ABSTRACT
126Water is a necessity at all levels including industrial applications and drinking purpose. Water to be used in these applications, especially drinking, has to be soft and free from the hazardous metals. Calcium and magnesium are the main hardness-causing metals typically present in water. Apart from issues related to drinking, presence of these elements in water used in industrial applications results in scale formation in processing equipment, creating issues in operations. This work deals with the use of ion exchange beads to remove calcium and magnesium from hard water using both batch and continuous column operations. Indion 225 Na resin has been used as an adsorbent and effect of different operating parameters have been investigated. It was established that the optimum contact time required for the equilibrium was 44 min whereas the optimum pH for maximum removal was 6. The obtained results for equilibrium study have been fitted into different adsorption isotherm models. The Langmuir adsorption isotherm model was observed as the best-fitted model in this system and Langmuir parameters obtained were q m as 54 and b as 16 confirming better sorption capacity for the used resin.
