Essay On Reverse Osmosis

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Reverse osmosis is a process which is used in the purification of drinking water that uses a semi-permeable membrane or porous membrane to remove, ions, molecules and large particles from the water by means of applying pressure which overcomes the osmotic pressure. Reverse osmosis can remove many types of bacteria from water. Reverse osmosis results in a way that the solute is retained on the side of membrane which is pressurized and the pure solvent (water in this case) is allowed to pass. Keep in mind that the membrane should not allow large particles, ion or molecules to pass through the pores of the membrane.
As such in normal osmosis process, the solvent moves from an area of higher water potential to an area of low water potential. When we apply an external pressure to reverse the natural flow of pure solvent then it is called reverse osmosis. Reverse osmosis is dependent on certain parameters such as pressure, flow rate and other conditions.
Basically reverse osmosis is a process which forces the solvent through a semipermeable membrane from a region of high solute concentration to a region of low solute concentration by applying a pressure in excess of the osmotic pressure. The most important application of …show more content…

In the above diagram, a system is shown for water purification through reverse osmosis. In the first step a sediment filter is used to capture the particles like rust and calcium carbonate from the water coming from the main pipeline. A second filter with smaller pores is optionally used. In the third step a carbon filter is used to trap organic chemicals and chlorine. A reverse osmosis filter is also used which consists of a thin film membrane. Optionally a second carbon filter is used to remove the remaining chemicals which were not trapped by the RO membrane. An ultraviolet lamp is used to sterilize any micro particles that may have escaped filtering by the RO

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