Scale deposits and corrosion in pipes
Pipes block up. Exclusive fittings,expensive household appliances, washing machines or dish washers calcify and cause expensive damage to the home or to the aggregates themselves. The increasing fear of broken pipes play an important role in the mind of every home owner or plant manager. Expensive reconstruction work is likely to be due sooner or later.
What is corrosion?
Corrosion is divided into 2 main areas:
1) Corrosion of material through oxidation, (chemical process with delivery of electrons) e.g. the corrosion of plastic pipes.
2) The electrochemical corrosion of a metal. By corrosion, one generally understands the corrosion of iron through atmospheric oxygen. The oxidation is "caused" by electrochemical (electrolytic) processes. For example, rust has a higher electrochemcial valency than ship's steel. Therefore the steel corrodes in favour of the unpopular rust. Rust produces more rust and accelerates electrochemical corrosion by its presence.
How to protect against scaling, corrosion and rust?
Ion exchange
The most common water softening method called "ion exchange," is a reversible chemical process of exchanging hard water ions for soft water ions. Calcium and magnesium are the hardness ions, sodium can be considered the "softness" ions and they are exchanged to create soft water.
Ion exchange takes place in a "resin bed" made up of tiny bead-like material often made of styrene and divynlbenzene. The beads, having a negative charge, attract and hold positively charged ions such as sodium, but will exchange them whenever the beads encounter another positively charged ion, such as calcium or magnesium minerals. This ion exchange happens very easily since the sodium ions have a positive charge of only one, while magnesium and calcium have a more powerful positive charge of two.
Galvanic protection
Core piece of a galvanic based protection system is a sacrificial anode made of highly pure zinc. This principle has been used for a long time in the marine environment or at harbours.
The addition of zinc ions(ZN2+) is higher than the solubility in water. Zinc carbonates (ZnCO3) develop, which function as "inoculating crystals" for the limestone (CaCO3) present in its soluble state. The calcium carbonate grows into larger particles (agglomeration) on this competitive surface to such an extent, that the precipitated scale is no longer available to form into crystals on the inner pipe surface and/or heat transmission surfaces (heat exchangers).
CaCO3 
Ca 2+ + CO3 2- ZN2+ + CO3 2- ZnCO3
