The ion exchange method is to percolate the water through the ion exchange resins (which are typically a material with a spherical form to increase the size). While the water is pumped over the water filter made of these resin spheres the ions present within the water exchange for different ions that are either permanently fixed or embedded into these resin beads.

The two most popular systems for ion exchange that are in use today are deionized and softened. You can visit ancpurewater.com.au/ion-exchange-resins/ in order to soften or deionize your water system through ion exchange resin.

Softening is primarily used as a pretreatment technique for water hardness before reverse Osmosis (which will be explored in my next blog post). The softener beads are made of sodium ions within them and they are exchanged with magnesium or calcium Ions in water.

Deionization beads are available in two forms. They exchange hydrogen ions for the cation ions ( that is negatively charged particles ) and anion beads eliminate impurities that are negatively charged.

The process of de-ionizing water has to be done in two phases. Typically, the resins are packed into two separate filters to make replacing the used filters easier. They are also combined to create one filter, however, this can be a bit costly.

The main benefit that resin filters offer is that they can be reused. This means they will let go of all contaminants hydrogen or hydroxyl ions but the most crucial aspect of this is that the regeneration won’t occur in the water you drink.