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I was just wondering if anyone could give me some ideas on why RO product water would intermittently jump up in conductivity. The staff usually do the daily water report and has shown a rather steady 10-15 mS on product water. I have came in and checked it myself in the morning and have found the same results. But occasionally in the afternoon they will page me and tell me the quality has jumped up to about 40-50 mS. I have checked all the timers on the Fleck heads for all pretreatment components and all appear to be in good shape and operating correctly. I'm thinking membranes, but wouldn't it be a constant conductivity problem? If you can help, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks in advance!
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GTCSS,
Is this maybe happening at times of high water usage(ie. Bicarb tanks being filled, jugs washed, etc.)? If so, it is because you are recirculating less (if any) product water to the inlet of the RO machine. If it is happening at times of lesser water usage (ie. unit starting to shutdown and running less machines), it could be a brine seal on one of the membranes flipping or in the case of full-fit membranes, high back-pressure could be causing a leak in the end of the membrane seal. If the 23G has sample ports for each bank of membranes, check the conductivity of each bank independently to find the culprit. |
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| <Chattkid>
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Maybe the conductivity monitor is going bad. Try using a hand held meter to double check your 23-G's meter.
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The 23G is not a direct feed RO that I think your thinking of when you mentioned product recirculating back through the inlet of the RO. This RO is set up with a storage tank so all the product water goes back to the tank. And unfortunately there isn't any sample ports after the membranes where I could check the rejection on a particular membrane. I mentioned installing them but I was told it is considering 'adultering' the equipment. I checked the history in the menus of the RO and found that there was sometime Saturday afternoon that the condo went up to 178 for a brief period of time. Since all pressures are good and almost all of the time the condo is good, maybe it is a condo meter going bad? I'll try to put your suggestions into play. Thanks for the advice guys!
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| <kb>
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Do you monitor the feed water PH? If the PH approaches a value of 8 or greater, it will adveresely affect the RO product quality. |
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Check the conductivity by removing the top blue connector on the membranes. One at a time. It is kind of crude but it does work.
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Well, I seem to have found the problem. Doesn't necessarily make sense to me but if anyone knows how or why this would affect the RO conductivity please enlighten me. At this particular clinic the water room is very small and instead of a multimedia filter the company installed a 20" sediment filter (prior to scavenger tank) that should be changed regularly (I believe monthly). After discovering it hadn't been changed in almost 5 months I pulled it out and sure enough it was rather filthy. So naturally I change it and it's been a week now with no problems. Could this be the source of my problems or just coincidence? Condo is now running consistently at about 12-15 mS w/ no variations (roughly 6-9ppm). Thanks in advance for your advice and info.
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GTSCSS,
My vote would be that it was a coincidence. Most MM filters will filter down to about 10 microns and most pre-filters used are in the 5 micron range. As a filter gets dirty, it actually becomes tighter and will filter to a smaller size (though you have a greater pressure drop across it). What is a "scavenger tank"? I am not familiar with those. Chuck |
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Well, I can't give you detailed information on a scavenger because I really don't know a whole lot about it. This is the first time I've ever even heard of them. It is actually refered to as an 'organic scavenger'. I don't know if you remember the topic I posted a while back about the carbon tanks becoming exhausted prematurely, but we found the problem to be an unusually high level of organics in our water which was basically 'coating' our carbon and not allowing them to adsorb the chlorine from the water. What the scavenger is supposed to do is remove the organics from the water and ultimately extend the life of the carbon. From what I can tell so far it seems to be working quite well. The setup is exactly that of a softner. Same tank, head, brine tank and all. It uses salt in the brine tank just like a softner does but it has a different media in it (can't recall off the top of my head what it is) so it reacts differently than a softner. Hopefully it works like it's supposed to. We're getting tired of rebedding the carbon tanks every month. Lol. Hope I answered your questions and I'll see what happens with the RO. Maybe if I'm there when the condo goes up I can pull off one of the permeate hoses on the membranes and single out a bad membrane. Thanks!
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