EFHSS Questions and Answers - Answer to Question Q00073

Dear Sir

I have to install one big horizontal autoclave in France. The supplyer wants me, absolutly, to install reverse osmosis system for his unit. But lots of people told me that water softeners is enough. The price between this 2 systems is very different. What do you advise, do I have to buy this reverse osmosis system? If yes, why, if not, why.

Thanks in advance.

Olivier Peres

Olivier,

What is the water for? There is a difference between softening and RO as softening does not reduce the amount of contamination, it changes the scale-forming contamination into sludge-forming contamination. If the purity is an issue then RO will reduce the contamination to very low levels. If you merely wish to protect heat exchange surfaces then softening may be OK. If you want high quality water (and possibly high quality steam) then RO will be a step towards this.

Peter Hooper

With water softener you can remove the metallic ions present in water that principally cause scaling, it is easy to regenerate and time taken for regeneration is also very less, it is also economical but you cannot remove acidic /basic ions which can be removed easily by ion exchange method(i.e. demineralisation plant) which is the safest of all and also quite affordable.

With water softener the hardness of water can come down to about 10ppm whereas in D M plant it can come to as low as 1ppm which shows that it is totally soft and 100% safe. So i advice you for the latter.