Waste Water Treatment Plant – Softener Replacement

Complete Water Solutions recently performed a softener replacement at a Waste Water Treatment Plant located in Wisconsin. The facility was experiencing hard water and iron staining. Complete Water Solutions performed a free P.M. Service and discovered that the softener was channeling.

Channeling occurs typically due to low flows – sometimes formations of crevices in the resin bed will allow water to take the flow of least resistance. This low flow will go through the least resistant locations which may already be exhausted or not able to exchange sodium ions for hardness ions. This can result in hardness leakage or passing through the softener without being treated.

This customer had an oversized softener that was creating that issue. The facility was originally designed with 1 1/2″ piping so the existing softener was sized for 1 1/2″ piping. Shortly after installation, the customer experienced the channeling, so the solution was to decrease the capacity forcing the softener to regenerate every few days. This caused excessive salt usage, increased maintenance, and increased wastewater.

After evaluating the water usage Complete Water Solutions recommended going with a smaller softener which eliminated the channeling issues, the softener system selected for this location was a Fleck 9100 Twin Softener System with Digital Controller.