�y��vlog

Hard water is caused by mineral buildup, which isn’t bad for your health but can create limescale on appliances like your water heater.

Zeng says that over time, these incrustants would build up like typical limescale, at which point they could be scrubbed away to remove the NMPs.

This is a nuisance in households -- and an expensive problem in thermal power stations, for example those that generate electricity, where the formation of limescale is known as fouling.

Heat exchangers are particularly prone to limescale, which greatly reduces the efficiency of the systems: a layer of limescale just one millimetre thick in the heat exchanger's pipes reduces the efficiency of electricity production by approximately 1.5 percent.

A research team from ETH Zurich and the University of California, Berkeley has now found a possible solution to this problem: a special limescale-repellent coating with microscopically small ridges that prevent the adhesion of limescale crystals.