Friday, January 12, 2018

Is water "hardness" dependent more on calcium or magnesium?


If one sample of water has a certain concentration (g/L) of calcium ions, and another sample as that same concentration of magnesium ions, will one solution have a greater "hardness than the other"? In other words, does one ion have more influence over water hardness than the other?



Answer



The one with the magnesium would be harder (assuming no other hardness-inducing ions) because magnesium has a lower molecular mass, so the molarity of magnesium would be higher. Assuming a 1:1 molar ratio of magnesium:calcium would give the same hardness (i.e. the same $ppm\ \ce{CaCO3}$ rating).


No comments:

Post a Comment

digital communications - Understanding the Matched Filter

I have a question about matched filtering. Does the matched filter maximise the SNR at the moment of decision only? As far as I understand, ...