How to Remove Calcium from Drinking Water?
Published on by shiva amatya, Mr. in Technology
How to remove Calcium from drinking water?
The value of Calcium is 344 ppm/liter.
Is there any economical filter pant to easily remove the Calcium?
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19 Answers
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Pass through Cation Exchange kit in sodium from.
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The simplest method of removing Ca in water is to used package plant. If water pumped from different sources, just blend water into one reservoir after treat it as blend in order to reduce the amount of Calcium into water.
1 Comment
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Ya , but source of fresh and non Calcium water must be there near by the site or make arrange the system .
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Hi Shiva Amatya,
There will be a range of approaches which will help but it is somewhat dependent on how low you want to go in terms of calcium. However, a strong candidate will be cold lime softening.
In terms of evaluating and sizing the process, I recommend taking up a demo license in our process simulation and concept design software AqMB (https://www.aqmb.com.au/ ). You can model/design are whole range of softening processes include cold lime softening, WAC-IX (not recommended for your water), nanofiltration, etc using this software. We have over 30+ process units and 40+ analytes with easy drag and drop features.
I hope it helps, please feel free to contact me if there are further questions.
Cheers,
Dianne Finsenda Lika
Process Engineer | Salt Water & AqMB Software
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The degree of hardness of drinking-water is important for aesthetic acceptability by consumers and for economic and operational considerations. Many hard waters are softened for those reasons using several applicable technologies, and the mineral composition will be significantly affected. The choice for the most appropriate conditioning technology will depend on local circumstances (e.g. water quality issues, piping materials, corrosion). Some softening is provided at the central treatment plant. Modification of calcium and magnesium concentrations in drinking-water for health reasons should comply with the technical requirements to provide water suitable for distribution and should not compromise disinfection. Softening is often carried out by means of ion exchangers.
These are ion exchangers that usually contain Na+ ions, which are released and substituted by Ca2+ and Mg2+ ions
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Hi,
it is possible to increase pH and Ca is formig solid calcium carbonate, that can be settled in the sedimantation tank.
Ladislav
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Use lime softening to reduce calcium and magnesium
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If you are going to remove calcium for drinking purposes you should leave a minimum level of calcium in the water such as by blending. Generally there is a minimum standard for artificially softened water. In the UK it is a total hardness level of 150 mg/l as CaCO3.
By the way be careful about the use of hardness and calcium concentrations as there are a lot of different methods of expression used. A common one is to convert everything to Calcium Carbonate CaCO3 as this has a molecular weight of 100 and simplifies exchanger sizing calcs. But many others are in use.
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We are softening Water at some of our Waterworks in Denmark, Using the pellet method (adding NaOH to precipitate CaCO3 on sand grains and adjusting the pH with carbonic acid). Overall, we believe it is cheaper to soften the Water before delivery (at the waterwork) rather than removing carbonate deposits at consumer level (large consumption of Chemicals, detergents increasing treatment costs and more rapid weardown of applicances like laundry machines).
The method has been used in N. Europe the past 30 years.
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I am afraid that there is no easy and economical solution to remove the Calcium. You could consider :
- Ion exchange (Calcium will be replaced by Sodium)
- Lime softening, depending on bicarbonates concentration (settler+sand filtration). main drawback : sludge handling
- Catalytic Caustic Soda softening: upflow reactor+sand filtration (pellets handling has also to be managed)
- Nano filtration
- Reverse osmosis
Afterall Calcium is good for health...
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Cation exchange in Na form will work. Better to do it by Lime softening.
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If your source is a free running stream, and you live in a sunny place, you could install a solar evaporator, simple and effective for small flows.
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Share Mr Zampollo´s comment: reduce calcium for what purpose? pH? stability?
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You could study and learn about cold lime process if use cation exchange not admitted. PH control at 9.5 or hydrate alkalinity +/- 5 ppm CaCO3, after it reduce the pH in level 7.5- 8.5 range, first.
