Assuming this is a portable humidifier and not a built in furnace model, add vinegar to the water. The vinegar will serve two purposes by ridding of the white dust and sweetening the air. HTH
thanks for all responses. with filtering, what would i use as a filter please? it is a portable humidifier. what percentage of vinegar 'to' water would that be please? many thanks.
Your "white powder" is mostly lime (Calcium oxide or CaO) and lime compounds like calcium carbonate.
A filter will not filter out dissolved lime unless an expensive reverse osmosis filter is used. Depending on the type, the other filters filter out suspended particles, use redox to convert some contaminates into hydroxides, or in the case of carbon filters, absorb volatiles that have more affinity to the carbon than the water.
Adding vinegar (CH3COOH) to water will not remove the lime. It will reduce the hardness or "sweeten" it by making more calcium carbonate (CaCO3) and adding acid, but when the water is all evaporated, the white residue will still be there.
Adding salt to distilled water in a "cold" humidifier won't help. A "cold" humidifier sprays the water, often in microscopicly small droplets created by cavitation from an ultrasonic vibration, whereas a "vaporizer" used to help people with colds uses electrodes immersed in water to heat and boil the water. Adding salt there increases the current flow and heating ability.
A "cold" humidifier can be a breeding ground for germs, which it then sends into the air. The effect is worsened when the water is not changed out regularly and the container cleaned. Because of the heat and method of evaporation, vaporizers avoid this, but can suffer more lime buildup.
The short answer is to use distilled water, reverse osmosis filtered water, or rain water in a "cold" or ultrasonic humidifier.
As usual dipshit (serendipity) you dont know what your talking about..... To the original poster, "cold mist" humidifiers work with ultrasonic energy, it literally "cracks" the minerals in the water. the use of distilled water ONLY will stop the white powder. "warm" type humidifiers WILL NOT produce the white powder at all. Distilled is still preferred as you will get calcium and lime buildup in either humidifiers. Serendipshit is giving you BAD info, adding vinegar WILL NOT stop the dust, will make the house smell like a salad..., but to trailer trash.(Serendipshit) thats a major plus.
Watch out, Rastis, or you'll get googled and threatened with an incoherent stream of insults for daring to say that Ms. Dipshit isn't the veritable fount of All Useful Knowledge. ;-)
The dust is the salt in the water. Nothing you add to the water will remove salts, including vinegar. There are two possible solutions to the problem -- use distilled water or replace the humidifier with one that evaporates the water rather than spraying it into the air. In the long term, replacing the humidifier with an evaporative unit will probably be cheaper. Large evaporative units cost about $100, room sized units about $50 in the U.S. I use a larger unit for my 1200 sq. ft. house. It uses from 3 to 5 gallons a day here in the desert southwest (mild, but dry, winters). --- SJF
The dust is from the mineral content of the water - it's probably calcium, but I've never heard it referred to as "chalk" in this context. You can either use distilled water which would be free of mineral content or switch to a vaporizer-type humidifier, one which in essence boils the water and emits steam. With this type, the mineral residue is left behind in the water reservoir.
Not if it's a cool mist humidifier - that type uses ultrasonics to break the water up into drops small enough to float in the air, no heating required.
Fraid not, it just creates a mist of the water ultrasonically and that sees minerals that are in the water end up in the air as well, where they deposit on surrounding surfaces as the water evaporates.
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