Antiscalant

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Material preventing or slowing scaling of a surface.

    "Antiscalants inhibit scaling by one or more of the following mechanisms: threshold effect which keeps scalant ions in solution, crystal distortion by absorbing onto the crystal surface at active sites preventing further growth, and finally by dispersancy where a surface charge is added onto the crystals so that they repel one another, reducing their ability to adhere to each other and equipment surfaces, hence, they remain in solution."

Example

More examples

"Antiscalants inhibit scaling by one or more of the following mechanisms: threshold effect which keeps scalant ions in solution, crystal distortion by absorbing onto the crystal surface at active sites preventing further growth, and finally by dispersancy where a surface charge is added onto the crystals so that they repel one another, reducing their ability to adhere to each other and equipment surfaces, hence, they remain in solution."

Etymology

From anti- + scale + -ant.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.