Ion-Exchange Systems
Resin beds that trade unwanted ions for harmless ones — from hardness removal at the front of the plant to sub-microsiemens polishing at the end.
Membranes separate by size. Ion exchange works chemically instead: water passes through a bed of resin beads loaded with a sacrificial ion, and the ions you want gone stick to the resin while the sacrificial ion takes their place in the water. Nothing is filtered out — something is swapped in.
That single mechanism covers a wide span of duty. What changes between the five systems is which resin, which sacrificial ion, and how deep the polish goes — and, in the case of EDI, whether regeneration chemicals are needed at all.
Ion exchange appears twice in a typical train — once ahead of the membranes as protection, once behind them as polish.
Four of the five systems run on a cycle. Understanding it explains almost every operating cost and every design decision in this category.
An applied DC field regenerates the resin continuously, so there is no exhaustion, no acid or caustic handling, no regeneration downtime and no neutralisation pit. That is why EDI replaces mixed-bed polishing on most new pharma and semiconductor plants — the trade is that it needs low-conductivity RO permeate as feed.
These carry the load — taking raw or filtered water and removing hardness or the full dissolved-salt burden.
These sit at the end of the train, taking already-treated water the last decimal place — or recovering steam condensate so it never has to be made again.
Read down the column that matches your requirement. Where a softener will do, never buy a DM plant — the regeneration chemistry alone changes the cost of ownership.
Client names withheld under confidentiality. Full commissioning data available on request.
Send us a feed water analysis and your daily demand. We will return the recommended configuration, resin volumes, regeneration frequency and an indicative footprint.