Improving Efficiency of Water Softeners at a Hospital

A customer found they could reduce the salt and water costs of regeneration by 63% by having our service person diagnose the problems they were having and make changes to the system.

Situation:A hospital customer has a 20 cubic foot water softener used for domestic water.  The system was designed for run length of of 20,000 gallons between regenerations, but recent records indicate the run length has reduced to 10,000 gallons.  The hospital demand is approximately 10,000 gallons per day.  The following is the cost information:

• Water and Sewer Cost - $4.00/1000 gallons
• Salt Cost - $0.05/lb

Findings:
After inspection of the unit and analysis of resin samples, several problems were found:

• The softener had 7 cu ft missing in the softener
• The resin was fouled with iron
• The regeneration cycle needed to be adjusted

Changes:
The following changes were made:

• 7 cubic feet of cation softening resin was added to the softener
• The resin was cleaned to remove iron and a preventative maintenance program will maintain clean resin in the future
• The regeneration cycle was changed to the design conditions

Results:

The following are the benefits the customer realized by making the recommended changes:

• The number of regenerations dropped from 365 to 182 per year
• The salt use per regeneration dropped from 180 lbs to 120 lbs.
• The water use pre-regeneration decreased from 2590 gallons to 2090 gallons

Calculations:

Cost	Calculations	$/year
Salt Before	(180lb/regeneration)($0.05/lb)(365 regenerations per year)	$3,285/year
Salt After	(120lb/regeneration)($0.05/lb)(182 regenerations per year)	$1,092/year
Salt Savings		$2,193/year
Water Before	(2590 gallons/regeneration)($4.00/1000 gallons)(365 regenerations per year)	$3,781/year
Water After	(2090 gallons/regeneration)($4.00/1000 gallons)(182 regenerations per year)	$1,522/year
Water Savings		$2,259/year
Total Savings		$4,452/year