Chemistry Of Natural Water :: essays research papers

The purpose of this experiment is to explore the hardness of the water on campus. Hard water has been a problem for hundreds of years. One of the earliest references to the hardness or softness of water is in Hippocrates discourse on water quality in Fifth century B.C. Hard water causes many problems in both in the household and in the industrial world. One of the largest problems with hard water is that it tends to leave a residue when it evaporates. Aside from being aesthetically unpleasing to look at, the build up of hard water residue can result in the clogging of valves, drains and piping. This build up is merely the accumulation of the minerals dissolved in natural water and is commonly called scale. Other than clogging plumbing, the build up of scale poses a large problem in the industrial world. Many things that are heated are often cooled by water running thru piping. The build up of scale in these pipes can greatly reduce the amount of heat the cooling unit can draw away from the source it is trying to heat. This poses a potentially dangerous situation. The build up of excess heat can do a lot of damage; boilers can explode, containers can melt etc. On the flip side of the coin, a build up of scale on an object being heated, a kettle for example, can greatly reduce the heat efficiency of the kettle. Because of this, it takes much more energy to heat the kettle to the necessary temperature. In the industrial world, this could amount to large sums of money being thrown into wasted heat. In addition to clogging plumbing and reducing heating efficiency, the build up of hard water also adversely affects the efficiency of many soaps and cleansers. The reason for this is because hard water contains many divalent or sometimes even polyvalent ions. These ions react with the soap and although they do not form precipitates, they prevent the soap from doing it's job. When the polyvalent ions react with the soap, they form an insoluble soap scum. This is once again quite unpleasing to look at and stains many surfaces. The sole reason for all these problems arising from hard water is because hard water tends to have higher than normal concentrations of these minerals, and hence it leaves a considerable amount more residue than normal water. The concentration of these minerals is what is known as the water's Total Dissolved Solids or TDS for short. This is merely a way of expressing how many particles are dissolved in water. The TDS vary from waters of different sources, however they are present in at least some quantity in all