Water Softener Circuit Explored

The post discusses a circuit design which can be used for softening hard water and for descaling it into soft water. The idea was requested by Dimple rathode.

Technical Specifications

My name is Dimple and i am an electronic hobbyist. I look up to your blog whenever i have any doubt regarding any circuit and it helps me a lot. Thank you very much for your blog.

Recently a farmer who is also an electronic enthusiast came to me to build an electronic water softener which he came across while browsing. He wants to install it in his farm to reduce the scale formation inside the pipes.

I request you to send me the schematic of an electronic water softener which can be used for agricultural purpose. I am sure you will not disappoint me sir.Please....

Thanks and regards

The Design

Water available through natural resources may contain many dissolved minerals such as sodium, magnesium, calcium etc. and are termed as hard water. Due to the presence of these minerals especially calcium, hard water create problems and become unfriendly for our home use, our everyday domestic applications such as washings clothes, bathing, etc.

Such waters need to be converted from hard to soft by using certain forced external methods. There are many different methods which have been found to be effective for making hard water into soft water, like by the way of distillation, by applying reverse osmosis, by using other chemicals such as caustic soda, sodium etc.

Using Magnetic Field

There's another passive method for acquiring identical results, that's by using a magnetic field around the passage of the hard water through a pipe. Strong permanent magnets may be attached across the length of the pipe and hopefully positive results could be attained for the same.

The magnetic field affects the free flow of the dissolved calcium crystals and forces it to cling and stick with other crystals in the vicinity and form larger crystals which finally stick around the inner walls of the pipe due to the presence of the strong magnetic field. The result being a cleaner water free from calcium and much friendlier for our everyday use in our bathrooms.

However according to many researchers, instead of using passive magnets if the magnetic field is oscillated produces a greater influence on the Calcium crystals causing the crystallization process to activate quicker and at an much efficient rate.

The following circuit arrangement which incorporates a parallel path magnetization principle can be effectively used as a water softener when implemented as per the shown instructions:

Circuit Diagram Layout

In the above water softener circuit we can see a small tank or metallic container used as an intermediate water storage area through which the hard water is allowed to pass.

This container is made up of a ferromagnetic material such as iron.

This iron container is attached with a special electromagnetic arrangement consisting of a U shaped iron device configured with a couple permanent magnets and couple of wound inductors as shown in the image above.

Applying Parallel Path Concept

This electromagnetic device is based on parallel path concept for extracting an enhanced magnitude of  magnetic field from a small amount of current input and in an oscillating manner.

The exact detail of the electromagnet may be witnessed in the above image, and the entire principle may be studied in this parallel path technology article

The coils or the shown inductors are connected with an alternating frequency generator circuit which may be implemented using any suitable oscillator design such a IC 555 or an transistor AMV circuit.

The inductor winding data is not crucial, any thin super enameled wire may used, around 500 turns on each side will be enough.

The tank being a ferromagnetic material gets completely magnetized generating a strong influence on the water content.

The calcium content which may be in the hard water get significantly influenced and start attaching among themselves.

The procedure allows the unwanted calcium to clog on the tank walls and the soft clean water is allowed to pass through outlet across the other end of the container.