Reverse Osmosis in Manufacturing?

Many manufacturers think of drinking water when they hear the phrase reverse osmosis system, but in fact many manufacturing processes reply on high quality water in places you would never think they apply.  We recently spoke with Ron Hoolahan, president of All Water Systems in Pittsburgh, PA who specialize in commercial reverse osmosis distribution systems and water treatment technology.

Ron recently shared a story about a manufacturer in the metals industry who was getting product rejects because of deposits on the finished products caused it to no longer meet the specifications required by their customer. These products were expensive, and the reject rate was significantly hurting the company’s bottom line.

AWS was hired to analyze the situation to find the root cause of the problem and provide recommendations. They quickly determined that the deposits were due to one of the final steps in the manufacturing process, a cooling and cleaning process that relied on water in the final steps.

The feed water to the final process was identified as the specific contaminants causing the deposits. Deionizer Exchange tanks created a temporary pilot system that was able to confirm that removing the dissolved minerals from the water would eliminate the deposits. Once this was confirmed, several water samples were tested on an RO System Analysis software program to confirm that installing an RO system would provide high quality water and remove the deposit issue thus mitigating the problem.

Reverse osmosis is a proven method to filter water and provide high purity water feed where water quality is critical. Reverse Osmosis works by using a high-pressure pump to increase the pressure on the salt side of the RO and force the water across a membrane that allows water molecules to pass and traps particles and pollutants in the membrane. In osmosis, water becomes more concentrated as it passes through the membrane to obtain equilibrium. Reverse osmosis stops the contaminants from entering the less concentrated side of the membrane. When an amount of saltwater is pressurized during reverse osmosis, the salt remains and only clean water flows through the feed.

The outcome:

AWS designed a reverse osmosis unit with a distribution system to replace the deionizer exchange tanks. Controls were integrated into the system allowing the customer to control the operation of the water treatment system. Point-of-use quality monitors were added to allow operators to confirm the treated water met the required specifications. The result was an almost immediate elimination of the deposits allowing the product to meet the customer’s requirement, eliminate rejects, and retune to a profitable manufacturing process.

Author: Neal Rabogliatti, DMS - Many Thanks To Ron Hoolahan, President of All Water Systems: www.allwatersystems.com