Reverse Osmosis Water Treatment Comparison

Here's a brief RO or reverse osmosis water treatment comparison. I'll compare its cost, performance and other important issues to that of a multi-stage purifier that includes granulated carbon, a carbon and multi-media block, sub-micron filtration and ion exchange. For the sake of brevity, I'll refer to the multi-stage device as MSP.

If you read reverse osmosis reviews, supposedly written by current customers, you will see that some are positive. Others are negative and some are more or less neutral. Most feel it does a good job, but there are many complaints related to maintenance issues and costs incurred.

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The typically reverse osmosis water treatment comparison includes only brands that use RO. I decided to compare it to an MSP, because I believe that MSP is better than RO in many ways.

First, there is performance. Single stage RO only removes things that are larger and heavier than a water molecule. Most of the synthetic and organic chemicals that our society is plagued with are lighter and molecularly smaller than water. They are literally "in" the molecules.

Combining carbon with RO is an improvement, but RO is still an expensive, unnecessary and wasteful step for most homeowners. Sub-micron filtration does nearly everything that RO can do.

Ion exchange does the rest. Granulated carbon and a carbon multi-media block remove more chemicals than carbon alone. So, an MSP is more effective than either the single stage or RO combined with carbon.
Some of the positive reverse osmosis reviews come from homeowners that have brackish wells. If this is your problem, you should know that the new inexpensive compact RO systems cannot handle the job. In order to desalinize, they need a special membrane that is not included in the smaller, less expensive models.

No reverse osmosis water treatment comparison would be complete without looking at waste and price. MSP devices do not create wastewater. All RO units, regardless of the size and price, create gallons of wastewater, in which the contamination level is much higher than in the original source.

What does one do with this wastewater? It goes down the drain. Some companies suggest that you use the discharge to water your plants. That's not a good option.

If it doesn't kill the plants right away, it will contaminate your soil. Depending on the degree of contamination, it could cause health problems through inhalation or skin absorption. Whether it goes down the drain or on the lawn, the contaminants eventually end up back in the groundwater.

So, you will have contributed to our already large environmental problems. Contaminants removed by an MSP are trapped within the enclosed cartridge, which is easy to dispose of and not a source of pollution.

Negative reverse osmosis reviews usually have a lot to do with price. They cost at least 9 and the more effective units, such as those for treating brackishness start at ,000.

An MSP for your kitchen costs around 5, for the shower around , for the whole house less than a thousand. I think that completes this reverse osmosis water treatment comparison. Hopefully, you can figure out where to go from here.

Reverse Osmosis Water Treatment Comparison

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