What is reverse osmosis?


by Rick Martin - Date: 2007-04-02 - Word Count: 778 Share This!

Reverse osmosis is a very practical and common process nowadays, and people use it to accomplish a variety of practical purposes, such as the purification of water for drinking, washing cars, in the food industry, for the producing of maple syrup and the production of hydrogen. With reverse osmosis, it is possible for people to collect the pure liquid they need so much, the basis for the activities already enumerated. This is what we will call a pure solvent. Initially, this solvent comes as an element of an impure solution. People needed to find a way of separating it from this solution. They found the most appropriate answer with reverse osmosis.

With the help of a system that uses this principle of separation, the solution passes through a filter. The solute, i.e. the elements that turn the solvent impure (the solvent dissolves these elements), remains in the filter. Once the separation takes place, the solvent travels across the filter, while safely leaving behind all impure and potentially harmful substances. Pressure is the one responsible for this. It operates with the help of a certain type of layer. This layer places an additional amount of pressure on particularly impure parts in the solution (where the highest amounts of solute establish). The pressure forces the liquid to separate into pure solvent and solute. The layer used to apply the pressure is half-absorbent, i.e. it will allow the solvent go through it, but it will stop the solute.

Anyone who wants to have water purification systems at home can use RO systems. People who have aquariums, but also universities and hospitals, public aquariums, various industrial applications, all of these users can benefit from using them. With enough pressure on the half-absorbent layer, forced upon it from the solute region, people can find applications for a process of slowed down, stopped or reversed osmosis. The pressure used by RO systems is very high, usually 2-14 bar for fresh, brackish water and 40-70 bar for seawater, because seawater has a natural osmosis pressure of around 24 bars. The process of removing the salt from seawater in order to obtain fresh water identifies as desalination and people have been widely using it since the early 1970s.

The state of equilibrium is the state in which the concentration in all the different areas of the resulting mixture is the same. With the help of a process called diffusion, we can achieve this state of equilibrium. If you ask yourself why I would buy a RO system, the answer is very simple. If you care about your own health and safety, and about that of your family, you will make sure that the water you and they drink its safe and pure. In addition, most RO systems have automatically shut down systems, which do not allow the wasting of water; they can treat tap water as well as well water and hard water.

The advantages of having a RO system is that you cut down on the costs by not buying bottled water any longer. Moreover, you do not need to buy fabric softeners and your clothes are safe. Usually doctors and dieticians recommend that we do not drink tap water because it contains unwanted substances, and that filtered water is 99% free of those damaging substances. In addition, hard water can damage your hair and skin, so it is best to use filtered water even for hygiene.

The portable reverse osmosis water processors sold for personal use in your home are gravity powered, so they do not need a water pump or electricity. The process is similar to the one of the coffee-maker filter, and the pressure of the gravity is the one that is draining the water through the filters. One filter lasts for about seven years before it needs replacement. The RO water processors are very useful to people who live in rural areas away from the city's water pipes, because it is easy to use and they can filter river or ocean water themselves.

In the food industry, reverse osmosis is useful in concentrating food liquids, such as fruit juices, because it is more economical than the conventional heat-treatment processes. A couple of the most appreciated benefits of this process are the cost-effective operations it needs and the possibility of leaving heat-sensitive substances untouched by heat-treatment operations. In this manner, we can spare the "life" of useful proteins and enzymes.

This process is also useful in the dairy industry. How do you think they can obtain in a cost-effective manner the so much needed whey protein powders? Having such wide applications, we have grown attached to this process without even realizing its importance.

Related Tags: ro, reverse osmosis, ro systems, osmotic pressure, ro water processor

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