Water Conditioning Process

Water conditioning must be adapted to the particular use for which the water is designed, and problem should be referred to the experts in the field. The use of elevated pressure (17.2 MPa and higher for steam generation) requires the employment of extremely carefully purified boiler feedwater. Each industry has its special water conditioning requirement; e.g. laundries require zero hardness to prevent the precipitation of calcium and magnesium soap on clothes. Calcium, magnesium, and iron salts cause undesirable precipitates with dyes in the textile industries and with the dyes in paper manufacture.

In this industry an abundance of fairly soft water has long been available from surface supplies of the industrial Northeast. Cities such as New York and Boston obtained comparatively soft water from rural watersheds over igneous rocks. However, as the middle west and the west were developed, it became necessary to use the harder water prevailing in many areas, particularly those rich in limestone. This hard water needs to be softened for many uses. Furthermore, as the advantages of really soft water needs to be softened, more and more fairly soft waters are being completely softened for laundries, homes, textile mills, and certain chemical process. Thomas Clark of England, in 1841, patented the lime process for the removal of carbonate, or temporary; hardness, followed by Porter, who developed the use of soda ash to remove the noncarbonated, or permanent hardness of water. In 1906, Robert Gans, a German chemist, applied zeolite to commercial use for water softening purposes. Only since the 1980s has softening been extended to municipal supplies to any appreciable extent.

Method:
The purification and softening of water may be accomplished by different methods, depending on the prospective use. Softening in the term applied to process which remove or reduce the hardness of water. Purification, as distinguished from softening, usually refers to the removal of organic matter and microorganism from water. Clarification may be very important and may be combined with cold water softening by precipitation.

Old method for water purification that usually use in Industry are ion exchange process, by this process chemical contaminated will separate by absorption method. Positive ion will absorb by negative ion or anion and negative contaminate will absorb by positive ion or cation in ion exchange unit. By using this unit water will result nearly 98% of pure water. This pure water usually use for boiler feed, but still can’t use on pharmaceutical industry because still contain small ion contamination. For pharmaceutical Industry uses, pure water must be process by distillation unit and the unit must be made from glass material.