The SOFT-TEC Hardness Stabilizer technology has an efficiency of 99.9%

How does the chemical free water treatment technology work?

You first have to look at the basics of calcium scale:

The calcium rich water comes from private wells or public water plants into the house. The carbonic acid – calcium equilibrium is interrupted in the pipes.

The hydrogen carbonate [Ca(HCO3)2] is a very weak chemical compound which is very easily broken by temperature increase or movement. (Example: When heating water bubbles appear which is the escaping CO2. When shaking a bottle with CO2 enriched water the CO2 very easily escapes in form of bubbles.)

If the water is heated or there is a lot of movement in the water, then the CO2 escapes from the water. This means that there is less and less solvent (CO2) present for the calcium. Parts of the calcium are no longer dissolved (Dissolved Solids) and attach themselves to surfaces of pipes, heaters, hardware in the form of calcium carbonate (CaCO3).

Negative: Calcium creates scale on pipes, hardware and surfaces. This leads to high energy costs for heaters and expensive repairs for ice machines, coffee machines, cooling towers, etc. Another problem is that bacteria can grow in the scale.

Positive: Calcium has several positive effects, especially positive health effects. In some European countries it is illegal to sell RO or distilled water as drinking water. The reason is that the water with no calcium enriches itself with the body’s calcium and can cause diseases related to the lack of calcium in the body. Water without calcium also has a bad taste. Dasani water by Coca Cola for example is filtered with RO systems and is enriched with minerals afterwards to add taste to the water.

1. Conventional water softener (ion exchanger). This system exchanges the calcium ions with sodium ions. Scale is prevented, but this system has negative effects. Calcium necessary for the body is completely missing, and sodium added to the water has negative health effects. This system has no future because several states such as California have already banned salt regenerated water softeners.

2. Magnetic and electric systems. These systems are  upposed to create crystals from the calcium ions. It is known that the calcium crystals cannot attach to surfaces. However, these systems only have an effectiveness of up to 20%. This is not enough to prevent scale. It is easy to create better test results in a laboratory by adding certain amounts of iron to the water before treating it. The conditions for these tests are unrealistic and do not occur in nature.

3. Polyphosphate has a scale prevention effect but releases chemicals into the water and requires maintenance and related costs. The media uses up.

4. SOFT-TEC produces this technology named SOFT-TEC Hardness Stabilizer. This technology prevents all the negative effects of calcium, while allowing for the positive health effects to remain. The system is maintenance free, chemical free and salt free and does not require regeneration or backwashing.

The SOFT-TEC Hardness Stabilizer media has all the scale prevention advantages of an ion exchanger, for example the amount of soap and detergents needed is smaller. There are no more spots on dishes, bathroom tiles, etc. The SOFT-TEC Hardness Stabilizer reliably transforms the calcium ions into calcium bonds. These bonds are stable and cannot attach to surfaces, hardware, etc. The crystals are rinsed away by the water flow. The size of the bonds is so small that they can only be seen with a microscope. Therefore the effect is the same as if the water was completely free of calcium.

Tests lasting several years showed that the bonds cannot attach to any kind of surface and the result is a 100% scale prevention. Also other ions can no longer attach to surfaces because of the structure of the surface created by SOFT-TEC Hardness Stabilizer . Because the ions are formed into stabil bonds, the TDS is thus lowered. Please note that a TDS meter does not directly measure the total dissolved solids, but rather the conductivity. It cannot distinguish between bonds and dissolved solids, therefore it is not suitable for this system.

The most important factor in the development of bonds from ions is the surface. The surface which encourages the bonds growth. These bonds are also formed in normal water pipes. According to the “Brownian motion of molecules” a bond is created whenever a certain number of calcium ions meet in a certain constellation. This creation of bonds is completely random. With the knowledge about these surfaces SOFT-TEC set out to develop a surface which the calcium ions would accept as a template and form into crystals. Critical for the development of crystals is the enthalpy. This is the energy required to form a crystal or a new layer of crystals. A very important development in the SOFT-TEC catalyst is that the nanostructure on the surface of the catalyst decreases the enthalpy needed Ions (charged) can attach to Surfaces and create scale buildup. The bonds (neutral) cannot attach To surfaces and scale is prevented. enough to allow all ions to form into crystals, even in cold water. Altogether, the SOFT-TEC media can be described as an artificial template which allows for all calcium ions to form into harmless crystals. When the crystals growing, they loose their grip on the templates and are rinsed away with the water flow. Now new crystals can form on the template.

