Buckeye Hydro

And here we are... 6 years and almost 200 brewery and distillery customers across the country later.

The UV light would be on a recirculation loop, so the HDPE tank would not be exposed. Russ

Great - we'll be here! What's the name of your distillery?

If the primary concern is reduced water use by your RO system... How hard/soft is your feedwater? If your feedwater is soft/softened, and you're using a typically configured residential RO system (something like a 20% recovery - or a 4:1 concentrate to permeate ratio) you can reduce your waste water flow considerably. If you have a commercial RO system, hopefully a water analysis was done when the system was first installed. Typically part of that process was limiting concentrate flow to the extent possible, including recirculation. Russ

1. Make sure that the tank you bought is specifically for use with RO water. Many/most tanks are not. 2. Assuming that your process requires use of a pressurized storage tank, realize that a full tank will typically hold about 50% of the stated capacity. So for instance, a 40 gallon tank will hold about 20 gallons of water. The remainder is the air bladder. 3. Check your incoming water pressure. Do you have enough to run the RO system (regardless of the presence of the pressure tank). What does the pressure gauge on your RO system tell you when the system is running. You mentioned you bought a "cheap" system, so it may not even have a pressure gauge on it. If that is the case, add one: https://www.buckeyehydro.com/pressure-gauges-1/ 4. Assuming you have enough feedwater pressure to run the system, add a permeate pump https://www.buckeyehydro.com/aquatec-permeate-pump/ and high pressure auto shut off valve https://www.buckeyehydro.com/automatic-shut-off-valves/ and turn your tank right side up. If the fill time is still too long for you, you can put up to a 200 gpd membrane in your system. There are some details to attend to if you do this, so feel free to give us a call and we can walk through the details. Russ

Any feedwater to an RO system that contains chlorine of chloramine must first run through carbon. Modern RO (TFC or Thin Film Composite) membranes don't tolerate exposure to those chemicals. Additionally, if the feedwater is hard, a softener is a common piece of pretreatment equipment. This typically applies only to commercial RO's, as the membranes are more expensive to replace when they get loaded with hardness scale. Russ

Where to start? The two processes, carbon filtration and reverse osmosis, are two entirely different things. In nearly all circumstances they produce very different water quality. Yes - if sized correctly, a carbon filter can remove chlorine. But it will not remove dissolved solids (the "TDS" you've probably heard of). Reverse osmosis will remove a very high percentage (>95%) of total dissolved solids. Every distillery we've worked with uses RO water to proof. Russ

Well we can certainly help you with an RO System if you're looking for new equipment.

So you'll need room for the RO system (dimensions depend upon gpd capacity; can be floor-standing or wall mounted), and you'll need a storage tank (capacity and dimensions dependent upon your process needs). Russ

You'll want RO water for proofing, no?

Sediment removal? UV treatment?

where is your water treatment equipment?

We have spare parts for that system, if needed.

We size carbon tanks, based upon EBCT - empty bed contact time. To help reduce the size/expense of the tanks needed to accommodate the longer contact time needed to treat chloramines, we use a special fast-acting (catalytic) carbon. Russ