02
Track 02 · Water treatment
RO: reverse osmosis
Removes salts and most dissolved matter through a membrane under pressure.
Equipment range: 1-250 m³/h
How it works
A high-pressure pump pushes water through a semi-permeable membrane against the osmotic pressure of the solution. What passes through is clean water. Salts and dissolved matter stay behind in a concentrated reject stream.
The configuration depends on the source: BWRO for brackish water, SWRO for seawater, DTRO and STRO for dirty water and wastewater that must be concentrated.
When to use it
- You need to reduce TDS, hardness, salts and most dissolved organics.
- Boiler feed, process water, or drinking water from a saline source.
- The first stage before EDI in an ultrapure water system.
- Reuse of treated wastewater.
Common mistakes
- Designing without a full water analysis, so scaling risk cannot be calculated.
- Weak pretreatment, leading to fast fouling and an early rise in differential pressure.
- Residual chlorine reaching polyamide membranes, causing irreversible damage.
- Raising recovery to reduce reject, which scales the last elements.
- Reading raw flow only, without normalizing for temperature and pressure, so nobody can tell fouling from cold water.
- Stopping without a flush, leaving concentrate sitting in the membranes.
Related notes
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