SuperBee364
New member
CRSpotless resin (mixed bed de-ionizing resin) is expensive. I have spent *many* long hours searching the internet, sending emails, etc. trying to find an affordable source. The best I ever found was 200 bucks for one cubic foot, which is enough to recharge the big CRSpotless system three times.
Depending on how chewy your water is, you can go through media very quickly. Unfortunately, the water where I live is extra crunchy; I get *maybe* 100 gallons out of fresh resin. If you buy a package of resin that is just big enough to refill your CRSpotless system, it'll run you a hundred bucks. So I've been paying about a buck per gallon for DI water. That's just not sustainable long term, even if purchased by the cubic foot.
Fortunately, mixed bed de-ionizing resin can be recharged. It's kinda like how a soft water system recharges it's resin using salt, but the chemicals used for recharging DI resin are much more dangerous: Lye and muriatic acid. But don't let the chemicals involved scare you away from doing it. Check out this site: How to Recharge DI Resin by David Sanders - Reefkeeping.com The guy goes through recharging DI media step by step. (Edit: Please visit this link first, and read it top to bottom. It has very comprehensive info on what we're doing, and will make the rest of my post much easier to understand.) He states that he's been recharging the same DI media for over two years and it's still working.
Lye and muriatic acid are both really cheap. It'll only cost a couple bucks worth of chemicals to recharge a hundred bucks worth of resin.
I just refilled my CRSpotless with fresh factory media. I'm going to take a stab at recharging the stuff I just took out. We'll see how it goes...
6/1/10 Edit: Adding the relevant parts of later posts to this post so it's not so hard to find in what's becoming a long thread...
Depending on how chewy your water is, you can go through media very quickly. Unfortunately, the water where I live is extra crunchy; I get *maybe* 100 gallons out of fresh resin. If you buy a package of resin that is just big enough to refill your CRSpotless system, it'll run you a hundred bucks. So I've been paying about a buck per gallon for DI water. That's just not sustainable long term, even if purchased by the cubic foot.
Fortunately, mixed bed de-ionizing resin can be recharged. It's kinda like how a soft water system recharges it's resin using salt, but the chemicals used for recharging DI resin are much more dangerous: Lye and muriatic acid. But don't let the chemicals involved scare you away from doing it. Check out this site: How to Recharge DI Resin by David Sanders - Reefkeeping.com The guy goes through recharging DI media step by step. (Edit: Please visit this link first, and read it top to bottom. It has very comprehensive info on what we're doing, and will make the rest of my post much easier to understand.) He states that he's been recharging the same DI media for over two years and it's still working.
Lye and muriatic acid are both really cheap. It'll only cost a couple bucks worth of chemicals to recharge a hundred bucks worth of resin.
I just refilled my CRSpotless with fresh factory media. I'm going to take a stab at recharging the stuff I just took out. We'll see how it goes...
6/1/10 Edit: Adding the relevant parts of later posts to this post so it's not so hard to find in what's becoming a long thread...
SuperBee364 said:OK, just a quick run down of the whole process... All measurements are by volume, not by weight.
Pic of most everything I used.
Put about three gallons of cold tap water in the white five gallon bucket. Put about five gallons of DI water into the orange five gallon bucket.
1. mix 15 oz of lye into 55 oz of cold *DI* (or Distilled) water. As shown.
Put an airtight lid on it, and shake it. It'll get hot fast. Carefully release the excess pressure, and let the container cool off in the five gallon bucket of cool water. Every few minutes, shake it again. Do this until it no longer gets hot when shaken. Takes about five times.
Now that you have your lye solution ready, you're ready to soak all the resin in it. Dump a bunch of resin into your container. This picture is after dumping a bunch of DI resin into the container, then adding the lye solution to it. Notice that the fluid gap is between the two layers of resin. That's what you want. If the fluid gap is on top of the resin, then you don't have enough lye solution. Add more lye solution until the gap separates the two media types.
Now you have to separate the two resin types. The Anion resin is floating on the top of the lye solution, and is getting recharged *by* the lye solution. The Cation resin (dark purple) has sunk to the bottom, and is now completely spent. I used the yellow transmission filling valve to drain the Cation resin off of the bottom of the tank. I poured it into a strainer, then ran a gallon of DI water through it to rinse as much of the lye off of it as possible. The Cation resin is going to take an acid bath, so removing as much lye (by rinsing it with DI water first) is very helpful to keep from neutralizing too much of the acid.
