NurdRage - 2020-07-05
In this video we show how to Regenerate Mixed-Bed Deionization Resin for Use in Reverse Osmosis Deionization systems. A reverse osmosis deionization system purifies water by first subjecting it to reverse osmosis to remove most of the minerals, and then passing it through a column of deionization resin to remove at leftovers. This resin has a very limited capacity and often represents the most expensive recurring cost of such systems. Normally they are discarded when spent, but can be regenerated chemically. First a 15% solution of sodium hydroxide is prepared by mixing water and sodium hydroxide in a 3/17 ratio by mass. So for 170g of water, 30g of sodium hydroxide are added. This solution is added to spent deionization resin (80mL-200mL). The anion exchange resin component will float to the top while the cation exchange resin component sinks to the bottom. The solution also regenerates the anion exchange resin. The two resins are separate by pouring. The anion exchange resin is repeatedly washed with deionized water. The cation exchange resin is washed a few times with equal volumes of water and then regenerated by mixing with a equal volume of 5% hydrochloric acid (made by mixing 30% hydrochloric acid in a 1:4 ratio with water). After letting it sit for an hour, the cation exchange resin is filtered and also washed repeatedly with deionized water. The two resins are now regenerated and can be recombined to make mixed-bed deionization resin. #deionization #resin #regeneration Donate to NurdRage! Through Patreon (preferred): https://www.patreon.com/NurdRage Through Youtube Memberships: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIgKGGJkt1MrNmhq3vRibYA/join Through Bitcoin: 1NurdRAge7PNR4ULrbrpcYvc9RC4LDp9pS Glassware generously provided by http://www.alchemylabsupply.com/ Use the discount code "nurdrage" for a 5% discount. Twitter: https://twitter.com/NurdRage Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/NurdRage/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nurdrageyoutube/
11:29
Ah yes, the truly professional way of storing things that you just spent hours preparing. I really love how youäve always used whatever you have on-hand to do so many of your things with. Easily one of my favorite things about you.
I really like it as well, I do barely any chemistry, but I appreciate his effort to bring professional techniques together with amateur equipment.
Still rebuilding the lab. Might do some electroplating, or revisit making nitric acid (my last video on nitric acid is a decade old).
Birkeland-Eyde process style Nitric Acid!
DOOO ITTTT
Hello NurdRage!
1. Could you one day show how to produce H2O2 with different methods, as hydrogen peroxide is so often used in various processes.
2. And my next question would be, if you can synthesize phtalic acid (and later the anhydride of it for luminol) out of naphthalene?
Thank you for all your videos!!
Suggestion, the partial oxidation of a primary alcohol to an aldehyde, many have the demonstration or common experiment on you tube using acidified dichromate or permanganate, although another preparation needs the vapour of ethanol to be passed over hot copper turnings at 300 C. These is no real video or assessment of this method to produce acetaldehyde, could you maybe do it for an upcoming video? Regards, Karl
When will you update your bilibili channel
Propel "Fitness Water" bottles are perfect for DIY separatory funnels. The top of the bottle is already spout shaped and it's clear as well.
They also make AMAZING alcohol vapor rockets when used for the "whoosh bottle" demonstration, as the spout acts just like a rocket nozzle. Use a ring stand or similar to make sure that they fly upward instead of sideways and assume anything underneath is going to catch fire from alcohol.
Wow, a fitting name for that demonstration too!
(I've had it and thus heard the name before but haven't tried that experiment and don't have any bottles lying around)
@revenevan11 It's pretty impressive. There is one poor ceiling tile in my classroom with chunks out of it from being hit by a Propel bottle dozens of times. If you try it, be smart about your hands, face, and the surroundings.
This is what my dad does for a living, since 1990, on a rather large scale.
Good for him saving the environment 👍 if no one regens resin it just goes in the bin
This answered many questions I had on regeneration. Worked with equipment (servicing electronic controls) with ion exchange resin many years ago and never really understood how it worked until now.
