Not to get too bogged down in all the details. Think of the method of cleaning a popular ion battery aka water softener.
This is done by 'flushing' the system with Salt, it removes the caked on calc and mag (toxins) from the cell ..err.. bead walls :)
One more thought; no clumping can occur with the correct ion charge! In other words for clumping to occur we need to introduce badly charged ions into the system that block or overwhelm the normal ion battery function.