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REVERSE
OSMOSIS
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REVERSE
OSMOSIS TECHNOLOGY
Reverse Osmosis Filtration
Reverse Osmosis (RO) water purifiers protect you from the harmful effects
of lead, heavy metals, chlorine, chemical contaminants,
pesticides, pathogens, bacteria, virus, and even radioactive materials.
This is the only technology capable of desalinating seawater, making it
drinkable. This process, originally designed to make seawater drinkable for
the Navy, removes sodium, as well as lead, arsenic, nitrates, asbestos, and
a range of many other contaminants from household drinking water.
Non-RO water filters are much less effective, and the pore size on these
filter media are much bigger, generally 0.5 - 10 micron. They can filter
out coarse particles, sediments and elements only up to their micron
rating. Anything finer and most dissolved substances cannot be filtered
out. As a result, water is far less clean and safe compared to reverse
osmosis filtration.
What is Reverse Osmosis?
Reverse Osmosis, as its name implies, is the reversal of the natural
flow of osmosis. By applying pressure to the water solution of higher
concentration (the incoming water), the flow of liquid is reversed. Under
these conditions, the membrane still rejects the contaminants, but allows
the fresh cleansed water to pass through. The purified water is collected
in a holding tank and the contaminants are flushed away.
Reverse Osmosis, also known as Ultra-Filtration by the industry, represents
state-of-the-art in water treatment technology. Reverse Osmosis was
developed in the late 1950's under U.S. Government funding, as a method of
desalinating seawater. Now this advanced technology is available to homes
and offices for drinking water.
How It Works
In short, it is the process by which water molecules are forced through
a 0.0001-micron semi-permeable membrane (that’s 0.00000004 inches) by water
pressure. Long sheets of the membrane are ingeniously sandwiched together
and rolled up around a hollow central tube in a spiral fashion. Reverse
Osmosis, otherwise known as hyper- filtration, is the finest filtration
available. This process will allow the removal of particles as small as
ions from a solution. Reverse osmosis is used to purify water, remove
salts, and other impurities in order to improve the color, taste or
properties of the fluid.
Most Reverse Osmosis technology uses a process known as cross flow. This
allows the membrane to continually clean itself. As some of the fluid
passes through the membrane, the rest continues downstream, sweeping the
rejected species away from the membrane. The process of Reverse Osmosis
requires a driving force to push the fluid through the membrane, and the
most common force, is pressure from a pump. The higher the pressure, the
larger the driving force. As the concentration of the fluid being rejected
increases, the driving force required continuing concentrating the fluid
increases.
Reverse Osmosis is capable of rejecting bacteria, salts, sugars, proteins,
particles, dyes, and other constituents that have a molecular weight of
greater than 150-250 Daltons (TDS’s). The separation of ions with Reverse
Osmosis is aided by charged particles. This means that dissolved ions that
carry a charge, such as salts, are more likely to be rejected by the
membrane than those that are not charged, such as organics. The larger the
charge and the larger the particle, the more likely it will be rejected.
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