Hard water can lead to scale buildup, specifically limescale buildup, reducing efficiency, increasing maintenance costs, and raising energy consumption in industrial water systems. Water softeners play a crucial role in removing hardness minerals like calcium and magnesium, protecting equipment, improving water quality, and ensuring compliance with industry regulations.
We provides advanced water softening solutions tailored to various industries, helping businesses maintain efficient and compliant water systems.
Water softeners are specialised filtration systems designed to remove hardness-causing minerals like calcium and magnesium from water. These minerals can lead to scale buildup, reducing system efficiency and increasing maintenance costs.
To understand how a water softener works, it’s important to know that water softeners use ion exchange to remove calcium and magnesium ions from hard water, replacing them with sodium ions. Inside the system, resin beads charged with sodium ions attract and exchange with calcium and magnesium ions as water passes through the mineral tank. Over time, the resin beads become saturated with hardness minerals and require a regeneration process. During regeneration, a salt solution is used to recharge the resin beads with sodium ions, restoring their effectiveness and ensuring the system continues to deliver soft water.
Marlowe Environmental Services provides reliable water softening solutions to help businesses optimise water treatment and maintain compliance with industry standards.
Water softeners offer numerous benefits for industrial water treatment, helping businesses maintain efficiency, reduce costs, and ensure compliance.
Areas where a water softener is found to be beneficial are industries where large volumes of hot water are used such as the food and beverage industry, Laundry Industry, and industrial manufacturing. These sectors often face hard water issues, including limescale build up in pipes, which can lead to clogged plumbing and reduced water flow in fixtures and appliances. Hard water can also cause stains on bathroom surfaces and fixtures, making cleaning more difficult.
As water flows through systems, minerals in hard water deposit on pipes, appliances, and surfaces, contributing to limescale build up and potential blockages. This not only affects the efficiency of equipment but can also result in appliances malfunctioning and increased maintenance needs.
In some circumstances, industries that use large volumes of water will use a borehole water supply as this has a financial saving but can also be found to have high mineral content which needs to be treated. Water hardness levels vary across the country and depend on the type of land you live on, so the severity of hard water issues can differ by location.
Hard water can have a negative effect on essential equipment used for cooling systems used in areas like data centres, scale on heat exchanger surfaces means reduced heat transfer efficiency which will require more cooling to reduce the temperature of water, this may result in additional power consumption which can have a knock on effect to carbon emission targets. Water softeners improve the efficiency of household and industrial appliances by preventing limescale buildup, reducing the need for harsh descaling chemicals, and promoting a safer, more eco-friendly household with less environmental impact.
The building services industry will use water softeners to increase the energy efficiency and longevity of heating and hot-water services in commercial buildings, just 1.6 mm of scale can lead to a 12% loss in heating efficiency. With fuel efficiency and carbon reduction top of the agenda, building-services consultants and contractors should consider the positive contribution effective water-treatment technology can make.
The specific water requirements for the intended application of the water softener need to be defined, along with the mineral content of the incoming water supply, whether it is mains water, borehole water, or recovered water.
Sizing an appropriate system is very much dependent on flow rates, system size, and the end product requirement.
For the installation, local water authority requirements have to be taken into consideration, and sufficient precautions to eliminate the build-up of legionella bacteria. There may also be a requirement for the water softener to be Water Regulations Advisory Scheme (WRAS) approved which is an independent UK certification body for plumbing products and materials, helping businesses and consumers choose compliant products that keep water safe.
Water softeners used in a residential building should follow the DWI’s requirements on sodium levels and this should not exceed 200 mg/l (0.2g).
Marlowe Environmental Services provides a reliable solution for hard water issues with high-performance, reliable, and compliant water softening solutions tailored to various industries. Our expertise includes supplying, installing, and maintaining water softener systems and water softening systems, ensuring effective prevention of limescale buildup and supporting appliance longevity across diverse sectors.
Custom solutions for manufacturing, healthcare, and more.
Reduces scale buildup, boosts efficiency, and extends equipment life.
Ensures compliance with industry regulations.
Eco-friendly options for sustainable water treatment.
Expert support & maintenance for long-term performance.
Maintenance of a water softener is quite simple; the core task is to maintain the right level of salt in the brine tank, and test the outlet water quality regularly to ensure the unit is supplying soft water. When the water softener is installed and commissioned the frequency of the regenerations will be set either as a timed event or by a water meter controlled initiation, so there is no need for operator interaction with the regeneration of the water softener.
An annual service of the control valve is recommended by most manufacturers to ensure internal components are not damaged and working correctly. The annual service can also include a disinfection of the resin beds to comply with any L8 ACOP requirements.
We have a experienced team of nationwide service engineers, with a dedicated support team to assist with scheduling, our maintenance contracts can be tailored to meet any specific requirement and not only covers our own brand of Water Purification Equipment but other manufacturers too, our tailored solutions ensure your systems are operating efficiently, reliably, and in compliance with your requirements.
We provide high-quality water softeners from trusted brands such as Fleck and Clack, delivering reliable performance and long-term efficiency. Where required, we can also supply WRAS-approved units to ensure full compliance with the Water Supply Regulations. In addition, we offer expert maintenance and servicing for water softeners from all major manufacturers, helping to keep your systems efficient, compliant, and running smoothly.
