TY - JOUR T1 - Scale Prevention by Ceramic Balls JO - East Asian Journal on Applied Mathematics VL - 3 SP - 424 EP - 446 PY - 2019 DA - 2019/06 SN - 9 DO - http://doi.org/10.4208/eajam.310718.020119 UR - https://global-sci.org/intro/article_detail/eajam/13160.html KW - Water scale control, Poisson-Boltzmann equation, crystal lattice model, Helmholtz free energy, Navier-Stokes equation. AB -

We studied the influence of the arrays of ceramic balls on the hardness of water and discovered effects, which can possibly explain the correlation between the balls and the growth of calcite crystals of CaCO3. A model to compute the electric field at the surface of the balls is proposed. It is shown that the number of polarised nuclei contributing to scale prevention is considerably larger than in natural water. Numerical simulations for a two-dimensional macroscopic model show that the effect of ceramic balls can be reproduced in configurations studied experimentally and industrially. Summarising, we note that ceramic balls induce a polarisation in the calcite particles thus decreasing the surface tension energy of crystals in the vicinity of the ceramic balls.