I run silica cycles, along with total hardness and chloride cycles, however, there are certain difficulties with getting "perfect" data on the silica cycles, as the make-up silica at our plant varies considerably from day to day.  I have heard reports of utilizing high-efficiency soft water plant, while retaining the silica in the water, and simply closing the blow-down, to arrive at ~100 cycles of concentration.  BTW, drift solids are reduced even further when there is sufficient dissolved solids in the water such that making a PM10 particle is completely impossible.

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I run silica cycles, along with total hardness and chloride cycles, however, there are certain difficulties with getting "perfect" data on the silica cycles, as the make-up silica at our plant varies considerably from day to day.  I have heard reports of utilizing high-efficiency soft water plant, while retaining the silica in the water, and simply closing the blow-down, to arrive at ~100 cycles of concentration.  BTW, drift solids are reduced even further when there is sufficient dissolved solids in the water such that making a PM10 particle is completely impossible.