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Hasan Riza Pasha College
ABSTRACT
Prepared by: Sheri Tuzi & Fjona Bushi
Topic : The effects of water hardness and ways to soften it.
Purpose
In our project we will be discussing about the hardness of water and different ways to soften it. Hard water is
water that has high concentration of minerals, especially Ca2+ and Mg2+ ions, in its structure. Statistics and
observations show that hard water may be harmful to people, the environment and some home appliances
that function by using water. Hard water may cause kidney stones, gallbladder stones, cardiovascular
diseases, skin and hair roughness in people. In home appliances like boilers, water pipes, radiators, heaters…
calcification happens and prevents them from working properly and decreases their efficiency.
Procedures used
We have found some different ways and resources to soften water, which means to decrease the
concentration of the Ca2+ and Mg2+ kations in hard water. These resources are available in different places of
the world as this issue is worldwide and concerns every country. Most of them are found in nature but are
also chemical. To soften water we can use Sodium bicarbonate NaHCO3 (baking soda), ion-exchange resin or
pine resin, Zeolite (a microporus mineral) and Bongo kelp (an algae found in oceans which when burned its ash
may be used as a water softener).
Observation/Data/Results
We have conducted the experiment by using the most common source that can be found all over the world,
Sodium bicarbonate. Our aim was to discover how much sodium bicarbonate is needed to neutralize and
soften completely or partially a certain amount of water. We started out by using a small amount of NaHCO 3
and doing the experiment each time with a different amount of baking soda until we reached the result we
expected. The method we used to determine the hardness of each sample was titration, also known as
titrimetry. Titrimetry is a laboratory method that is used to find the concentration of a certain component in a
substance. Apart from the Sodium bicarbonate, we also tried different ways with pine resin and the Zeolite
stone.
Conclusion
In this experiment we used tap water from our city, Shkodra, and bottled mineral water. We have come to the
conclusion that soft water despite from being harmless is also very economic because by adding the same
amount of detergent to each of the water samples: tap water, mineral water and softened water, we noticed
that soft water is more efficient, so the detergent will last longer. All the appliances won’t calcify and will work
better. Also all the problems and diseases caused by water will decrease in time and as a result water won’t be
one of the main problems anymore.