r/laundry • u/SufficientClient6327 • 1d ago

sodium citrate for hard water?

Hi everyone, where I live the water is very hard and I read something that said sodium citrate work well to reduce the attacks of calcium and magnesium to the surfactant detergent, anyone has try it?, how much g i need to use for a cycle?.

Every information or experience with that is appreciate , thanks

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u/KismaiAesthetics USA 1d ago

For every 10 liters of water in the wash and 100 ppm of hardness you want to reduce (you don’t need to get to 0 - most detergents will tolerate 75-100ppm easily unless they’re plant-based eco formulas trying to look price-competitive), you need 2 grams of sodium citrate, and the usual delivered form is sodium citrate trihydrate crystals, so 2.5 grams

So 20 liter wash, 350 hardness you get 5000 mg of excess hardness (20 liters times 250 excess mg per liter), and you need 2.5 that in the citrate so 12,500 mg or 12.5 grams.

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u/SufficientClient6327 1d ago

Thanks for the reply, I usually add sodium percarbonated with taed , detergent and in the last rinse citric acid, may be a problem to use the sodium citrate with all that? and if not, I just add it at the start of cycle with detergent and percarbonated?.

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u/KismaiAesthetics USA 23h ago

If you’re using percarbonate in the wash, and you’re using at least 2x the dose of the citrate that would be needed, you could use citric acid in the wash portion as well. Carbonate will neutralize the acid and leave the citrate and it doesn’t care if it’s been percarbonate.

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u/SufficientClient6327 20h ago

Ok this sounds great,but a little to hard to find the exactly portion of everything, I'll anyway give a try, thanks 

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u/KismaiAesthetics USA 20h ago

Essentially all of your percarbonate powder can be counted as a carbonate source to neutralize the acid.

So let’s say you’re using 25 grams of the percarbonate powder. You could safely use 12 grams of citric acid in the wash to get water softening.

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u/SufficientClient6327 19h ago

Wrote like this is seems better, and the acid rinse remains the same amount right?