How a Water Softener Works

It all started in 1908 with the discovery by Prof. Robert Gans of Berlin Germany that the process of ion exchange is reversible.  Dr. Gans applied the process to softening hard water, using refined zeolites as the ion exchange material.  He renamed his discovery, the "Permutit" process from the Latin verb "permutare", which means "to change."

In 1912 the Permutit company was born. Permutit started by installing water softeners into laundries, free of charge. They would then recoup the costs by allowing the laundry to pay for the softener with the money they saved in soaps. The softener was usually paid for in 3 months.

As you can see from the above picture hard water passes through millions of tiny ion exchange beads, which attract the hardness minerals calcium and magnesium and exchange them for sodium. Not every softener looks like the picture above, but they all use the same ion exchange process.

There comes a point in the water softener's cycle where the resin beads become covered in hardness minerals, and the softener will need to regenerate. In the regeneration process the softener will draw a salt solution (left of the picture above) slowly into the softener. This salt solution washes through the resin and knocks off the hardness minerals sending them down the drain, in doing so the sodium in the solution is attracted to the resin beads and the softener is ready to soften once again.

Depending on the type of softener, the regeneration process will take place immediately for a twin tank softener or at a pre-set time (usually 2am) for a single tank softener.