REVERSE OSMOSIS SYESTEM
Reverse Osmosis
• Reverse Osmosis is a technology used to remove majority of
contaminants from water by pushing water under high pressure
through a semi permeable membrane
• It is a process where you demineralize or deionize water
Osmosis
• To understand purpose and process of RO, you must first
understand naturally occurring process of Osmosis
• It is a process where a weaker saline solution will tend to
migrate to a stronger saline solution
• For example, Plant root absorbs water from soil & Kidney
absorbs water from blood
• In diagram, salts are more concentrated in salty water so natural
flow of salts will be from right side to left side and water will
flow from right side to left side
Reverse Osmosis
• RO is other way round of naturally occurring Osmosis
• Water is pushed through semi permeable membrane under high
pressure, thus leaving behind contaminants
• Pressure depends upon salt concentration of feed water.
• More the salts, more will be the applied pressure
Cont.…
• Two types of water coming out of RO
– Permeate (containing less contaminants)
– Concentrate, reject or brine (containing more contaminants)
• Ro system employs cross filtration rather than standard
filtration where the Contaminants are collected within the filter
media.
Salt Rejection %
• It tells you how effective the RO membranes are removing
contaminants.
• A well designed RO system with properly functioning RO
membranes will reject 95% to 99% of most feed water
contaminants
s𝑎𝑙𝑡 𝑅𝑒𝑗𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 %
𝐶𝑜𝑛𝑑𝑢𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝐹𝑒𝑒𝑑 − 𝐶𝑜𝑛𝑑𝑢𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑒
=
𝐶𝑜𝑛𝑑𝑢𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝐹𝑒𝑒𝑑
• The higher the salt rejection, the better the system is
performing
• The lower the salt rejection meaning either filter needs to be
cleaned or replaced
Salt Passage %
• It is the inverse of Salt rejection.
• It tells the amount of salt passing through RO system
Salt Passage % = (1-Salt rejection%)
Recovery %
• It is the amount of water that is being
recovered as permeate
𝑃𝑒𝑟𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑓𝑙𝑜𝑤 𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒 (𝑔𝑝𝑚) * 100
Recovery % = 𝐹𝑒𝑒𝑑 𝑓𝑙𝑜𝑤 𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒 (𝑔𝑚𝑝)
• Industrial RO typically run anywhere from
50% to 85%
Concentration Factor
• The concentration factor is related to RO system recovery
• The more water you collect as permeate, the more concentrated
salts you collect in concentrate stream which may lead to scaling
and fouling
1
Concentration Factor = 1−𝑅𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 %
1 & 2 Stage RO System
• In 1 stage RO system, feed enters RO system as one stream
and leaves as concentrate and permeate.
• In 2 stage, concentrate from 1st becomes the feed water to the
2nd stage. Permeate water from 1st stage is collected and mixed
with permeate water from 2nd stage.
1 stage RO
2 Stage RO
Single Pass RO & Double Pass RO
• In double pass RO, permeate from 1st pass becomes the feed to
2nd pass
• By going through 2 RO systems, a much higher quality
permeate can be achieved
• It also removes Carbon Dioxide by injecting Caustic Soda
between 1st and 2nd pass
• By adding Caustic Soda, we convert CO2 to carbonates and
bicarbonates which are removed in 2nd pass.
Single Pass RO
Double Pass RO
Membrane Construction
Several designs are available for making RO membrane and elements. These membrane devices are
available in plate and frame, tubular and hollow fiber membrane module configuration. The
Lewabrane® RO membrane elements from LANXESS are manufactured as “spiral wound RO
membrane elements”.
The most common element device for RO membrane application is assembled according to spiral-
wound configuration.
This format provides the highest degree of packing density. The spiral-wound module uses flat sheets
wound around a centre pipe.
The membranes are glued along three sides to form membrane leaves attached to a permeate channel
(centre pipe) placed along the unsealed edge of the membrane leaf. The internal side of the leaf contains
a permeate spacer designed to support the membrane sheet without collapsing under pressure.
This permeate spacer is porous and conducts permeate to the centre pipe. A feed channel spacer (a net-
like sheet) is placed between the leaves to define the feed channel height (typically round 1 mm) and
provide mass transfer benefits. The membrane leaves are wound around the centre pipe and given an
outer casing (Figure 1.5). This design provides a high packing density (300-1000 m2/m3).
Ro construction
`SAND FILTERS
• At first ground water is collected and passed through sand filters,the filter media is supported on
gravel bed that consists of multiple layers of graded quartz
sand,fine sand,super fine white sand and pebbles of progressively large size.
• The filter will effectively remove up to 30 – 50 micron of the suspended solids to less then
5 ppm. Flow rate :1500 Lph min.operating pressure:1.5 kg/cm^2 media :support bed + carb
