What to Know Before Buying an RO Water Purifier

Water purification once seemed like a luxury reserved for those who demanded the cleanest-tasting water. However, with recent news about lead and other contaminants present in our tap water, water filtration has become a necessity for anyone who wants to know they have safe drinking water. If you want exceptionally pure water for your household, it’s time to buy an RO water purifier. These systems produce the purest possible drinking water of any at-home filtration option.

RO, or reverse osmosis, is a purification technology that uses a special membrane to filter the water. This membrane is designed to mimic the osmosis that occurs on a cellular level. In cellular osmosis, a solvent like water is drawn across a semipermeable membrane to a region with a higher solute concentration. This allows cells to replenish their supply of water without absorbing any external contaminants.

While cellular osmosis moves pure water naturally through a membrane where it can form a solution with the chemicals in the cell, RO takes a solution of water and other chemicals and uses pressure to push water through the membrane. This process creates pure water on one side of the membrane and leaves the water with a higher concentration of dissolved chemicals behind.

To help imagine this process, if you took a saltwater solution on one side of the membrane and pure water on the other, the pure water would naturally flow towards the salt solution, attempting to dilute the solution through osmosis. Applying pressure to the salty side of the membrane helps to overcome the natural osmotic flow, allowing pure water to be extracted from the saltwater and leaving a concentrated brine behind. This is the basis of RO filtration, pressure helps overcome natural osmosis and removes pure water from a solution. Once a solution has undergone osmosis, the concentrated solution left behind is removed as waste and the process repeats.

If you are interested in having one of these systems in your home, you can buy RO water purifiers here at efilters. We carry the ROM II, III & IV home RO filtration systems by Everpure. These amazing filtration systems feature Everpure’s user-friendly design combined with outstanding filtration power. These systems can be installed under your sink using simple hand tools. Once you install the filter head, storage tank, and connect the water lines, your new system will be ready to provide clean drinking water on demand year-round.

The RO membrane is the key to providing superior water quality. These membranes can last for years, but they are surprisingly fragile. Chemicals like chlorine can punch holes in the membrane and large particulate can clog large portions of the filter. To avoid damaging the effectiveness of your RO system, all water is passed through an initial pre-filter cartridge. This cartridge will help absorb the chlorine commonly found in municipal water and filter out the larger particulate matter that would otherwise quickly foul the RO cartridge. The pre-filter cartridge will need to be changed approximately every 12 months to ensure your system functions properly.

After passing through your pre-filter, your water will be filtered to approximately 0.5 microns. This filtered water then moves to the RO filter cartridge. Once pressure is applied and your water is forced through the membrane, it will be filtered down to 0.00001 microns. To offer some perspective, that is one five millionth the width of a human hair or one hundred-thousandth the width of a bacteria. Forcing water through this extremely fine membrane takes slightly longer than a standard carbon filter, which is why every RO system comes with a storage tank. This tank stores 3 gallons of RO filtered water so you can always have clean water on demand despite the filtration rate of 0.6 gallons per hour.

If you choose to install the new ROMIV system, you will have one extra layer of filtration. This third filter cartridge is for filtering volatile organic compounds, also known as VOCs. While RO membranes have outstanding filtering power, compounds close to the size of water molecules can still slip through. The VOC cartridge helps to remove many of these residual contaminants to ensure that the water from your filtered water faucet is as pure as possible.

No matter which of these RO systems you choose to install, you will be able to enjoy amazingly clean water on demand with minimal maintenance. The cost of RO water is also well below that of bottled water and it will also be far more pure, especially when you consider the effects of plastic leaching chemicals into bottled water over time. If you are ready to enjoy the cleanest water possible, now is a great time to buy RO water purifiers here at efilters. If you have any questions about the systems we carry or RO water in general, feel free to reach out to our team at info@efilters.net or hop on LiveChat.