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At yesterday's opening session of Aquatech 2007, the Water Quality Association presented me with its Award of Merit recognizing the Salt Institute's strong support and involvment with WQA over many years. I'm pictured above receiving the award from WQA President Neil J. Desmond.
The March issue of Water Technology has an article you won't want to miss on the future of ion-exchange water softening.
The consensus: For the near future — say, the next five or 10 years — the gradual improvements in ion exchange technology that have marked the last several decades will continue to be the norm. However, the industry will be working harder than ever to minimize salt consumption in its systems, and no one can rule out the possibility of a scientific or conceptual “leap” outside the realm of ion exchange.
Culligan's Frank Brigano makes a strong case for salt-regenerated softeners:
Advances in softening technology have been evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, and are likely to continue that way, according to Dr. Frank A. Brigano, vice president of research and development at Culligan International Co., the Northbrook, IL-based water treatment manufacturer.“What’s brilliant about [ion exchange] water softening is that it’s so efficient at what it does,” Brigano says. “It targets only the hardness ions.”
He adds, “Most water softeners are about 95 percent efficient” in terms of their performance and water usage. “Now it’s a matter of getting those efficiencies even higher.”
Brigano believes, as do others, that the basic chemistry of water softening is still a “given” that the industry must work with.
“No matter what technology you use in exchanging ions in the water, you’re always going to have a discharge of solids. Those solids have to go somewhere, so it’s a matter of improving the efficiency” of the process that produces those solids, he says.
The most intriguing "alternative" technology seems to be a micro-crystal-forming system by Next Filtration Technologies which does not remove the calcium and magnesium, but encapsulates the hardness ions so they don't create scaling. The article doesn't explain how they affect consumer uses of the treated water such as shampooing, detergent use, etc.