Water softening using caustic soda: privileges and restrictions

The aims of the current study is to investigate the constraint of using caustic soda in water treatment and evaluating its performance in water softening, compared to other chemical group, including lime and sodium carbonate. Based on mass balance of reactants in the caustic softening process, a mathematical relation for expressing the constraint of using caustic soda in water softening was derived. To evaluate caustic soda performance in water softening and proving the derived relation as well, some experimental works on some water sources including well water and clarifier’s inlet water in two oil refineries were performed. The results showed that compared to lime- sodium carbonate, the caustic soda is the best choice for water softening, however, using caustic soda in water softening, while restrictive mathematical relation doesn’t verify the chemical characteristics of water, could lead to an extreme increase in alkalinity.