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Water Quality

LIME-SODA ASH WATER TREATMENT METHOD

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To remove the magnesium, additional lime is used. The reaction for this process is:

Ca(OH) ₂ + Mg --> Mg(OH) ₂ ¥ + Ca++

Calcium hydroxide plus magnesium ions react to form magnesium hydroxide plus calcium ions

This step has simply replaced the magnesium with calcium. If soda ash is then fed into the water, the calcium will precipitate as calcium carbonate:

Ca++ + Na₂CO₃ --> CaCO₃ ¥ + Na+

Calcium ions plus sodium carbonate react to form calcium carbonate plus sodium ions

There are many variants possible under this general heading. Their discussion here, however, is not essential to our course of study.

Lime-soda ash treatment becomes increasingly costly when the hardness of the water must be reduced to less than 5 grains. Municipally, the complete elimination of hardness is rarely attemped as less than 5% of a municipality's water is used for home consumption. The use of soda ash for the reduction of non-carbonate hardness increases the sodium in the effluent water in the same proportion as ion exchange softening.

The use of the lime-soda ash treatment is impractical for individual home softening of supplies. For one thing, there are difficulties in feeding lime and soda ash into raw water. Further, close control of the operation is required both while the settling and filtering occurs.

An additional deterrent to home use of the lime-soda ash treatment is the size of the equipment necessary, together with the high cost of this method of treatment.

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Many cities across the U.S. have started to ban traditional water softeners from their communities even though they have hard water. These ion-exchange systems use large amounts of salt, which is then flushed down the drain and harms the environment. Sanitary departments are then forced to build treatment plants to remove the salt and they in-turn pass these costs down to the consumer through higher monthly water bills. Thus many cities have decided that it is not worth the cost and effort and have banned the use of salt-based water softeners altogether.

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No Salt, No Mess, No Scale - No Problem.

According to recent news and reports, most tap and well water in the U.S. are not safe for drinking due to heavy industrial and environmental pollution. Toxic bacteria, chemicals and heavy metals routinely penetrate and pollute our natural water sources making people sick while exposing them to long term health consequences such as liver damage, cancer and other serious conditions. We have reached the point where all sources of our drinking water, including municipal water systems, wells, lakes, rivers, and even glaciers, contain some level of contamination. Even some brands of bottled water have been found to contain high levels of contaminants in addition to plastics chemical leaching from the bottle.

A good water filtration system installed in your home is the only way to proactively monitor and ensure the quality and safety of your drinking water. Reverse osmosis water purification systems can remove 90-99% of all contaminants from city and well water to deliver healthy drinking water for you and your family.

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