If you are thinking about a reverse osmosis (RO) water purification system, you may wonder why it works better than a simple filter. In fact, understanding how reverse osmosis works will help you to better appreciate the limitations of the size and capacities of these devices. Though small, an RO system gives you the purest water possible from your home tap.
About Diffusion
First, think back to high school chemistry when you learned about diffusion and osmosis. These two ideas are really the same concept but with different media. Diffusion happens when any liquid passes through a membrane to balance out concentrations of dissolved contaminants. The system will attempt to reach a state of equilibrium. This state is when the concentration of contamination is the same throughout the entire container. The membrane that keeps contaminants from moving between the areas prevents this from happening, though.
About Osmosis
Osmosis is diffusion when it involves water. The process is the same. Water will naturally flow from a low concentration area to a high concentration area. For instance, if you have salt water on one side of a membrane and fresh water on the other, the fresh water will flow to the salty side to water down the solution. Since the membrane prevents salt from moving to the low concentration side, the higher concentration side will take on more water to increase its volume until it waters down enough to match the freshwater side.
About Reverse Osmosis
Reverse osmosis takes the concept of osmosis and uses pressure to switch the direction. Instead of clean water flowing into an area of water with higher levels of contaminants, the contaminated side’s water moves to the clean water side. This only happens by a reverse osmosis system putting the side with contamination under high pressure. The pressure forces the water through the membrane, but the tiny filter of the membrane traps contaminants. Often, in a home unit, the water will pass through another filter to remove odors before coming from your tap.
Get Clean, Purified Water at Home Through Reverse Osmosis Treatment
If you want purified water from home with a science-backed filtration method, choose reverse osmosis. These devices, due to the pressure needed and amount of filtration required can serve a single tap each. Most people install one of these under the kitchen sink for easy access to purified water for cooking and drinking.
Pick up your phone and call us at 951.737.1500 at Best Home Water Treatment Systems for more information about our reverse osmosis system or any of our other water treatment options.
