RO/DI Waste water solution?

because people will buy anything...

RO/DI water is mostly (properly) used in industrial processes where it's used to clean sensitive electrical components or as a chemical component of a manufactured good where steam distilled water isn't required. i.e. water based dyes/paints vs. pharmaceuticals. It's also used as a coolant around certain electrical devices, mostly HV stuff like lasers where any free ions would allow a flow of current in the water (pure H2O is an insulator).

On boats it's used in lieu of or in conjunction with a steam distiller (desal plant).

Some bottled water places process their water through large RO units then carefully add in USP grade minerals to replace those taken out with the RO. Smaller "private label" bottlers seem to mostly use multi-stage sieves and carbon filtering, then claim it's RO, but it's really not. They're like giant Brita filters.

As for drinking RO water, a little wont hurt you, it's just not going to be good for you. Like fish humans need water to live, but it's not JUST the water, it's the ions and minerals that come with it. RO water lacks those things.

Large amounts of RO water can be toxic, it will shut down your kidneys and put you into shock. It's because the water, when it hits your digestive tract, is so clean that it has it's own RO effect on your intestines which are a biological RO membrane of sorts. As the blood passes along the water pulls easily soluble ions into it and out of the blood. the more water the body processes the more it looses.

Drinking too much of ANY water can be fatal for the same reasons, but RO/DI water will adsorb more than regular water, so it takes less.

Ultimately, you'd have to drink 2-3 gallons in an hour to really feel the effects, which most people wouldn't do.... but I've seen it in HS, jocks held a water drinking contest and 4 went to the hospital.

Also, RO/DI water kills plants, Roots are an R/O membrane as well, the clean water pulls the "waste" i.e. nutrients, from the roots. Bam, dead roses.

-Doug

p.s. RO water is GREAT for cleaning just about anything. It removes stains, and is a great solvent, breaks up rust and hard water deposits, etc. without leaving water spots.

 

True true true!

If i new how to give Karma i would give you a lot for the awesome facts you've posted below. I've spent the past 3 days learning what you just posted. If i would have asked on here first i could have hit the beach today instead.

I'm a little down about how much water RO/DI uses. I'm wondering if using just a DI would be better for those like myself who pay more for water. My town goes into mandatory water restrictions every summer and the price of water goes way up so people won't use it as much. I had a little $50 DI unit for a while that did the trick and it didn't put out any waste water. My tanks looks so clear until the day the DI exhausted and all my coral started closing up. Why use RO/DI over just DI?

 

Pay to play

I never seen a city look at how much your drains flow. you are charged for waste. They have a water meter on the line in...you pay for that amount going in,,,,the water department then in turn charges you for that much waste. So your meter uses 1000 gal per month,,your waste is 1000 gal per month.

 

Oh yeah

I would use the waste water for watering lawn.

 

The problem is its so wasteful. Not everyone has really cheap water Your 1000 gallons of water would cost me $300-$400 here, not too mention the heavy fines and penalties associated with using too much water us in the desert can get. In a lot of places, the water from the store machines is cheaper than tap is here, so I definitely feel Nikon's pain.

 

water

I would try to rip out all city water taps if they tried to charge me 2 bucks per gal. ekk,,,that is painfull.

opps,
math problems keep me from my dream job

 

pretty soon we'll have to buy carbon credits for having a reef tank!

 

That's right Cool but like Packleader said, i'm in a drought area. When the city designed the water system here it was before they built a major highway ending here on the coast. They didn't account for the number of people the highway would bring. Now every summer we come very close to running out of water .. or so the city says. To help things the city raised the price of water. It's not $2 per gallon (i don't think) when i watered my lawn using a piggy back sprinkler system the city was charging me around $300 per month to water 1/2 acre for 12 minutes each day.

I'm wondering if it would be better to have a well installed. I tried to do it myself last year but I couldn't figure out how to pull water. The last quote i received was around 2.4k for instalation and a pump. Is that a good price? Does anyone have any comments on using an RO/DI system with well water? Would it cause the RO/DI unit to last longer or is it the oposite? I would think the pressure might be hard to regulate with a pump cutting on and off. The unit i have is sensitive to the feed pressure.

 

if you were ed begley you could use it to wash your solar panels lol. man it would be cool to see a reef tank that runs on solar

why dont you just put it through a brita filter and drink it, i dont think it would kill you(atleast im pretty sure it wont), you could bathe with it. you could do your dishes with it.

 

the DI resins need to be replaced faster and get expensive, but if your water is that expensive it may be worth it. i would do some math and figure out how many gallons you can make before it goes bad(your water quality determines this), and then compare that cost to the cost of the RODI.