with regards to water treatment facilities...what actually makes hard water hard and how can hard water be softened? Does hard water have any effects on the end users apart from soap wastage?
Water becomes hard owing to the presence of dissolved bicarbonate, sulphate, nitrate and chloride of some metal ions such as calcium, magnesium iron etc. There are number of methods by which hard water can be converted to soft. Among them ion-exchange/surface adsorption method is most convenient. Ion-exchange method gives decriminalized water (fails to remove organic materials like covalent substances) but surface adsorption gives relatively poor performances.
Hard water is hard because of the presence of bicarbonate and chloride.
Hardness is basically owing to the presence of dissolved polyvalent metal ions in the form of bicarbonate, chloride, nitrate, sulphate etc. Many of the bivalent metal salts such as MHCO3 , M(NO3)x (x = valence state of metal), MCl2, MSO4 etc.(M= Ca, Mg, Fe etc). Thus hardness is not due to the anions only.
You can become some info at
http://www.rsc.org/learn-chemistry/resource/res00001788/what-ions-cause-hardness-in-water?cmpid=CMP00005298
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