Reverse Osmosis was so great and ingenious that it was actually referred as hyper-filtration mainly because of the cheaper and cleaner costs and the much better efficiency in comparison to distillation and membrane filtration.
So what is Reverse Osmosis? Just a quick recap,
Osmosis is
- The net movement of water molecules from a region of higher concentration to a region of lower concentration through a semi-permeable membrane.
Reverse Osmosis is
- Basically the exact reversed way of osmosis.
- Reverse Osmosis uses pressure and force to push the molecules into the semi-permeable membrane.
- So, Reverse Osmosis is generally a filtration method to obtain the filtrate which is often pure(not having any solute) and is normally the solvent itself.
However, it is not used for basic filtration but more often used for a bigger purpose and the scale is much bigger than normal filtration. Reverse Osmosis is different from Osmosis because
- Reverse Osmosis is more of a unnatural flow of the solution, which means that external force is applied so that the natural flow is reversed.
- Reverse Osmosis also the filtration of the solvent whereas Osmosis is generally the idea of diffusion of water molecules.
- However, in both cases, the molecules pass through a semi-permeable membrane.
The amount of people that still purchase bottled water for home use never ceases to amaze me. Come on people, it's time to get educated here. You are wasting time and energy, landfill space, and yes, money...Lots of it. Have you ever heard of reverse osmosis? Did you know that most bottled water manufacturers are using reverse osmosis as a means of purifying the bottled water you are drinking?
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