I just read on a bottle of drinking water that reverse osmosis was used to ensure that it's clean. I was just curious, is reverse osmosis an expensive process?
It must be, if water covers 73% of the surface of the earth and yet fresh water is considered a scarce resource.
From Wikipedia:
quote: Reverse Osmosis is the process of forcing a solvent from a region of high solute concentration through a membrane to a region of low solute concentration by applying a pressure in excess of the osmotic pressure. In simpler terms, reverse osmosis is pushing a solution through a filter that traps the solute from one side and allows the obtainment of the pure solvent from the other side.
This process is used in treating sea water to get fresh water.
Posted by ludosti (Member # 1772) on :
From what little I know about home reverse osmosis sytems, it isn't necessarily expensive so much as it is inefficient.
Posted by kaioshin00 (Member # 3740) on :
You mean a significant portion of the water isn't usable?
Posted by ludosti (Member # 1772) on :
Yes. I don't know if this is the same for larger systems, but that (in the past) has been the problem with home units.
Posted by skillery (Member # 6209) on :
I think it takes about four gallons of tap water to make one gallon of RO water.
Posted by kaioshin00 (Member # 3740) on :
Well they should make more efficient ones Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
But is the inefficiency a big problem for large plants? Can't they just dump the rest of the water back in the ocean and take more?
If the intake and outflow are separated enough, I'd bet they couldn't make a measurable difference in salinity.
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