Chemistry, asked by alen9825, 1 year ago

Explain the method of softening of hard water by ion exchange method

Answers

Answered by gurudeep87
15
Softening Process. After softening a large quantity of hard water, the exchange medium becomes coated with calcium and magnesium ions. When this occurs, the exchangemedium must be recharged or regenerated . To recharge the softener with sodium ions, a softener is backflushed with a salt brine solution.

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Answered by MARCELLA02
10
Calcium (Ca2+) and magnesium (Mg2+) ions that cause water hardness can be removed fairly easily by using an ion exchange procedure. Standard water softeners are cation exchange devices. Cations refer to positively charged ions dissolved in the water. Cation exchange involves the replacement of the hardness ions with a nonhardness ion.

Water softeners usually use sodium (Na+) as the exchange ion. Sodium ions are supplied from dissolved sodium chloride salt, also called brine. In the ion exchange process, sodium ions are used to coat an exchange medium in the softener. The exchange medium can be natural “zeolites” or synthetic resin beads that resemble wet sand.

As hard water passes through a softener, the calcium and magnesium trade places with sodium ions (Figure 1). Sodium ions are held loosely and are replaced easily by calcium and magnesium ions. During this process, “free” sodium ions are released into the water.

Softening Process

After softening a large quantity of hard water, the exchange medium becomes coated with calcium and magnesium ions. When this occurs, the exchange medium must be recharged or regenerated

To recharge the softener with sodium ions, a softener is backflushed with a salt brine solution. During a backflush, the brine solution replaces the calcium and magnesium ions on the exchange medium with sodium ions from the salt solution

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