Water softening can help alleviate problems caused
by hard water, such as hindering of laundering
processes and scale buildup in hot water pipes and
heaters. This article summarizes the fundamental
aspects of softening and explains the effect of improving
the process with the use of seed crystals.
Heterogenous nucleation, which refers to precipitation
on the surface of nucleating agents such as seed
crystals, lowers the free energy of crystallization in
precipitative water softening processes. To determine
the importance of the amount of surface area provided
by the nucleating agent, the authors added different-
sized calcium carbonate seed crystals to various
hard waters during precipitative softening with caustic
soda. As these results demonstrated, the surface
area of the seed crystals, rather than the total mass,
proved the key factor in the optimization of the softening
process. Includes 35 references, tables, figures.
| Edition : | Vol. 97 - No. 12 |
| File Size : | 1
file
, 320 KB |
| Note : | This product is unavailable in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus |
| Number of Pages : | 10 |
| Published : | 12/01/2005 |