Would there be any value in keeping most of the already separated resin as an easily in-situ regenerated dual bed to do the bulk deionization and use the remainder as a mixed bed for final cleanup of the ions?
go for it
That is actually a good way to do it. I built a system in an old lab with separate color indicating anion and cation beds and a polishing step with mixed breed nuclear grade resin. The system consistently put out >1 megaohm water at 2gpm. Didn't need the ro step since the incoming water was fairly high quality. I would recommend having physical filters (1 um gradient spun yarn filters work well) and a uv sterilizer and at least 1 activated carbon block upstream if the resins. The water coming out of the system was very low toc and was deionized enough that it completely after away a stainless steel temperature probably in a few months.
@Dan Heidel > was deionized enough that it completely after away a stainless steel temperature probably in a few months.
Did you mean: completely ate away a stainless steel temperature probe?
That's what happens when people post from phones - you end up with a lot of gibberish.
Thank you!
I keep being amazed at how you manage to pack so much relevant information into the videos, explained in a way that a novice can understand.
This choice of experiment provided an excellent visual demonstration of what you were trying to achieve, it was really inspiring and easy to understand for the layman.
I would love to see an attempt at an amateur production of a proton exchange membrane. Love this channel, keep up the good work!
Suggestion: please do di-nitration of phenol or some other substituted benzene. Lots of videos on mono- or tri-nitration (keep it cold or let it rip), but I don't think I've ever seen a youtube video on the controlled process of di-nitration and how to deal with excessive side-reactions, etc.
Yea I like this idea! I made lots of lower nitrates when using crappy nitrates for picric acid and the lower nitrates all were similar but had slightly different melting points and color. To make mono and di nitrophenol you'd just need more dilute acids and lower temps. NileRed actually made mono nitrophenol in order to make tylenol from aspirin.
Very cool video, I haven't watched for a year or two; good to see that you're still going strong. Love the content, hope to see you at a million before the new year!
I have been in the water treatment industry for a few years.
My 2¢ on this.
1. Consider adding another RO/NF stage (NF if the system feed water is softened, RO if water is hard) to the system before the current RO. This will reduce the TDS of the RO permeate and increase the life of the second RO membrane. Doing this will require one more pump and tank to be added to the system.
2. The biggest advantage to running a three vessel i.e ( anion, cation and mixed-bed) ion exchange system is that you can regenerate and rinse the anion and cation vessels in place. You can use the hoses to pump HCl / NaOH / DI water into the vessels. The OBR (Output between Regenerations) of the Mixed bed vessel will also be very very high and most of the ions are exchanged in the anion and cation exchangers.
Oh great: another Nalcoholic! 😄😄😄
If i want to do this in larger quantities, what do you recommend for containers? I run DI water system for car washes at home, and would be interested in doing like 5-10lb at once to save on time. Also what is the proper way to dispose of the chemicals after? I'm not a chemist, but looking for ways to cut resin cost. thanks! great video btw!
Plastic buckets is fine for containers, for car wash use, you don't need ultra-high purity like a laboratory. Just be sure to wear elbow high dish washing gloves when handling the chemicals. When you're done, you can mix all the waste chemical solutions and add in some (like half a cup per bucket) baking soda. If it fizzes, stir it until dissolved then add in another half cup of baking soda. Keep doing this until it stops fizzing. At that point it's safe enough to dump down the drain (it has essentially become salt).
Nice video and well researched. I wonder how much performance would be lost of the anionic and cationic resins were physically separated (layers? bags?) in the column. It would make regeneration easier.
Separate resins would produce lower quality water. So it's better to use mixed resins.
2:10 The nitrogen atom on the right has an OH group instead of a methyl, not sure if intentional or not.
Yup, that's wrong. I'll fix for a future video.
الله احيان عاباالي
He says "hydronium" but shows hydrogen several times. Hydronium is H3O, but H+ is shown.
Interesting video! The separated resins might be very interesting for home-packed HPLC columns for DIY protein chromatography!
HPLC uses way finer resins than this.. You can grind them up, maybe?? If not, it can be used as a normal CG column for those
Is it important to recombine the two resins or could you keep them separate for easier regeneration later? It would mean an extra filter can on the RO/DI system though.
water quality is worse. Best thing to do is to have 3 beds. 2 bed with different resins, and then have a final bed of mixed resin that you change less often.
It should work perfectly fine. I think that's what's done to remove nitrate from drinking water, since you're only interested in removing anions in that case, you only use an anionic exchange resin. Keeping the resins seperate would just make it a two-step-process.
No IT'S NOT PERFECTLY FINE. You get lower water quality.
This is because as you replace ions you shift the equilibrium of the reaction and some of it shifts back.
For example, let's say we have a solution of sodium chloride salt water and we run through a cation exchange resin already loaded with hydronium ions. The result is the sodium ions are swapped out for hydronium ions making hydrochloric acid. But as we know from before, hydrochloric acid will actually regenerate the resin and swap out sodium ions making salt again. Fortunately the effect is very small since the concentration of hydrochloric acid produced is very low. The actual equilibrium will lie very far to the right. But the effect isn't zero.
The tiny amount of sodium that remains will pass through the anion exchange column without being absorbed. Meanwhile, most of the chloride will be removed but again, not all for a similar reason of equilibrium. To improve this you need to have another cation exchange resin column that now removes the remaining sodium ions. Since the most of chloride was removed by the anion exchange resin the amount of hydrochloric acid produced is lower so you get improved water quality. But it still isn't zero, you need to keep stacking more and more pairs.
A mixed bed deionization resin column solves this by essentially having hundreds of deionization pairs in one column. The leftover ions from one bead of resin are removed by the next bead, and the leftovers from that bead are absorbed by a bead further down. So mixed bed resins give the best performance for the least complication. And thus remain the standard for water deionization.
However there is a way to get the benefits of a mixed bed deionization column and still have the slightly easier maintenance of separate beds, and that's to use both.
First have the anion and cation exchange columns processing the incoming water, and then have a final mixed bed column to polish the tiny percentage that makes it through. As long as you keep regenerating the anion and cation exchange columns before they are completely depleted, you can get many months of use out of the mixed bed column before it needs to be regenerated.
Personally though, i don't bother. Separating and remixing the resin isn't the most labor intensive part of this process and i don't regenerate my resin often enough anyway to be bothered by it.
@NurdRage that's a really interesting example of the effects of the equilibrium shifting as a reaction proceeds. Really cool that it actually ends up making the mixed resin more efficient! Feels like the case of having just one type alone in a column should be an example problem in a differential equations textbook lol.
You never cease to amaze me after all the years on YouTube. No complete lab? No problem! :)
I really enjoy vids I can replicate at home quite easily. Not that I had a reverse osmosis filter, but still..
This is awesome, had no idea such a thing was possible!
Me: Doesn’t understand a word of the title
Also me: Watches with complete and utter interest anyways
Cations are positive and I remember that because "cats are a plus".
Hi this is siva from India. I am aquarium hobbyist. I have a few questions
1) Inserted of mixing two resins. Can we use two different cadrage separate anion and cation ded?( any negative reactions)
2) If we use two separate ion cadrage first which ion we should pass water?
3) By using this HCL and NaoH chemical any effect on fishes health?
Hello NurdRage!
1. Could you one day show how to produce H2O2 with different methods, as hydrogen peroxide is so often used in various processes.
2. And my next question would be, if you can synthesize phtalic acid (and later the anhydride of it for luminol) out of naphthalene?
Thank you for all your videos!!
Thank you for always sharing and being awesome. I want to mess with this and I don't even have an RO system...just looks like fun.
The density separation is ingenious!
Excellent video! Thanks for the presentation.
I have a question though, what do you do to dispose of the regenerant? Pour it down the drain??
He answered this: When you're done, you can mix all the waste chemical solutions and add in some (like half a cup per bucket) baking soda. If it fizzes, stir it until dissolved then add in another half cup of baking soda. Keep doing this until it stops fizzing. At that point it's safe enough to dump down the drain (it has essentially become salt).
This process might be simplified a lot by having a 2-stage deionization process, rather than a mixed bed process.
If you keep the two resins separate in the deionizer, you won’t have to bother separating them when regenerating them, and would have less chemical use.
Did you read the pinned comment?
Answer to a common question that keeps coming up:
Separating and remixing the resin seems redundant, can time and labor be saved by keeping the resins separate during use and regenerating them in independent cycles?
Actually yes, you can save time and labor by using separate deionization beds, but there are some caveats.
So for those of you that don't know, since the resin beads work independently, you don't strictly need to mix them. Instead two different cartridges can be made, one containing anion exchange resin and the other containing cation exchange resin. They are installed in separate housings and connected in series. As the water flows through one the corresponding ions are removed, and then as they flow through the next cartridge, the ions of that type are removed. The result is deionized water just as with a mixed bed. But the system is much easier to regenerate as the resins are already separated and it's just a matter of removing the appropriate resin, mixing it with regenerant, washing it, and putting it back. In fact a number of commercial systems indeed do it this way. And you can set your system up this way as well.
The reason why it's not the standard is because it actually produces slightly lower purity water. This is because as you replace ions you shift the equilibrium of the reaction and some of it shifts back.
For example, let's say we have a solution of sodium chloride salt water and we run through a cation exchange resin already loaded with hydronium ions. The result is the sodium ions are swapped out for hydronium ions making hydrochloric acid. But as we know from before, hydrochloric acid will actually regenerate the resin and swap out sodium ions making salt again. Fortunately the effect is very small since the concentration of hydrochloric acid produced is very low. The actual equilibrium will lie very far to the right. But the effect isn't zero.
The tiny amount of sodium that remains will pass through the anion exchange column without being absorbed. Meanwhile, most of the chloride will be removed but again, not all for a similar reason of equilibrium. To improve this you need to have another cation exchange resin column that now removes the remaining sodium ions. Since the most of chloride was removed by the anion exchange resin the amount of hydrochloric acid produced is lower so you get improved water quality. But it still isn't zero, you need to keep stacking more and more pairs.
A mixed bed deionization resin column solves this by essentially having hundreds of deionization pairs in one column. The leftover ions from one bead of resin are removed by the next bead, and the leftovers from that bead are absorbed by a bead further down. So mixed bed resins give the best performance for the least complication. And thus remain the standard for water deionization.
However there is a way to get the benefits of a mixed bed deionization column and still have the slightly easier maintenance of separate beds, and that's to use both. First have the anion and cation exchange columns processing the incoming water, and then have a final mixed bed column to polish the tiny percentage that makes it through. As long as you keep regenerating the anion and cation exchange columns before they are completely depleted, you can get many months of use out of the mixed bed column before it needs to be regenerated.
Personally though, i don't bother. Separating and remixing the resin isn't the most labor intensive part of this process and i don't regenerate my resin often enough anyway to be bothered by it.
Id love to see some polymer chemistry.
never gets much love or exploration.
This polymer processing engineer agrees!
I did my training period in polymer chemistry lab and synthesized thermoresponsive polymers. Functional polymers are actually very useful and fascinating!
polymer? I barely know her
That's because it has some very big challenges
Thanks for sharing your amazing video. I run separated resins. Please how long should I let the anion resin in the NaOH solution and the cation in the acid solution ? Once I finish can I put each resin in a different container with DI water to remove the restoration solution or is it better to filter as you demonstrated.
Is it possible that after the regeneration(s), resin will slowly leach out of the system, and end up in the deionized water? How could that affect future chemical reactions?
Edit: NEVERMIND, you answered this at 11:50 .
Would it be possible to make an ion selective membrane with this stuff? For a battery separator for example?
Hi there
I would like to ask if the separation can be done with potassium hydroxide instead of sodium hydroxide,and, if this would also simultaneously regenerate the one half of the resin (cation or anion) ?
Best regards
Do you reckon organic acids (e.g. acetic, citric) can be used for the cationic exchange resin? Asking because it's much easier and cheaper to obtain food-grade supplies of these. (I live in the UK where HCl is not readily available and of dubious purity.)
From my brief survey the only sparingly soluble salt seem to be calcium citrate, which I imagine means I'll just have some precipitate to wash out if I use citric acid.
no, they're weak acids and don't produce a high enough concentration of ions. Also, being organic, they'll absorb into the beads themselves and contaminate your product water
Liyang, I found HCl but struggling for a good source of hydroxide, have you found a good cheap UK source? All the drain cleaner stuff I can see is contaminated with aluminium nitrate and stuff
you know id love to to see you do nickle plating most if not all the other videos ive watched are of amateurs doing it in rather crude set ups. id love to see a much better set up of a run. its always kinda amazed me that since the 1800s people nickle plated guns or other things and they held up so well
An idea - would it be possible to add clock to the shots? Always wonder at which speed e.g. the filtration process is proceeding. Or add text saying at which speed it's played. Thanks!
Thanks. Much appreciated. A question I have. The contents of the CLARIS smart IWS (r) by Jura (for my D4 coffee machine): do you think this is solely cation exchanger with a few active carbon particles added?
theres a nice system on amazon, a 5 stage with the 4.5g storage tank for like 189 dollars. brought my PPMs from down 550 to 20. I probably need a water softener upstream. for now i have two very strong neodymium magnets coupled together around the input to the filter in order to mitigate the adhesion of mineral scale to the innards. I imagine the R/O filter is being thrashed which I didnt know about till your previous video.
11:40 Professor, I have a question...
11:49 ...oh, I guess I don't.
Thank you for the valuable lecture!
NurdRage - Love your videos!!! I watch them all the time. Can I ask, what degree do you hold and where did you obtain it? Just curious.
Wish I knew even 1/5th of what you know.
Is it possible to have 2 cartridges, one with the cationic exchange resin and the other with anionic resin, then have the water flow through both cartridges one after another? Would that eliminate the need to have to separate the resin each time you want to regenerate it?
How do you suggest getting the resin out of the original filter cartridge? I am working in a research lab for the summer and my task is to do this exact process, however, I am concerned about how to extract the resin beads safely (given that I don't know what chemicals the resin has absorbed over its operating period) and efficiently. Any help is great, thank you so much again for the wonderful video, it really saved me. :)
In this video: Chemist cleans Caviar!
Joking aside, it really amazes me how similar looking it is... Donät get me wrong, I donät think Iäve ever once owned caviar muchless know what it tastes like, but you must admit it looks very similar to all the depictions of caviar youäve seen.
Nice video! I appreciate it very much that you are back!
Oh I would love a new video on nitric acid!
Greetings from Germany. Have a nice week!
although simple, i liked the ingenuity of separation stage using a liquid of intermediate density
Very in depth and interesting!!
Dude thanks, I have been thinking on getting RO system for brewery needs but unavailability of spare cartages does not make it a wise purchase. Regeneration of at least one part of the system might make it viable for me. Will research further.
That is the best quote ever "this fluid is somewhat corrosive to human flesh"
It's as corrosive as soap. NileRed stuck his hand in it once, and nothing happened.
hi thank you for all this teaching and sharing i have one question what chemistry book do you recommend us to buy thanks
Marvellous Chemistry, and Useful too ! Nice one Nurdy :)
NurdRage - 2020-07-05
Answer to a common question that keeps coming up:
Separating and remixing the resin seems redundant, can time and labor be saved by keeping the resins separate during use and regenerating them in independent cycles?
Actually yes, you can save time and labor by using separate deionization beds, but there are some caveats.
