Water hardness is due to the high content of dissolved alkaline earth metal salts such as calcium and magnesium. This is the cause of damage to household appliances, mainly washing machines. You can get rid of this property of water in different ways.
Drinking hard or soft water is slightly harmful to your health. High salt levels can form urinary stones, and low salt levels only slightly increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. The taste of spring water is determined by its hardness.
Hard and soft water
The hardness and softness of water depends on the level of salt content in it. In the first case it is high, in the second it is insignificant. These terms appeared, presumably, due to the properties that water had on things. If you wash them in hard water, the fabric itself will be the same. If soft, then the clothes became so.
Water hardness is temporary and permanent. The first contains magnesium and calcium bicarbonate, the second - other salts. These are mainly sulfates and chlorides of the same components. They are released when boiling water.
Hard water dries out your skin when you wash your face. Foam is poorly formed in it, and its use leads to the formation of scale. At the same time, soft water leads to corrosion, while bicarbonate hardness, on the contrary, does not allow it to form.
The salt content in natural waters is variable. It rises during the evaporation of water, and decreases during the rainy season and the period of snow melting.
Ways to eliminate stiffness
The first and easiest way is thermal. It is only necessary to boil the water, because of which the unstable bicarbonates of magnesium and calcium will begin to decompose. This will eliminate the temporary hardness of the water. In addition, scale will be the result of decomposition of salts.
You can also try reagent water softening. It is necessary to add soda ash or slaked lime to it. In this method, magnesium and calcium salts are converted into an insoluble compound and precipitated. Sodium orthophosphate is considered the best way to remove hardness. It is part of many household and industrial products.
Another way would be cationization. An ion-exchange regulated charge must be placed in the water. The most commonly used ion exchange resin. In contact with water, it absorbs salt cations. Taking them away from calcium, magnesium, iron and manganese, it gives up sodium and hydrogen ions, and the water becomes soft.
Reverse osmosis can be used. It is necessary to pass water through semi-permeable membranes. This will remove most of the salts from the water, including those that are responsible for hardness. The effectiveness of this method sometimes reaches almost 100%.
