The well water where we live here in New Mexico has lots of dissolved silica. It looks more or less like calcium scale, but pretty much bonds permanently to glass. At first I thought it was just calcium and tried all sorts of products to clean it off. But nothing worked. So our drinking glasses, shower door, toilets and even exterior windows are getting damaged. Not much hope until this recent paper.
What really surprised me was this line from the paper, which is aimed at industrial silica removal:
“About half of all fresh water withdrawn daily in the US, ∼500 billion gal/day, is used by thermoelectric power generation plants”
