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Watering with soft water
Well I am not confusing anything. salt is NaCl which dissociates in water to Na+ and
Cl-. Cl-, BTW is what makes food taste "salty". The sodium ions are exchanged for the calcium and magnesium ions in the water which are stabilized with the chloride ions which are flushed down the drain. The sodium stays in the softened water. This is a BIG issue with people who keep fish because some places have so much calcium and/or magnesium in their water that the sodium ion concentration is thus high enough to sicken and/or kill their fish. This is even a bigger problem when people use salt prophylactically without testing for sodium ion concentration. It is the chloride ions that are helpful to fish, not the sodium. In addition physicians typically admonish their patients with high blood pressure to not drink softened water, rather, to use RO water for drinking. Ingrid On Mon, 3 Mar 2008 08:43:40 -0500, "J. Clarke" wrote: You're confusing "sodium" with "salt". The process is that sodium ions are picked up on the surface of the zeolite. Not "salt", just one of the chemical components of it. Those are exchanged for less-reactive calcium and magnesium ions in the water, so calcium carbonate (or magnesium sulfate or whatever) gets turned into sodium carbonate (or sodium sulfate or whatever) with a slight release of energy. The calcium and magnesium ions then remain on the suface of the zeolite until such time as it is regenerated by exposure to sodium chloride at which time it picks up the sodium ions and the calcium goes into the brine as calcium chloride. So the softened water has no "salt" added, what is has is the existing calcium and magnesium compounds turned into sodium compounds. The quantity of the compounds doesn't change, what changes is their chemical composition. If you think that a water softener works by "adding salt" then try adding salt to hard water and then have the hardness checked with and without salt and see what you get. -- |
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