Troubleshooting:

Softener Problems
By Alicia Kenney
Originally Published: CSTN – November 2004

A customer was interested in expanding their 2 year-old twin softener

system to a triplex. This potential had been planned for when the original
two vessels were designed and constructed. The third vessel and associated
components were shipped and installed at the site. A Service Technician was
sent to the customer location for two days to perform the required controls
upgrades, startup the system and train the operators. He accomplished all of
this without a problem. However, in the days following the startup of the
third vessel, the plant reported that the throughput of each softener vessel
was now only half of what it had been before – rather than running 60,000
gallons between regenerations, they were only able to get 30,000 before
hardness breakthrough occurred.
What could cause the service cycle of ALL THREE units to be cut so
significantly?
(A note from the Editor: Think about this question before continuing to the
rest of the article.)

Possible Causes of Shortened Service Cycle

• Inefficient Regeneration- It made the most sense to me that the problem
was related to the regeneration since all of the vessels shared a common
brine system. To evaluate, I performed an elution study. The brine tank
had concentrated brine. Each step of the regeneration process was as
recommended in the O&M manual, and I verified that they were actually
performed for the proper time and at the proper flow rate. The elution
curve showed that we were actually using slightly too much salt at 17.5
pounds per cubic foot.
• Change in Makeup Water Characteristics- The water source at this
facility was clarified Lake Michigan water. Since I had another facility
that also operates on this water I was familiar with its characteristics, and
moreover, felt confident that the hardness hadn’t doubled! Still, I tested
the water and calculated the expected service run volume at about 70,000
gallons.
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• Vessel Exhaustion – It was suggested that if the vessels had been run to
complete exhaustion that it may take more than a normal regeneration to
get them back to their full capacity. With this idea, we performed a
double regeneration on each vessel. When they were put online the
operators began testing the vessel starting at 30,000 gallons throughput
until they detected hardness. They never exceeded 31,500 gallons before
hardness was detected.
• Flow Meter Problems- Since each vessel had its own flow meter, it
wasn’t clear to me why the installation of one new vessel would cause
problems in the whole system, but I still investigated. Fortunately since
the entire facility is very new there was also a flow meter on the boiler
makeup. Roughly comparing the instantaneous flow rate through each
vessel to the instantaneous boiler makeup indicated good agreement.
• Controls Problems- The plant suspected problems with the controls
since the other softeners worked fine before the controls conversion from
a twin to a triple system. After verifying the flow rates and watching the
units step through regeneration I didn’t see how it could be the controls
causing the problem. But when the Service Technician was brought back
to perform troubleshooting, his well-trained eyes detected the problem
quickly – the totalizer didn’t seem to be advancing properly with the
flow. In fact he found that at a steady flowrate of 75 GPM, it took over 3
minutes for the totalizer to advance 100 gallons!

Conclusion
I was wrong! The plant logically concluded that the problem must be
controls-related, but after my elution study I was convinced that it must be
something else. Now I know to always look a little closer.
Fortunately when we discovered the problem, we quickly contacted our
Equipment Engineers who corrected the programming error and emailed it
back to us. A combination of great teamwork and modern technology helped
resolve the problem to the client’s satisfaction the same day!

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