoke
and soot are NOT going to help clean anyone's air.

I wrote a recent article for Bee Culture about smoke, focusing on bee smokers,
you can read it online if you want to get the low down on combustion and what
you get when you burn stuff:

http://bee.airoot.com/beeculture/months/02aug/02aug2.htm


        jim