I then placed the rinsed cation resin into one of the large plastic cereal containers and added a 1:1 muriatic acid/water solution to it until it was completely covered in the acid bath. Stir it well, several times over the next 45 minutes to an hour (or even longer, if you have time).
Now drain the Anion resin (use a strainer) and rinse it thoroughly with DI water, straining as much water out as you can. Place it in a new ziploc bag. Do the same thing with the Cation resin. You're done.
Now if you want to try your luck at separate filters, some guys have had some success. But supposedly (and even though it's more work), mixing equal parts of anion/cation resin is better. I'm not very happy with how much water I got out of my first batch of recharged resin, and I'm slightly concerned that there's enough lye/acid in each corresponding resin to negatively effect mixing them together, but I'm going to give it a shot again today and see what happens.
Keeping them separate in different cartridges would certainly make the whole resin recharge thing go much easier. Guess I'll have to find out which one should go first if you keep them separate instead of doing a mixed-bed cartridge.
Edit: The 55 oz of water and 15 oz of lye wasn't enough to recharge an entire CRSpotless full of resin. It'll do about 3/4's of it. You'll still need to do a smaller batch. My smaller batch was 22 oz of water and 6 oz of lye. On the acid side, just mix it one to one with DI water, and add it to the resin until the resin is completely submerged by the acid bath. Next time, I'll just do a 77 oz of water to 21 oz of lye solution and do it all in one batch.
SuperBee364 said:Well, it's official... It really does work.
Yesterday, I washed three cars, one of which was a pre-polish prep car, so it took a huge amount of water to do. After washing the cars, I had a bunch of five gallon buckets that needed to have a winter's worth of crapola cleaned out of them in order to bring them up to par for detailing use. So each bucket was filled, cleaned, and rinsed. The sole water source for the car washes (start to finish) and the bucket filling, cleaning, and rinsing was the CRSpotless filled with my regenerated resin. "Green" folks are gonna shoot me, but I ran around 80 gallons through my CRSpotless yesterday. I ran my John Deere gas powered pressure washer for almost five hours.
At the end of the day, the TDS meter hit 20. So I got about 20 less gallons using regenerated resin than I do when I use fresh resin. Not bad for 10 bucks worth of chemicals! My water here is *extremely* hard, so I only get 100 gallons out of fresh resin. I think most guys get about 300 or more.
Now of course my OCD wouldn't leave well enough alone; I've been researching how to make this whole process much, MUCH easier. As the old saying goes, "Give the laziest man the hardest job, and he'll find the easiest way to do it." Gents, I'd like to introduce you to the laziest man... Me.
This whole separating the resin system of regeneration isn't necessarily hard, but it could be a ton less labor intensive. How to fix that? Easy!
To start, I'm going to try and buy my resin as separate resins instead of mixed bed. But that's looking ahead... how to help the guys that have the mixed bed stuff?
Here's what to do:
1. Do step one in the regen process. Here's a quick refresher. As shown in the regeneration post (I think it's the first post on page three), dump all your mixed bed resin in the separation tank. Add the lye mixture until the resins separate into the two different types. Let it sit for around 45 minutes or so, stirring the top layer (not the bottom layer). The acid resin (cation) sinks to the bottom. Drain off the acid resin, and put it in a separate bucket.
2. Use DI (or distilled) water to rinse out BOTH types of resin. Keep the resin types separate, in their own buckets.
Now here is where we get a bit different from what I posted earlier. We're gonna KEEP THE RESINS SEPARATE FROM NOW ON.
I'm typing this out as a "how to", but keep in mind it's more of a way for all of us to give this a try; I haven't done this actual procedure *yet*, but it's how I'm gonna do it from now on.
3. Load one of your empty CRSpotless cartridges (not the blue thing, the actual cartridge that holds resin) with your acid (cation) resin. Don't put it in a blue cartridge holder yet. You'll see why in a minute.
4. Load your other empty CRSpotelss cartridge with the base (anion) resin, but don't put it in a blue cartridge holder yet. You'll see why later. This cartridge is now ready to go (for the most part, keep reading), as it was recharged when you separated the resin types in the lye bath.
5. Prepare a strong ( 1:1 or stronger) solution of hydrochloric acid (also known as muriatic acid)/water. The stronger the better. Do this in at least a five gallon bucket. I'm not sure if a five gallon bucket is gonna be tall enough for this until I get a chance to try it out... anyway...
