You may have heard that Reverse Osmosis (RO) water is great-tasting, very pure water and that there are two types of RO systems, but do you know how they work? And did you know Reverse Osmosis was initially developed by the U.S. Navy to produce drinking water from sea water for submarine crews?
Reverse Osmosis filters have a pore size around 0.0001 micron. After water passes through a Reverse Osmosis filter, it is essentially pure water. In addition to removing all organic molecules and viruses, Reverse Osmosis also removes most minerals that are present in the water. Reverse Osmosis removes monovalent ions, which means that it desalinates the water . To understand how Reverse Osmosis works, it is helpful to understand osmosis.
Osmosis occurs when a semi-permeable membrane separates two salt solutions of different concentration. The water will migrate from the weaker solution to the stronger solution, until the two solutions are the same concentration, because the semi-permeable membrane allows the water to pass through, but not the salt.
In Reverse Osmosis, the two solutions are still separated by a semi-permeable membrane, but pressure is applied to reverse the natural flow of the water. This forces the water to move from the more concentrated solution to the weaker. Thus, the contaminants end up on one side of the semi-permeable membrane and the pure water is on the other side.
McBride’s Water Advantage sells two types of Reverse Osmosis units; Whole House and Point of Use Reverse Osmosis. The latter are commonly called ” under the sink RO’s. These units can better be installed in the customers basement freeing up room under the kitchen sink for other items that are normally put there. In addition to more room under the kitchen sink, placing the Reverse Osmosis in the basement and running just one line to the RO faucet makes it far easier for our McBride’s Water Advantage service techs to service your RO. Reverse Osmosis diagram, picture number 1. Upgrade to Tomlinson Reverse Osmosis faucets pictures 2 and 3.
Whole house Reverse Osmosis units are units that provide extremely pure water for your entire home. Both of these units make water and store it for later use. In the smaller, point of use version, a three to ten gallon pressurized storage tank is used and is available upon demand. The larger Whole House system utilizes a atmospheric storage tank usually from 100 to 400 gallons and requires a re-pressurization pump to deliver water to the home. Fourth photo below.