So for those of you that don't know, since the resin beads work independently, you don't strictly need to mix them. Instead two different cartridges can be made, one containing anion exchange resin and the other containing cation exchange resin. They are installed in separate housings and connected in series. As the water flows through one the corresponding ions are removed, and then as they flow through the next cartridge, the ions of that type are removed. The result is deionized water just as with a mixed bed. But the system is much easier to regenerate as the resins are already separated and it's just a matter of removing the appropriate resin, mixing it with regenerant, washing it, and putting it back. In fact a number of commercial systems indeed do it this way. And you can set your system up this way as well.
The reason why it's not the standard is because it actually produces slightly lower purity water. This is because as you replace ions you shift the equilibrium of the reaction and some of it shifts back.
For example, let's say we have a solution of sodium chloride salt water and we run through a cation exchange resin already loaded with hydronium ions. The result is the sodium ions are swapped out for hydronium ions making hydrochloric acid. But as we know from before, hydrochloric acid will actually regenerate the resin and swap out sodium ions making salt again. Fortunately the effect is very small since the concentration of hydrochloric acid produced is very low. The actual equilibrium will lie very far to the right. But the effect isn't zero.
The tiny amount of sodium that remains will pass through the anion exchange column without being absorbed. Meanwhile, most of the chloride will be removed but again, not all for a similar reason of equilibrium. To improve this you need to have another cation exchange resin column that now removes the remaining sodium ions. Since the most of chloride was removed by the anion exchange resin the amount of hydrochloric acid produced is lower so you get improved water quality. But it still isn't zero, you need to keep stacking more and more pairs.
A mixed bed deionization resin column solves this by essentially having hundreds of deionization pairs in one column. The leftover ions from one bead of resin are removed by the next bead, and the leftovers from that bead are absorbed by a bead further down. So mixed bed resins give the best performance for the least complication. And thus remain the standard for water deionization.
However there is a way to get the benefits of a mixed bed deionization column and still have the slightly easier maintenance of separate beds, and that's to use both. First have the anion and cation exchange columns processing the incoming water, and then have a final mixed bed column to polish the tiny percentage that makes it through. As long as you keep regenerating the anion and cation exchange columns before they are completely depleted, you can get many months of use out of the mixed bed column before it needs to be regenerated.
Personally though, i don't bother. Separating and remixing the resin isn't the most labor intensive part of this process and i don't regenerate my resin often enough anyway to be bothered by it.
Christopher Wilson - 2020-07-07
why do you still pretend to be nurdrage when its so obvious you're nilered
Benjamin Shropshire - 2020-07-08
Exactly the question I was going to ask. But it does moot yet another: in industrial environments, do they even bother swapping out the cartridges for the regeneration process or can it be done with bypass valves? Stack a dozen or so single resin pairs in a row with more than you really need and you can always have one in bypass at some phase of the regeneration process.
Rúna Kovács - 2020-07-08
@Benjamin Shropshire I was taught they use bypass valves.
Imagine a big tank with multiple pipes leading into it. One for normal operations, one for rinsing with DI water, one for regeneration.
And IIRC, the way it works (it's been a while since I studied/interned on the plant-level) is to flush one column into the next and only at the end clear the waste fluid.
bknesheim - 2020-07-09
"The reason why it's not the standard is because it actually produces slightly lower purity water."
Could you not fix this using a third mixed cartridges after two with different resins. Since it only have to remove any small amounts that slipt through the two other cartridges it should last a long time.
James Green - 2021-06-16
Hopefully someone here that knows more than I do about the actual workings of these systems could answer this question for me. In a small RO 4 cartridge system used to clean water for an aquarium is any sodium in the water being filtered already removed before it gets to the resin cartridge. The resin cartridge is the last of 4 cartridges in my small RO system and before the water even gets to the resin cartridge my TDS is 21. I was wondering if any sodium in my unfiltered water is removed before it gets to the resin cartridge because sodium would be the only thing in the 21 PPM before it gets to the resin cartridge that might cause me issues and was thinking of just leaving the resin cartridge out of my system if I don’t need it. Thanks in advance to anyone who might be able to answer my question.👍