6. Carefully (you are wearing gloves to the elbow, eye protection, and any other needed hazmat protection, right??? RIGHT?????) place the CRSpotless cartridge that contains the acid (cation) resin in the bucket containing the acid/water mix. Let it sit for an hour. Occasionally, carefully (CAREFULLY!!! ) slowly raise, then lower the cartridge back in the bucket.
7. Place a five gallon bucket full of clean water (DI would be best, but tap will do) next to your acid bucket. Carefully remove the cartridge from the acid bath, and place it in the clean water. Slowly raise and lower it a bunch of times in the clean water. If you use tap water for this, it will reduce the resin capacity somewhat, as the resin will try to deionize the water in the bucket.
8. Remove the cartridge from the clean water bucket, and place it in the blue CRSpotless cartridge holder, and screw it on to your CRSpotless.
9. Screw the other blue cartridge holder (WITH NO CARTRIDGE IN IT. IT NEEDS TO BE EMPTY) on the other side of your CRSpotless.
10. Run about five gallons of water through your CRSpotless. Collect it in a five gallon bucket. This water will be weakly acidic, and should be easily neutralized with some baking soda.
11. Remove the acid cartridge from the blue holder, and screw the (now empty) blue holder back on to the CRSpotless.
12. Place the base resin (anion) cartridge in a blue holder, and attach it to your CRSpotless. Run about five gallons of water through it. This water will be mildly caustic. If there's room in your acid bucket, you could recover this water to the acid bucket, as it will help to neutralize the acid.
13. Remove the empty blue holder from your CRSpotless, and place the acid resin (cation) cartridge in it.
14. Mount the cartridge holders on to the CRSpotless so that the ACID (CATION) RESIN CARTRIDGE WILL GET WATER FIRST! Yes, it is important that the CATION resin receives water before the anion resin.
Now while the above procedure sounds complicated, it's really not too bad. And the benefit is that the resins will now remain separate, and will greatly speed future regeneration. Here's how....
Now after your TDS meter hits 20, it's time to regen the resin again. It's gonna be easier this time, and from now on...
1. Remove the resin cartridges from their blue holders.
2. Prepare two five gallon buckets. One holding the lye regeneration solution, the other holding the acid solution.
3. Place each cartridge in it's respective bath for an hour, slowly raising and lowering the cartridge into the solution occasionally.
4. Prepare two buckets of fresh water. Place each cartridge in it's own water bucket, and raise/lower the cartridge repeatedly.
5. Perform steps 8 through 14, above.
Now of course all the disclaimer stuff. You are working with hazardous chemicals. I'm not responsible for any damage you cause to your self, others, the environment, your property, your neighbor's property, or anything else. This is all DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK stuff. Be careful, and be smart. Remember that acid can be neutralized with lye, and lye can be neutralized with acid. When combined in equal parts, they create water. By themselves, they are capable of causing huge destruction.
I have read in some places that separate cation/anion filters will not produce as much total DI water as mixed bed resin does, so I imagine that we won't get quite the capacity of mixed bed by regening this way and keeping the resin types separate. However, it *will* make the regeneration process itself much, much easier. No more resin separation, and the entire regen process is done while leaving the resin in it's filter cartridge. No more lost resin!
Commercial water treatment plants regenerate their deionizing resin in a similar manner over and over, in most cases only replacing the media after five years. So DONE CORRECTLY, you will regenerate the media to around 90% of it's original capacity.
If you get LESS DI water out of your regenerated media, please don't come crying to me, "it doesn't woooooorrrrrrkkkk.." Yes, it does. You did something wrong along the way. Your regen solutions must be mixed correctly, the resin needs to sit in the regen solution for at least 45 minutes, and your resin must be rinsed thoroughly. If you keep those things in mind, you should have good luck with this, and save some money.
Above all else, guys, PLEASE BE CAREFUL! It's not worth saving a buck or two if you get hurt along the way.
Edit: A few safety tips if you decide to try this.
When you are preparing your acid solution, add acid to the water. Don't add water to the acid.
When you are preparing your lye solution, I would recommend making a max of 32 oz at a time. Make it according to the post on page three. Follow those steps for mixing the water/lye, then cooling it off. Make sure it is cool, then carefully add it to a five gallon bucket. Continue making 32 oz at a time until you have enough in the bucket to completely cover (and then some) your filter cartridge that contains the anion resin.
SuperBee364 said:
