Water Softeners and Air Filtration Systems - Water Softener Efficiency
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BikerBill
01-11-08, 01:29 PM
I'm working my way through the decision making process on purchasing a water softener. One of the vendors that provided a quote claimed his softener was very efficient and used only 40 gallons of water (and significantly less salt) per regeneration cycle, which is about one fourth of what other vendors claimed.
That sounded great until I started thinking about it. If I remember my college chemistry, the regeneration cycle is just another ion exchange event. So if the salt brine is stronger then I could see how less water is needed. But you'd still need to use the same amount of salt to regenerate a given number of resin beads. This seems like pretty basic chemistry we're dealing with here. So can someone explain what affects softener efficiency as measured by both water and salt consumption?
On what I think may be a related subject, I see that some softeners employ counter current regeneration. Does this convey some inherent advantage regarding salt and water efficiency during regeneration? Is there a reliable way to determine ascertain the efficiency of different water softeners? I'm looking for real world efficiency numbers here. I think what's really important here is how much water and salt will I use in a week or a month, not necessarily per regeneration cycle.
That sounded great until I started thinking about it. If I remember my college chemistry, the regeneration cycle is just another ion exchange event. So if the salt brine is stronger then I could see how less water is needed. But you'd still need to use the same amount of salt to regenerate a given number of resin beads. This seems like pretty basic chemistry we're dealing with here. So can someone explain what affects softener efficiency as measured by both water and salt consumption?
On what I think may be a related subject, I see that some softeners employ counter current regeneration. Does this convey some inherent advantage regarding salt and water efficiency during regeneration? Is there a reliable way to determine ascertain the efficiency of different water softeners? I'm looking for real world efficiency numbers here. I think what's really important here is how much water and salt will I use in a week or a month, not necessarily per regeneration cycle.