I am not defending this product, but there is significant merit and utility for this sort of result when you are talking about "process" water in an industrial environment (or an open loop ground coupled heat pump). The scaling problem would be fixed and the water is discarded so no one cares about the end state of dissolved solids. The success would depend on the lifetime of the effect in the pipe.
I am a bit confused after reading the residential FAQ. They are talking about charging colloidal particles that pre-exist. But the things that are the target are dissolved solids. Are the "particles" the individual compound molecules? They also seem to claim that even with no flow, water upstream of the devide will be processed. That one is a little tough for my head.
More musings on what if.
If the lifetime of the effect is sufficient it may also be useful in circulating water heat exchangers. Other uses would depend on what happens when water evaporates during part of the process. Are the resultant solids such that they simply rinse away? It probably would not be a benefit for open loop boilers because the particles would accumulate as the steam is produced (unless they were very small maybe).
As described in this thread, it would not seem to be particularly useful in the average residential or multi-user water system. If we knew the size of the resultant particles we could evaluate the possibility of filtering the particles, thus removing the dissolved solids. It would also be important to know exactly what elements or compounds will be changed from dissolved to solid. Or if that indeed happens. It really does not seem that it precipitates/aggregates anything. Rather the opposite. They claim that the residue is water "soluble" and it can be rinsed from affected surfaces. That is the same end result you want from softened water in terms of collecting on fictures, tubs, shower, etc. A water softener does not actually eliminate the compounds that form a film; if changes the compound from one based on calcium (insoluble) to one based on sodium which is soluble.
If there is a way that it could precipitate all arsenic compounds and create particles greater than about 0.1 - 1 micron, you would have a much simplified way to get arsenic out. If it charged the arsenic compounds such that they could be removed by an electric field later in the process; that would be real good.
It would be interesting to hear a response from the vendor on these points.
I suffer from the problem, but we really have to beware of absolute beliefs in what can not be true (e.g., the world is flat, you can't be killed by living near that rock [radon et all], man can not survive the stresses of traveling more than 10 MPH, can't fly, for damn sure no one can walk on the moon, no one could possibly elect him to a second term, ad infinitum).
If you look at the diagram of the system, it is very similar to the system discussed in the wells forum a while back. That one was being pitched to swimming pools.