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Soft Water Quality Standards for Plating

We have just completed installation of a new water softener for our plating operation. Our concern is "what is the industry standard for soft water used in plating". Any information on this subject would be helpful. This is a duplex system that automatically switches as the soft water available is used up. When the standby tank comes on line we have a soft water quality of 30 ppm hard for about 20 minutes and then the water quality goes to 0 ppm hard for the remainder of that cycle. Our system is averaging 30 gpm when running and has a system capacity of 55,000 gals, we estimate that 600 gallons of water passes into the plating system at the 30 ppm level. This occurs every day and a half. Is this acceptable or is this above standards?

Mark Long
- Rockford, Illinois, USA
2001

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Dear Mark Long of Rockford, IL,

I have a few questions for you if you are still out there....Are you happy with your decision to install the incoming water softening system at your plating facility? Why did you feel the need for the unit in the first place? What type of plating do you do? The reason I ask is that I have been working on a plating problem that many of us feel might be hard (extremely hard >1500 ppm) water related.

Brian Saas
- Westerville, Ohio
2002