Hard Water Softening
Hard Water Softening
(OP)
Hi
I am a chemical engineer and have been tasked to condition shaft water which is required for use in a nickel tankhouse for electrowinning purposes.
This water is high in sulphates as well as nickel and sulphates and thse salts present problems in the electowining circuit, as they form salt crystals which reduce the current efficiency. Please view attachment for full assays.
Currently trials are underway to treat the water with soda ash, lime and aluminium sulphate. my question is, "Is it possible to treat this kind of water via an anion exchange resin or are there better ways available for use?''
Your feedback will be greatly appreciated.
Best Regards
Kudzi
I am a chemical engineer and have been tasked to condition shaft water which is required for use in a nickel tankhouse for electrowinning purposes.
This water is high in sulphates as well as nickel and sulphates and thse salts present problems in the electowining circuit, as they form salt crystals which reduce the current efficiency. Please view attachment for full assays.
Currently trials are underway to treat the water with soda ash, lime and aluminium sulphate. my question is, "Is it possible to treat this kind of water via an anion exchange resin or are there better ways available for use?''
Your feedback will be greatly appreciated.
Best Regards
Kudzi





RE: Hard Water Softening
Anion exchange alone will not work either as you must remove the cations as well as the anions. Removing the anions only will leave you with a high hardness water that has a high pH and that will quickly cause scaling problems.
You need to speak to a firm that has experience with using RO for wastewater. There is a a RO process that uses RO to recycle the nickel.
The blowdown from your plating process has a high TDS and will probably have to be evaporated if you are unable to dilute the TDS in some manner.
RE: Hard Water Softening
You could also use a vapor compressor distillation plant, to give you very pure water. But of course, there is a capital cost for this equipment. Check out Aqua-chem or Meco for details. Vapor compression in my experience is far more user friendly than RO.
Offshore Engineering&Design
RE: Hard Water Softening
www.p2pays.org/ref%5C02/01187.pdf
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http://www.nmfrc.org/bluebook/sec371.htm
http://www.desline.com/articoli/5752.pdf
RE: Hard Water Softening
Dangerous Hardness Ions
By <a href=http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Idalia_Luczak>Idalia Luczak</a>
Water is everywhere. Nothing can happen without it and nothing can live. We commonly say about pure water and impure one. This recording to the possibility of drinking it or not. But except the rain there is no such thing as clean water. There is one important class of impurity: hardness.
Hard water is the type in which we have dissolved minerals of magnesium and calcium. And water that comes to our houses probably always has it. It's kind of a natural process: rain is falling and getting into the rivers and finally to our houses. But while it sleeps trough the ground it is slightly possible that it picks up minerals from the rocks like limestone, chalk. And that is the reason of hard water at home.
As it may seem natural to have that kind of water at home it may cause different problems. For example when you are wondering why your bills for heating increased the limescale might be the answer. The minerals, during the heating process, form a visible scale in pipes. As a result, the scale is clogging them and the efficiency of heat that it is needed to make water hot is increasing. That is why bills may get much higher. Whole process may also damage other appliances which are using heated water as for example kettles and dishwashers, and shorten their lives. Not speaking about smaller issues caused by hard water as sticky hair or harsh clothes.
We have two categories of hard water - temporary hard and permanent. The first one is water which hardness can be removed by boiling it. It's caused by combination of ions and bicarbonate ions in the water. And boiling promotes the formation of carbonate from the bicarbonate and precipitates calcium carbonate out of solution, leaving water that is softer upon cooling. Second type is much harder to soft and this is the one which deposits limescale and causes all the bad effects that were described above. To make permanent hard water soft you can't boil it. Heating permanent hard water increasing the problem. You need a good <a href=http://
The most popular solution is using water softener. It
might be one that works by replacing the calcium and magnesium in the water with sodium. Or an electronic limescale remover, that may remove lime scale problem. The truth is that all are less expensive than ignoring the problem. Prevention might be much cheaper than removing the effects. In that case the only thing left is to think about the best solution for you to deactivate dangerous 'hardness ions'.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Idalia_Luczak htt
RE: Hard Water Softening
Dangerous Hardness Ions
By <a href=http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Idalia_Luczak>Idalia Luczak</a>
Water is everywhere. Nothing can happen without it and nothing can live. We commonly say about pure water and impure one. This recording to the possibility of drinking it or not. But except the rain there is no such thing as clean water. There is one important class of impurity: hardness.
Hard water is the type in which we have dissolved minerals of magnesium and calcium. And water that comes to our houses probably always has it. It's kind of a natural process: rain is falling and getting into the rivers and finally to our houses. But while it sleeps trough the ground it is slightly possible that it picks up minerals from the rocks like limestone, chalk. And that is the reason of hard water at home.
As it may seem natural to have that kind of water at home it may cause different problems. For example when you are wondering why your bills for heating increased the limescale might be the answer. The minerals, during the heating process, form a visible scale in pipes. As a result, the scale is clogging them and the efficiency of heat that it is needed to make water hot is increasing. That is why bills may get much higher. Whole process may also damage other appliances which are using heated water as for example kettles and dishwashers, and shorten their lives. Not speaking about smaller issues caused by hard water as sticky hair or harsh clothes.
We have two categories of hard water - temporary hard and permanent. The first one is water which hardness can be removed by boiling it. It's caused by combination of ions and bicarbonate ions in the water. And boiling promotes the formation of carbonate from the bicarbonate and precipitates calcium carbonate out of solution, leaving water that is softer upon cooling. Second type is much harder to soft and this is the one which deposits limescale and causes all the bad effects that were described above. To make permanent hard water soft you can't boil it. Heating permanent hard water increasing the problem. You need a good <a href=http://
The most popular solution is using water softener. It
might be one that works by replacing the calcium and magnesium in the water with sodium. Or an electronic limescale remover, that may remove lime scale problem. The truth is that all are less expensive than ignoring the problem. Prevention might be much cheaper than removing the effects. In that case the only thing left is to think about the best solution for you to deactivate dangerous 'hardness ions'.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Idalia_Luczak htt
RE: Hard Water Softening
Gary Schreiber, CWS VI
The Purolite Co.