Conditioning and Softening of

Drinking Water
UTILITAS

By:
Faisal Farabi 5213415042
Introduct
ion “How do we avoid corrosion and scaling of our
water installations? how can we condition our
water? how do we remove hardness from
drinking water?”
Welcome at the presentation about conditioning
and softening of drinking water.

1
 1 Introduction
Before starting our presentation

2 Optimum Water Condition

Table of 3 Conditioning of Water

Aeration, Limestone Filtration.

Softening
Contents
4
Pellet Reactor
Material Used in Softening
5 Process
Caustic soda, Lime, Soda ash.

6 Amsterdam Reactor
An application

2
 Optimum Water Condition
optimum water diagram

Scaling Corrosion

The optimal water composition is with a pH between 7.5 and 8.5 and a calcium concentration between 0.5 and 1.25
milimole per litre depending on the magnesium concentration, in this case the total hardness is about 0.75 to 1.5
mmol per litre.

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Conditioning of Water

When Is It Needed?
Conditioning of the water is needed when the raw water isn't in the range
of optimal water composition. the wrong water has a low hardness and low
pH, it should be passed through a calcium carbonate filter to dissolve
calcium and bicarbonate as well as to increase the pH..

Furthermore, when the Raw water has a sufficient hardness but a low pH
carbon dioxide should be stripped out of the water to increase the pH.
finally when the water has a high hardness the calcium concentration
should be diminished and pH increased.

4
Conditioning
With
Aeration
Conditioning with aeration is based on stripping
carbon dioxide out of the water. To see the effect of
stripping on water composition the so called
Tillman's curve is used. aggressive water that has
an corrosive effect on pipe material will reached
equilibrium when the concentration of carbon
dioxide isn't too high and in equilibrium with the
bicarbonate concentration, resulting in a point on
Tillman's curve.

5

CaCO3 + CO2 + H2O  Ca2+ + HCO3-
Conditioning
With
Limestone
Filtration
Conditioning with limestone or marble filtration
is based on the dissolution of calcium carbonate in
water. this is only possible when sufficient carbon
dioxide is available sometimes additional carbon
dioxide dosing is required.
The dissolution of calcium carbonate with
carbon dioxide results in the formation of two moles
of bicarbonate per one mole of carbon dioxide,
increasing the alkalinity and preferring capacity of
the water and decreasing the aggressiveness,
bringing the water into chemical equilibrium.
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 Softening
with Pellet
Reactor Pellet reactors consist of a fluid aspect reactor with
seeding material sand grains where caustic soda lime or
soda ash is dosed. the increase in pH results in the
formation of carbonate that crystallizes with calcium on
the grains (the pellets). the resulting pellets are about
one millimeter in diameter are almost pure calcium
carbonate and can be reused in industry or agriculture,
avoiding the production of a waste stream.

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 Material Used In Softening
Process

Caustic Soda
The advantage of caustic soda is that it is relatively easy to handle and reacts rapidly. the disadvantage however, is
that sodium is added to the water which can be problematic in case of water with a relatively high sodium concentration.

Reaction : NaOH + Ca2+ + HCO3-  CaCO3 + H2O + Na+

Lime
Lime is more difficult to handle react slower leading to high reactors and produces 2 times more balance than caustic
soda. lime is therefore only used in case of waters with high sodium concentration and too high bicarbonate
concentration avoiding the protection of low alkalinity water.
Reaction : Ca(OH)2 + Ca2+ + 2HCO3-  2CaCO3 + 2H2O

Soda Ash
When water has a low alkalinity, so soda ash is used because with this chemical the water can be softened without
decrease of bicarbonate concentration.

Reaction : Na2CO3 + Ca2+  CaCO3 + 2Na+

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 Several types of softening reactors are on
the market. a common one is the Amsterdam
reactor that has a flat bottom and is about six
meter high. the reactor is designed for the
dosing of caustic soda. in practice, different
reactors are placed in parallel. this is to reduce
the surface area of the individual reactors and
to promote flexibility in operation.

Amsterdam Reactor
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 The most important part of the reactor is the bottom where the
water and chemicals are dosed and distributed over the reactor.
when the dosing is evenly distributed local super saturation of
calcium carbonate can be too high and spontaneous
crystallization can occur, clogging the reactors bottom. Equal
distribution of water flow is important as well to avoid short
circuiting and recirculation flows. in the bottom a large amount of
nozzles are placed to distribute the water and chemicals over the
reactor.

Each nozzle contains both a water and chemical flow stream

outlet, and is designed to create sufficient outflow turbulence to
ensure good mixing between the water and chemical streams
without clogging the nozzles. Thus, offering reactors are rather
high and the fluidized bad should be as high as possible to
maximize crystallization surface to avoid wasting out of the
seeding material. The pellets with crystallized calcium carbonate
sink to the lower parts of the bed. There, they can be discharged
and the gravity towards the pallet storage.

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Thank You for Watching!
Any Questions?