Radium Removal
Radium 226 and radium 228 are natural groundwater contaminants that usually occur at trace levels. For any water treatment application, radium removal is substancial since its presence cause serious health problems and even death at some point. Radium A strong acid cation exchange resin operated in the sodium cycle is a very effective method of radium removal.
Radium is like barium, it has a higher selectivity for cation exchange resins than hardness. It will also be removed during the normal water softening cycle. In a manner similar to barium, on the first cycle of exhaustion, radium will continue to load on the resin bed until well after hardness breakthrough by displacing all the other ions previously loaded, including calcium and magnesium. This effect is valid only for the first cycle and can be misleading.
Radium removal water treatment radium 226 radium 228
Point-of-use cartridges, which use ordinary softener resins on a one-time basis for radium removal. Will provide decent radium removal for over 5 to 15 times. This depends on the particular resin as long as they will produce softened water. In systems that can be regenerated, however, radium like barium. This means it is much harder to regenerate off the resin and more of it will remain in the resin after regeneration. The radium will be pushed toward the exit (bottom) of the resin bed during the regeneration cycle. As the softener becomes exhausted, hardness leakage reaches the radium-rich end of the resin bed.
The hardness, which is less preferred by the resin, will displace only a small, but nevertheless, significant amount of radium from the resin, causing radium levels to increase to unacceptable levels. Therefore, in systems that are regenerated it is necessary to limit the service cycle to the softener capacity for hardness. Since the amount of radium is insignificant compared to hardness, the softener design calculations are made for an ordinary softener.
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