All About Industrial Reverse Osmosis And How It Affects Your Drinking Water
Industrial reverse osmosis systems are now in the market. These can either be “stand alone” or “turnkey” units, from fresh water production capacity for bottling, water stores or other commercial or industrial requisites, where good purified water is required.
Commercial and industrial reverse osmosis systems can generally produce water in the 2 to 10 mg/litre, which is equivalent to parts per million (PPM) TDS range, assuming upcoming water TDS are under 1000 mg/litre.
Water quality may vary depending on different conditions, primarily the membrane condition. Production rates may vary depending on the temperature, pressure, membrane condition and other components such as the litres of water recycled within the industrial reverse osmosis system as a factor of the filtration process.
Commercial and industrial reverse osmosis systems should include numerous stages of preconditioning in order to alter the incoming water into product water, passing through various quality requisites.
Preconditioning is the first step. Preconditioning usually uses certain types of multi-media or depth filters, succeeded by a water conditioner or softener and lastly by a carbon filtration system to separate organic chemicals and chlorine which would incorporate major damage to the membrane if not disposed of. In the usual case, iron, bacteria, silicates or other contaminants exist in the incoming water and must be separated with additional stages of preconditioning. A complete water analysis is needed in order to completely specify the different components which must follow the industrial reverse osmosis module.
Next is the disinfection. All water storage and bottling operations would need some combination of Ultraviolet and Ozone processing to make sure that the biological purity of the product water is emphasized. Even in industrial reverse osmosis, biological purity can be really important. As the water is produced by the industrial reverse osmosis process, the water is stored in a closed storage tank. A combination process of recirculation and disinfection is needed to prevent stagnation and possible microbial contamination after production and also prior to use. A sample of a smaller disinfection system running at 10 gallons per minute (recirculation or water delivery) is needed. It is an essential part of each of the “turnkey” industrial reverse osmosis systems.
The following is the reverse osmosis process. These are the three main applications for commercial or industrial reverse osmosis:
- Water Storage
- Bottling or Bulk Water Delivery System
- Industrial Water
Both water storage and bottling system applications use pre-conditioners together with disinfection modules. Industrial water users in most cases will require an additional deionization module to the basic configuration to deliver water at greater purity levels, needed in semiconductors, electronics or medical water processes. Purity levels achievable by the basic reverse osmosis module will usually fall short of these much needed higher purity levels.
Reverse osmosis techniques for water storage will usually fall from 600 to 3000 gallons per day, while bottling systems will range from 1500 to 25,000 gallons per day or maybe greater. Industrial reverse osmosis water users may need 50 to 100% of these volumes, sometimes extending up to several hundred thousand gallons per 24 hours, which depends on application.