Can someone explain to me how reverse osmosis water drink system works?

Question

What makes it different from the regular filters and distillation and so on? What is the membrane is that a filter too? If so, what is the purpose of having a total of 3 filters?
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Please keep it simple to understand.

Answer 1

If you separate salty water from less salty water by what is known as a semi permeable membrane (SPM), pure water will flow to the salty water in an attempt to balance the salinities. This flow is known as osmosis. If you now put high pressure on the more salty side, the flow of pure water through the SPM will reverse. So, reverse osmosis - put salty water in a tubular container (ie pipe shaped) which contains a layer of SPM and subject it to high pressure and pure water flows fron the inside to the outside of the "pipe", where it is collected. Of course, as the previous answerer said, for practical reasons you sometimes need to pretreat and filter the incoming water, but the amount and type of this pretreatment depends on the condition of the feed water. Pretreatment is to preclude bacterial growth or remove solids both of which can prematurely block the SPM.

Answer 2

We have had a RO system for almost 20 years. I'm no expert, but this is my undestanding of how it works.

1. The first thing the water goes through is a water softener.
2. Then it goes through another cylinder filter to catch any larger particles still in the water.
3. The membrane is a tough film with very tiny pores, just large enough to let a water molecule through, but not the larger minerals.
4. The water is sent through another polishing filter, then into the holding tank.

Occasionally the membrane is backflushed so any minerals which have collected on the incoming side are flushed off the membrane. This can be either a manual flush or an automated timed event.

Answer 3

Try
http://science.howstuffworks.com/question29.htm

Answer 4

No somewhat extremely user-friendly thank you to describe it. "In opposite osmosis, the assumption is to apply the membrane to act like a very high-quality filter out to create drinkable water from salty (or otherwise contaminated) water. The salty water is placed on one component of the membrane and rigidity is utilized to renounce, and then opposite, the osmotic technique. It frequently takes an astounding sort of rigidity and is fairly sluggish, regardless of the undeniable fact that it somewhat works."