Real life example of an artificial template:

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If you have a saturated salt solution in a glass, no crystals will form. However, if you put a wool thread into the water, crystals will start to form on it. The wool thread functions as an artificial template, reducing the enthalpy and encouraging the dissolved salt to form a crystal.
 

Descaling effect of the SOFT-TEC media:

The SOFT-TEC media also has a descaling effect on scale already present in old pipes, hardware, etc. The water coming from the media is free of calcium ions. Calcium ions in the already existing scale are attracted to this unsaturated water and add on to the crystals that are now floating in the water. This way existing scale is usually heavily reduced or removed within 1 to 2 months.

Lifetime:

The SOFT-TEC media works chemical, salt and maintenance free and has a lifetime of 5 years. The SOFT-TEC media does not have to be backwashed.

In addition to preventing scale, the SOFT-TEC media also prevents corrosion.  As explained in the section above, it is important how the calcium carbonate crystal is built.

Scale in pipes is made of calcium carbonate. A pearl is made from the same material. Although these are the same chemical substance, they are completely different products. The difference in these two is the grouping of atoms.

The template or first layer of a crystal is deciding in what the final crystal structure will be. The SOFT-TEC media can decide how the crystal will grow and what the atomic grouping of the crystal will be.

The crystals built by SOFT-TE Care created so that they cannot stick together and cannot grow larger than 30 microns.

The corrosion prevention works by adding a 30 micron protective layer to the surface of pipes and hardware.

On the surface of a metal pipe there are ions. These ions are always grouped in a + - + - grating. The crystals created by SOFT-TEC media attach tightly to the surface. No more crystals can attach to this 30 micron layer. The effect of the SOFT-TEC media is also proven with the fact that the protective layer keeps copper from getting into the water when using a copper pipe. Without the protective layer there is a higher concentration of Cu in the water. The SOFT-TEC layer is even visible on the pipes. If a pipe that was used with the SOFT-TEC treated water is removed and dried, you will see the surface sparkling like diamonds when shining a flashlight into it.

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Calcium carbonate grows randomly in a copper pipe. The difference is that there is no smooth surface and the growth of the calcium is not restricted. Other compounds can also attach to the calcium. Picture 3 shows cuprous oxide (Cu2O) and malachite Cu2 [(OH)2/(CO3)] appearing in red and blue. The SOFT-TEC media can be used in all applications where otherwise phosphate is used for corrosion prevention.

The media is a completely reliable scale prevention and descaling system.
 

Boiler, Water Heater
Light/Heavy Manufacturing
Breweries
Food Processing Plants
Restaurants
Hospital/Medical
Hotels, Cruise lines
Car/Truck/Bus wash

All Hardware

Other Areas of Application:

Dishwasher, Washing Machine

Ice Maker

Cooling Towers

Evaporative Condensers

Coffee Machine

Pipes

Laundry industry

Steam Presses

The SOFT-TEC media works perfectly in combination with other media, such as

heavy metal removing media. It is also great in combination with a carbon filter.

Through these combinations the area of application is increased immensely.

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How can I test the Media?

For a home owner the best and most convincing results are using two sauce pans .You put two sauce pans on a heater. One filled with the untreated water and the other with water treated by the SP water conditioner. As the water boils down the untreated water will build a hard scum on the side of the sauce pan. The sauce pan with treated water will have no hardness scum on the side and you will see a circulation of hardness crystals on the bottom of the pan just before the water is boiled out. They are easily wiped out just as the water is boiled out of the pan. The other method will be to observe heating equipment and appliances already covered with scale. After installing SP water conditioning system in a few days you can observe that the white scale starts to disappear step by step and then no new scale appears. Our customers observed their coffee machines and appliances start to clean up from years of scale build up.