How do water softeners work?
Water softeners use a process call “ion exchange” to remove the mineral particles from the water that cause the hardness. These particles generally cannot be removed using a regular water filter. The softener uses resin bonded with sodium attract the minerals and “exchanges” the sodium for the minerals to soften your water.
Hard water is passed through a cyclinder containing millions of tiny beads of ion-exchange resin which attract and remove the hardness minerals from the water. The resin is automatically cleaned or “regenerated” by rinsing a small amount of brine (common salt – sodium chloride – dissolved in water) through the cylinder. The sodium from the salt is left in the resin as it is exhanged for the hardness minerals trapped by the resin. The used brine, containing the accumulated hardness, does not enter the household water system – it is automatically flushed away into a drain. Refreshed by the regeneration, the resin is again ready to remove hardness minerals, i.e. to soften the water. This process is known as “ion-exchange”.
