What Water to Warm

What water to warm?

As you know, water hardness is caused by the calcium salts of magnesium and dissolved in it. When heated, these salts partially precipitate, thereby causing the formation of scale on heat-transferring surfaces. The resulting scale deposits worsen the heat transfer of the heating surfaces, which leads to overheating of the boiler walls and a decrease in its service life. In addition, scale deposits cause additional heat loss. It is generally accepted that most of the energy is spent on heating homes using hot water boilers. How to increase the energy efficiency of this process?

The influence of rigidity on the efficiency of the boiler when using 170 liters of hot water per day

It was found that increasing the total hardness of water for every 2 mEq / l leads to the formation of domestic hot water boilers up to 200 g of limescale per year, and working on hard water (> 10 mEq / l) leads to a decrease in their efficiency by an average of 20% . The resulting scale deposits lead to clogging of pipes supplying hot water to the consumer and, accordingly, are one of the main reasons for the failure of boilers .It shows the data on energy and maintenance costs for gas storage and flow boilers over the entire period of their operation (15 years) using softened and hard water (hardness varied from 2 to 10 mEq / l).

Electricity costs during the operation (15 years) for gas direct-flow (a) and storage (b) boilers when using softened and hard water

It is obvious that the energy consumption (characterized by the cost of electricity, USD) of boilers operating on softened water is lower than on hard water, even if this hardness is only 2 mEq / l. An increase in electricity consumption with an increase in water hardness is more noticeable for flow-through hot-water boilers than storage boilers, which is primarily associated with the need for regular cleaning of the latter from sedimentation. This procedure is not cheap and can, depending on the hardness of the water, reach 200 USD.

An increase in the total hardness of water for every 4 mEq / l leads to an 8% decrease in the heat transfer of the boiler and an increase in energy costs. The use of softened water (0.0 mg-eq / l) by water softener plant  during operation of boilers allows saving 34% of electricity per year compared to water with a hardness of 6 mEq / l and 47% compared to 10 mg-eq / l. The above data show that the use of softened water not only reduces the energy consumption for heating water, but also to extend the life of boilers and reduce the cost of their maintenance. 

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