Effect of Initial Volume of Hard Water and Contact Time on the Reduction of Calcium Ion Concentration using High Voltage Impulse Technique

Recently high voltage impulse (HVI) technique has been extensively studied for desalting processes to control the $CaCO_3$ scale formation in industrial water practices such as power plant, boiler, and heat exchange operations. Investigation of the operational parameters for the HVI is important, however, those had not been reported yet. In this study, the effect of initial feed volume and contact time on reduction of calcium ion concentration by the HVI technique was investigated. Initial feed volumes of artificial hard water which contained 100 mg/L of $Ca^{2+}$, were set to 1, 2, and 3 L respectively. After 24hr of HVI contact with 12kV, $Ca^{2+}$ ion was reduced to 50, 29 and 19 % of their initial concentration, indicating that calcium removal increased as initial feed volume decreased. This implies the applied HVI pulse energy per unit mass of calcium is important parameter determining overall desalting efficiency. A series of extended operations of HVI up to 30 days verified the long term stability of the HVI system. The calcium ion declined to 40 mg/L after 2~3 days, and further reduction of calcium was not achieved, indicating that optimum operation time could be 2~3 days under these experimental conditions. Consequently, it was confirmed that the important operational parameter of HVI technique is initial feed volume and contact time as well as the applied voltage that was already proven in the previous study.

고전압 임펄스 기술을 활용한 경도 제거에서 경수의 초기부피와 인가시간이 칼슘이온 농도에 미치는 영향