What Would Make a Manufacturing Facility Replace Properly Functioning, One-Year-Old Water Softeners? Follow the Money!

A pharmaceutical manufacturer installed new water softeners for boiler pretreatment at two facilities. While the softeners were performing as expected, the decision was made to remove them and invest in Kinetico’s high-efficiency, twin-tank, non-electric water softeners. The primary driver for this change was significantly lower operational costs of the Kinetico softeners versus their traditional water softeners. 

Kinetico’s proprietary design includes the replacement of traditional electric motors, valves, circuits and controllers with hydraulic pressure and flow-based components. Elimination of the electrical requirements reduces operational costs. The twin tank design allows for soft water regeneration, as well as Kinetico’s patented counter-current regeneration, where the brine rinse flows from the bottom to the top of the vessel. This is much more efficient than the traditional top-down regeneration used by non-Kinetico softeners.

By flowing from cleaner to dirtier, versus the traditional more contaminated to cleaner method, the resin is cleaned up much faster. This requires significantly less water, sewer and salt to regenerate. These savings combined with the elimination of electrical costs made the payback period for upgrading to the Kinetico units a mere 12 months on the smaller softener and 18 months on the larger softener.

Beyond the significant operational savings, electrical component issues account for 85% of all water softener problems, repairs and replacements. By eliminating this primary cause of problems, Kinetico systems are more reliable and require less maintenance. Additionally, Kinetico’s specific integrated twin tank design is different than combining two traditional single-tank electric softeners. A primary difference is that Kinetico’s patented design ensures all the moving parts of the softener only interact with soft water. This prevents the hard water buildup that leads to valve cleanings, reduced performance, hard water breakthrough, maintenance costs and shortened equipment life.  

If you are interested in learning how much your facility can save by upgrading to Kinetico water softeners or other equipment, reach out today.