Buckeye Hydro

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Water reports in the USA call out chloramine vs chlorine. Not sure what the standards call for, or if there are reporting standards in Chile. If you measure TOTAL chlorine, and FREE chlorine and there is a difference in the two, the difference is chloramine. http://www.buckeyehydro.com/insta-test-free-and-total-chlorine-test-strips/ If you want to access the water n real time at common residential flow rates, you'd run the water through a carbon filter. I'd recommend you do that at point-of-use rather than point-of-entry. In residential applications POU treatment for this purpose is usually with a sediment filter followed by a carbon block. Are you asking about a whole house RO system, or a point of use RO system? Either way, yes - RO water would be ideal for residential use. Russ

And by all means don't give that water to a baby or a pregnant woman. Limit on Nitrate in drinking water is 10 ppm - you're at 4 times that. Get an RO system!

The lab results for Santiago water seem fairly ordinary, except: Cerium - I'm not familiar with this and would need to do some homework before commenting on it. Chlorine - the US EPA limit for drinking water is 4 ppm. Santiago has 97 ppm.

Ha! Well... something is screwed up. This is supposed to be drinking water? Are you confident in the lab results? 165 ppm chlorine??? 44 ppm Nitrate?? I wouldn't drink that water.

Everything below Boron is in mg/L?

Yep. This is one of the reasons water utilities are switching from chlorine to chloramine. As the water delivery pipelines get longer and longer as the suburbs expand, you can test for free chlorine at the end of the line and find none. Chloramine on the other hand, does not volatilize. Russ

We use carbon tanks for chlorine removal, and CGAC in the tanks for chloramine treatment. The EBCT needed to treat the two disinfectants is different. Both can be successfully treated with backwashing carbon tanks for faster flows, and cartridge filters for slower flows. Russ

Ha! No lookup necessary. Can speak the jargon of the water treatment world in my sleep

Yes sir.

Don't forget to factor in the expected usable life span of the resin and the cost of the exchange tank. The higher the TDS of your feedwater, the faster you'll burn through a given volume of mixed bed DI resin. Russ

When you look to invest in this sort of system, assure it uses non-proprietary components. If you don't, you'll likely pay extra for your initial purchase, and you'll certainly pay extra for maintenance/operation. Russ

Our distillery customers come to us for RO's - have yet to put a DI set up in a distillery. Russ

Standard membrane sizes near yours are: 2521 (2.5" in diameter and 21" long), and 2540 (2.5" in diameter and 40" long). Hopefully your system uses standard-sized membranes. Russ

Ha! Thanks for noticing!

We can provide a auto back washing valve to fit your tank if you'd like - then you wouldn't have to change carbon out for years. Would pay for itself in short order. Russ

Are you using a carbon tank, or carbon cartridges? There is significant variation in the chlorine capacity of carbon blocks on the market, and that difference is not always reflected in the price. In other words, if someone is not mindful they can end up paying more for a lower quality block. Although carbon cartridges are relatively inexpensive, as you begin to process higher volumes, and higher flows, a back washing carbon tank is more economical over time. NYC water has incredibly low TDS - it is almost RO quality in terms of dissolved solids. We have customers in that area with feedwater TDS below 30 ppm. Russ

In the water treatment business, if we know what we want to remove from the water, and we know its concentration, and the intended flow (usually in gallons per minute), we can typically specify a filter to do the job. Carbon, regardless if we are talking about standard GAC or catalytic GAC, can be used to treat chlorine, chloramines, organics, and a few others. It doesn't however remove TDS. That's where an RO membrane comes in.

The difference vary a bit depending on if we're talking about residential scale systems (generally less than 150 gpd or 200 gpd), or commercial systems (generally > 500 gpd). Although the quality of the filters is a critical difference, as you mentioned, there are lots of other differences as well. I'm happy to discuss in greater detail if there is interest. For Filmtec membranes, 24 to 50 gpd are 98% rejection, 75 is 99%, 100 is 98%. The 150 and 200 gpd at usually around 90 to 96%. When you jump up to commercial membranes, and run them at the intended pressures, rejection is typically 98.5 to 99.5%. Some low end systems have a commercial membrane run at line pressure (meaning without a pressure pump). Expect lower performance in these systems in terms of recovery and rejection. Large (e.g., 80 gallon) pressure tanks are expensive. The 80 gallon pressure tank we carry is $740 - well more than what you'd pay for a good quality residential scale RO. A couple of things to note regarding pressure tanks: An 80 gal p tank won't hold 80 gallons of water. A good rule of thumb is about 50% of that volume will be air, 50% water. A higher proportion of that total volume will be water at higher shut off pressures. *RO water in a full pressure tank will not be as pure as RO water straight from the RO membrane. As the tank fills it exerts more and more back pressure on the membrane and the pressure available to purify the water ("net driving pressure") is reduced. The internal bladder (the part that eventually will fail) on large, good quality pressure tanks is replaceable - at a considerable cost savings over buying a whole new tank. Russ

A you talking about a pressurized tank or an atmospheric tank?

Our customers use RO water to proof.

For our customers with residential scale systems (generally less than 200 gpd), the replacement filters are inexpensive enough, and a softener expensive enough that few buy the softener. For customers we provide with commercial RO's, the replacement filters get more expensive, and most with hard water opt for pretreatment with a softener (and a carbon tank appropriately sized to remove chlorine and or chloramines). Russ

There is significant price variation on RO units, but I wonder if you are comparing apples to apples here. There are a ton of very low end units available for a very low cost, especially on ebay.

We recently joined the forum to better learn what your members need in terms of water treatment and purification. Buckeye Hydro provides these services/equipment/supplies to a number of micro breweries and distilleries in Ohio and Indiana and we are interested in expanding our involvement in this arena. Looks like this forum does not have sponsors or otherwise engage vendors. Am I just missing it? Russ Romme www.BuckeyeHydro.com

If we stick to the technical issues for a minute, here are some things that caught my eye: At 77F and 60 PSI that system will produce only 11 gallons in 24 hrs. There are RO membranes that produce water just as pure much faster, and at 50 psi rather than 60 psi. Looked thru the instructions - the system only has one prefilter - a combination sediment filter and carbon filter. Looks like the same cartridge is used as the post filter. You can do much better than this configuration. No spec's provided on this cartridge. No pressure gauge No TDS meter It uses old fashioned Jaco style fittings. No consideration for feeding an atmospheric tank rather than a pressure tank. Etc, etc. Russ