Or You could use RO the permeate can be added from mucron filtered fresh water. To arrange the level Calsium in the product you can calculate ion balance, then define the fresh water rate to the permeate.
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The overall best solution might be to not Remove Calcium From Water but instead to treat the calcium in your water by installing a Hard Water Bullet along with an in-line filter. If you cannot ingest calcium for health reasons, then you should install a high quality Reverse Osmosis Drinking Water System which will remove the calcium. The reason I say this is simple: You will not need to purchase salt, and you will not waste water because the Hard Water Bullet will not need to regenerate and you’re not drinking water with sodium chloride in it.
In a watery solution calcium is mainly present as Ca2+ (aq), but it may also occur as CaOH+ (aq) or Ca(OH)2 (aq), or as CaSO4 in seawater.
Calcium is an important determinant of water harness, and it also functions as a pH stabilizer, because of its buffering qualities. Calcium also gives water a better taste.In what way and in what form does calcium react with water?
Contrary to magnesium placed directly above calcium in the periodic chart, elementary calcium reacts with water at room temperature, according to the following reaction mechanism:Ca (s) + 2H2O (g) -> Ca(OH)2 (aq) + H2 (g)
This reaction forms calcium hydroxide that dissolves in water as a soda, and hydrogen gas.
Other important calcium reaction mechanisms are erosion reactions. These usually occur when carbon dioxide is present. Under normal conditions calcium carbonate is water insoluble. When carbon dioxide is present carbonic acid is formed, affecting calcium compounds.
The reaction mechanism for carbon weathering is:
H2O + CO2 -> H2CO3 and CaCO3 + H2CO3 -> Ca(HCO3)2
And the total reaction mechanism:CaCO3 (s) + CO2 (g) + 2H2O (l) -> Ca2+ (aq) + 2 HCO3- (aq)
The product is calcium hydrogen carbonate.Solubility of calcium and calcium compounds
Elementary calcium reacts with water. Calcium compounds are more or less water soluble. Calcium carbonate has a solubility of 14 mg/L, which is multiplied by a factor five in presence of carbon dioxide. Calcium phosphate solubility is 20 mg/L, and that of calcium fluoride is 16 mg/L. Calcium chromate solubility is 170 g/L, and at 0oC calcium hypo chlorate solubility is 218 g/L. Solubility of other calcium compounds lies between the levels of these examples, for example calcium arsenate 140 mg/L, calcium hydroxide 1.3 g/L and calcium sulphate 2.7-8.8 g/L. -
Some amount of calcium is desirable in drinking water normally of 75 mg/l. Even upto 200 mg/l is permissible as per BIS standards. Excess calcium may be removed through either lime softener or zeolite softener. But excess sodium is injurious to heart. Hence first get the water samples analyzed as suggested by Juan Jose and then you can proceed accordingly to remove the excess calcium or sodium.
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Normally calcium is removed by ion exchange resin (softener) but in this process Ca is exchaged by Na.
But in this case it is probably that the sodium concentration in softened water exceed the maximum recommended by drinking water standards. Therefore I think that it is better to use softened membranes. The possibility of the use of this type of membrane depends on the concentration of the other ions present in the raw water. Please send me a chemical analysis of the raw water to juanj@outlook.com.ar
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Dear Shiva, it could be helpful to know a little more about Your Calcium (e.g. TH, MAlk and SO4 of solution).
Depending on the flow rate You could go with lime softening or zeolite softening. -
Rainwater Harvesting is prompt, reliable, easily implemented , economical and long lasting durable solution to remove the calcium up to cent percent out of drinking water i.e. to get calcium or any salt free drinking water.
With Regards,
Ratilal Sudani,
Director,
Bhoojalshree Geotech Consultant,
A Division for Groundwater Development, Exploration and Management,
Anand, Gujarat, India
Contact No; +91-942 738 2368 || +91- 997 815 9368
"SAVE WATER AND SAVE ENVIRONMENT".
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the best way would be ti install a water softener