How do water softener systems work? Are they magic? Adding salt gets rid of other minerals. . . HOW? I’ve never understood this. I’m 54, male.
In: Chemistry
There’s other systems for dealing with hard water, too. The “H2FLow” anti-scale system employs “Template Assisted Crystallization,” which uses resin beads to accumulate dissolved calcium compounds into larger particles that don’t stick to pipes & shower glass, but it needs a carbon filter in front of it to remove chlorine from the water, and the carbon filter needs a sediment filter in front of it, to keep from clogging the carbon filter – so you end up with three filters in series. I’ve got two sets of these to condition the water coming into my house.
The classical “ion exchange” system to treat hard water at 10gpg (grains per gallon), you end up with 80mg/liter of sodium, about 4x the recommended limit for someone on a low-sodium diet. Some of these systems produce water with up to 300mg sodium/liter (reference below).
https://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/chemicals/sodium.pdf
Latest Answers