http://www.hellenbrand.com/my_files/PDFs for Water Treatment Articles/2010_02_Wirth_print.pdf
Read the entire article and after doing so it occurs to me that there has been a misunderstanding of what exactly osmotic shock is and how it effects resin. Brining in and of itself does not cause osmotic shock. The shock occurs when overbrining combined with the rapid rinse cycle or water hammer conditions happen. Brining causes the beads to swell, which is normal and expected. Osmotic shock occurs when those swelled beads are subjected to stress such as the rapid rinse cycle or swelling and contraction over a shortened period of time.
Mid right hand column page 2.
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Osmotic shock differs from hydraulic shock in that osmotic shock is the swelling and contacting of the bead, where hydraulic shock is the physical destruction of the bead by external water force (water hammer). Over time, beads will succumb to osmotic shock and eventually some will crack.
As the beads crack, they break apart and lose mass. Partial beads lift higher in the backwash process and can exit out the drain. One should note that even cracked and broken beads function.
Osmotic shock is one of the major contributors to normal resin attrition. In addition, broken bead particles increase pressure drop through a softener by tightening and/or compacting the bed surface, filling the void spaces with bead particulate.
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Here is where you probably went wrong Wally.
Bottom right corner of page 2.
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In an immediate fast-rinse scenario, water enters the bead in large amounts, causing it to swell, crack and possibly burst (Figure 6).
This is the reason for the slow-rinse cycle; rinsing the resin bed slowly helps prevent this condition.
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As you should know, brine is introduced in the
SLOW Rinse cycle position, not fast rinse. The reason for slow rinse is to allow proper time to dilute the brine strength to 10% with the water in the resin tank and thereby to
slowly swell the beads so as to prevent breakage of the beads due to osmotic shock caused by the introduction of the brine. Recall that the salt brine solution is substantially diluted (down to 10%) because it is being mixed in the water in the resin tank.
Here we have someone mixing an unknown solution strength and pouring it into the resin tank quickly and my guess is that there is little fresh water in the tank to dilute the strength of this brine to 10% because he doesn't want to over fill the tank before he gets all the brine into it and he will top off the level of water with fresh water after adding the brine if he has too little brine solution.
That's why doing resin storage in brine is a bad idea and why your statement below is incorrect.
Leaving the beads in a normal brine solution will swell the beads but unless they are subjected to stress during storage, damage should be minimal if at all. Reading through all of these articles is interesting because in not one single article does it say that storing resin in brine solutin will destroy or degrade the resin, which is contrary to what I have always believed, so..... Thank you BD for enlightening all of us.
Which proves my point that until now you and BD/Andy knew little to nothing about osmotic shock (and you and BD/Andy still have it wrong).
Again. In an immediate fast-rinse scenario, water (WOULD) enter the bead in large amounts, causing it to swell, crack and possibly burst (Figure 6).
This is the reason for the slow-rinse BRINE cycle; rinsing the resin bed slowly helps prevent this condition.
The "condition" is osmotic shock due to 10% or less brine strength causing osmotic shock while you, BD/Andy and Skippy etc. all say it is fine to store resin in any strength brine.
Y'all are wrong, and doing nothing but agitating.
