Reverse Osmosis Water Filtration

[The Sequel]

I've got an R/O water system that is about 4 years old. Recently, it has not had much in the way of holding capacity. While I used to be able to fill about 2 gallons of water from the tank, now I'm lucky to get a glassfull. Although, within a few minutes, it will produce more water so I am wondering if the pressure in the tank is bad somehow. I just changed to of the filters and that made it worse. Do any of you have any ideas or experience with an R/O system?

 

[barryg41]

R/O Unit

We have a industrail unit at work. It puts out over 100 GPH. It has to be back flushed ever week(three different sand beds).



When we start up the unit it spills the bad water back to the suction until the conductivity is in check. Do you have a spill back valve (automatic)? This might be your problem. I am only guessing!



Hope this helps!

 

[Hummin Cummins]

Seq

I'm assuming this is a household / agricultrual type RO unit. I'm not very familiar with them, but working as a Wastewater Treatment Operator, I am responsible for several RO units capable of 10,000 gal. per day production, so I'll give it a shot.



Are the filters you changed the pre-treatment filters? Changing these will allow more feed water to enter the system, but it appears you are still lacking in treated "product". After pre filtering, the water enters a high pressure pump and is then injected into the ROMA (reverse osmosis membrane assembly) this is a membrane barrier that rejects suspended and dissolved solids. After this, a portion of the water carries these contaminants out (called "reject" water). The remaining water that passes through the membrane is the final product. The ROMAS should be cleaned whenever the normal water output rate drops by 10%, or if the differential pressure changes 15% from normal.



These membranes can be cleaned by an acid and alkaline cleaners. Acid removes inorganic (iron, etc. ) and alkaline cleaners remove organic biological matter. They should be available from the manufacturer of your unit in a pre-mixed form. If mixing them yourself the PH of the solution must be montiored closely.



Hopefully you have pressure gauges you can compare these readings to when your machine was operating properly, otherwise, after 4 years of use, I would venture to guess a membrane cleaning is needed. The only other reason other than a bad pump, is a drop in water temp. Production will drop 2% for every degree below 77.



We also ad an anti-scalant to our feed water to prevent biological growth inside the unit.



I can go deeper if needed, hopefully you have a manual for your unit, if not, a qualified dealer may be able to fix you up with cleaning chemicals. We have 2 units now and upgrading our plant from 6 million gpd, to 9 million gpd. Looking at about 6 more of these puppies Ours are manufactured by Waterlink Technologies.



Hope this helps, just like everything else, a good gut cleansing usually fixes it.



Whew thats alot of typin



Chris

 

[illflem]

The blatter in your pressure tank may have sprung a leak or lost pressure, it happens. Turn off the supply valve to the RO and open the outlet to vent the pressure, now check the tank pressure at the tire chuck on top with a tire gauge. You should have 40-60 psi, if you don't, pump it back up. If it doesn't want to hold the pressure the tank is shot and needs to be replaced.

 

[The patriot]

Re: R/O Unit

Originally posted by barryg41

We have a industrail unit at work. It puts out over 100 GPH. It has to be back flushed ever week(three different sand beds).



When we start up the unit it spills the bad water back to the suction until the conductivity is in check. Do you have a spill back valve (automatic)? This might be your problem. I am only guessing!



Hope this helps!

LMAO. The steam plant I run goes through 100,000 gallons of water a DAY !!!

Eric

 

[Hummin Cummins]

Hey Patriot, could we interest you in a couple million gallons of cleaned up poop water a day? No sense in boiling good drinking water.



Wastewater treatment... . you're poops our bread and butter

 

[The patriot]

Originally posted by Hummin Cummins

Hey Patriot, could we interest you in a couple million gallons of cleaned up poop water a day? No sense in boiling good drinking water.



Wastewater treatment... . you're poops our bread and butter

Yea, I handle the WWTP at my place too. I'm kind of like the jack (ass) of all trades there.....

Eric

 

[barryg41]

Re: Re: R/O Unit

Originally posted by The patriot







LMAO. The steam plant I run goes through 100,000 gallons of water a DAY !!!

Eric

OK OK So I forgot to put the K behind the 100... . I started to laugh also. What is bad is I put GPH instead of GPD. We use the R/O unit for boilers also.



At least I stayed on topic and tried to help Sequel.

 

[The patriot]

Re: Re: Re: R/O Unit

Originally posted by barryg41





OK OK So I forgot to put the K behind the 100... . I started to laugh also. What is bad is I put GPH instead of GPD. We use the R/O unit for boilers also.



At least I stayed on topic and tried to help Sequel.

100K GPH ? Ok, thats much better.

I used to run a steam plant in a laundry that had softeners like that.



Eric

 

[jimk]

power plant

Barry how big or how many meg watts unit is the one you are working for. I to work for a power plant, and some time do pm work in the water treatment also. How ever the plant I work at is only one unit and I am glad of it as it is enough to keep it together. lol jimk

 

[barryg41]

I dont work at a power plant. I work at a plant that makes plastic. The R/O unit that I was talking about supplies water to three steam boilers which supplies steam to the whole plant. It is really more than we need. The R/O unit sits idle for 1/3 of the time. It cycles off a treated water tank level. I am guessing that we have to do work on the unit maybe twice a year.

 

[The patriot]

Hey Barry, our softener was down for 8 months!!!!

I dont know how much you know about boilers, but most people flip out if it's hard for one day!!!!

 

[barryg41]

Originally posted by The patriot

Hey Barry, our softener was down for 8 months!!!!

I dont know how much you know about boilers, but most people flip out if it's hard for one day!!!!

When we first put in the R/O it had a few kinks. Like when do you not have kinks on something new that the company buys. We had to add plant water to the storage tank just to keep a level for the dearators. The conductivity was out the top and the engineers was jumping on us for not watching the conductivity. Most of our problems is with H2O supply to the R/O unit. The level control on that tank is a POS. It took them a little time to figure out a control application for the supply to the R/O unit. Now we have to get management approval before we add plant water. If we add too much it just gets blown down by the conductivity blow-down valves. And the treated water tank still loses it level in the long run.



I work shift work and I am there only half the year. Oo. Oo. So they might be doing more work than I see.