How does water get purified? Well, reverse osmosis is one way. Reverse osmosis is important because water often absolutely needs to be cleaned. In many places, the water from a faucet is not clean enough to drink, and doing so could cause sickness and in extreme cases even death. One of the most common water purification methods, reverse osmosis purifies water by using a process that separates out tiny ions and particles that are better off not in your drinking water. Let’s discuss how this works exactly.
The Basics
Before we get into the nitty-gritty details of the process, it’s important to understand the basics. Osmosis is when a molecule of a solvent moves through a barely penetrable layer into a more dense solute that results in an equalized concentration of solute. Reverse osmosis is the exact opposite of that. In reverse osmoses, water is forcefully pumped through a semipermeable membrane which holds back around 99 percent of particles in the pushed water. It is basically a way of straining your water. Just how you can strain pasta to remove excess water, you can strain water in a way to remove unwanted particles. Water passes through the semipermeable membrane, and the particles go the opposite way. This is the opposite of osmosis, where we end up with equalized concentrations. In reverse osmosis, the concentrations of dissolved particles are the furthest thing from even.
What Reverse Osmosis Removes from Water
Reverse osmosis generally removes between 95 and 99 percent of contaminants. Contaminants include ions, pyrogens, bacteria, organics, collides, and other particles. In simpler terms, reverse osmosis often removes salt, chlorides, chromium, fluoride, copper, lead, and other contaminants of water. Reverse osmosis is very dependable in removing these contaminants, and because of this reverse osmosis is used worldwide in many booming industries. The food and beverage industry often employs reverse osmosis to treat its water. Reverse osmosis can be effective for treating large or small flows of water and can be used on groundwater, brackish, or surface water.
Reverse Osmosis Benefits
So what specifically is beneficial about purifying water with reverse osmosis? For starters, salt is removed. Excess sodium intake leads to a number of health complications over time such as high blood pressure or stomach cancer. Not to mention the fact that salt makes you thirsty, so you do not want to drink water with salt in it. Lead is also removed, and this is important because lead intake leads to nerve damage, infertility, and heart disease among other things. The younger you are, the more vulnerable you are to lead intake.
Reverse osmosis offers more than just health benefits, however. For example, the environment greatly benefits from this process because it means there is no need to buy bottled water and waste plastic. Additionally, if you stay away from bottled water, you will be able to save money. So by employing reverse osmosis, you could save some serious cash. Lastly, reverse osmosis water simply tastes better. Pure water is so much more refreshing and better tasting than water with contaminants in it. You can always tell when drinking water has an off-taste, and it’s much more pleasant to have an almost tasteless gulp of water that can quench your thirst.
