Three Tips to Help Maintain Your Reverse Osmosis System
If you have an industrial reverse osmosis system in your Cincinnati, OH facility, you’ll need to perform regular maintenance and cleaning. This will help keep your system running efficiently throughout its lifespan. While your supplier will help you understand what’s required for your specific reverse osmosis system, read on for an overview of what you’ll need to do.
What is a reverse osmosis system and how does it work?
Reverse osmosis systems force water through special membranes. This removes contaminants, large molecules, minerals and other substances from the water, so you’re left with fresh, clean water for drinking, cooking and other uses.
To understand reverse osmosis, it’s helpful to first understand osmosis. Osmosis is when diluted water solution passes through a semi-permeable membrane into a more concentrated water solution. Reverse osmosis, on the other hand, does the opposite. Pressurized water forces a highly concentrated solution through a membrane and into a lower concentrated solution. The membrane allows water to move through, but removes contaminants.
Therefore, the water that’s pushed through the membrane is clean and fresh, while the contaminants remain behind the membrane. The wastewater is flushed, the membrane is rinsed and the process can begin again.
How to maintain your reverse osmosis system
Here’s an overview of the steps involved in caring for your industrial RO system:
- Change the filters and membrane regularly: You’ll need to change your filters and membrane on a regular basis to ensure your treated water remains fresh and clean. Pre-filters need to be changed about once every six months to a year, while post-filters need to be swapped out once per year. This is important because the pre-filter ensures chlorine doesn’t contact the membrane—chlorine will destroy it. Similarly, the membrane needs to be changed periodically, too. If you have hard water, change it every two to four years. If you have soft water, you can wait five to seven years between changes.
- Drain the storage tank: Every two weeks, you’ll need to drain your reverse osmosis storage tank. Do this right before regular downtime (such as overnight) to give it a chance to refill. This will allow the system the opportunity to completely turn all the water in the tank, rather than simply refilling the top portion of the water. In turn, it will help maintain your water quality.
- Sanitize the storage tank: Finally, you’ll need to sanitize the storage tank about once every two years. Every reverse osmosis system tank develops “slime” over time. Every other year, you should run a sanitizing solution through the system to get rid of this slime. Your system supplier will help you figure out which solution is best for your reverse osmosis system.
Whether you have an existing reverse osmosis system or need to install one, Ultra Pure Water Technologies, LLC can help. Get in touch with us today to learn more about installing industrial reverse osmosis systems in Hamilton County, OH. We can also help you determine the best way to care for your system.
Categorised in: Commercial RO Water System
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