Efficiency of one scale inhibitor on calcium carbonate precipitation from hot water sanitary: effect of temperature and concentration

The scaling of hot water transport pipes has become one of the major problems encountered in Agadir's region, which exploits water of underground origin with very high hardness (40°F). Several methods can be used to prevent this phenomenon. Among these methods, the use of chemical inhibitors remains one of the processes to stop or retard the formation of scale deposits. In this study, we tested the inhibitor with the trade name “Aquatreat601” at different temperatures such as 30, 40 and 60 °C. This inhibitor was tested at different concentrations for each temperature in order to find the efficiency concentration to prevent the precipitation of scale, which consists mainly of calcium carbonate CaCO(3) of the aragonite variety with a percentage of 88 %, and also the Mg-calcite Mg(0.06)Ca(0.94)(CO(3)) with a percentage of 12 %. These results obtained by method X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. We carried out this study on pure calco-carbonic water, of hardness equal to 40°F, using the “LCGE” method. The quantity of inhibitor is added before the research gas is introduced. In all cases, the presence of chemical inhibitors does not alter the initial pH of the solution or the concentration of calcium (TCa) value measured before the experiment begins. The results obtained show that the ‘‘Aquatreat 601″ contents of 100, 180 and 300 ppm allowed total inhibition of calcium carbonate precipitation at temperatures of 30, 40 and 60 °C respectively.