Reverse Osmosis Chillers
WPI manufactures RO chillers to assist in removing salt from sea water and many other applications. Reverse Osmosis normally requires a cupre nickel evaporator if the application requires an open loop chiller, and a titanium heat exchanger if the chiller system needed is closed loop. Sea water is very corrosive to brazed copper connections. This is why standard brazed plate heat exchangers are not utilized. WPI can supply your application with glycol chillers, closed loop chillers, modular chillers for increased redundancy(back-up units ready), packaged chillers, split chiller systems,pump tanks, once through sea water cooling, and any other custom chiller projects.
Application Description:
To understand “reverse osmosis,” it is probably best to start with normal osmosis. According to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, osmosis is the “movement of a solvent through a semipermeable membrane (as of a living cell) into a solution of higher solute concentration that tends to equalize the concentrations of solute on the two sides of the membrane.” That’s a mouthful.
The salt concentration becomes the same on both sides of the membrane (which isn’t going to happen in this case since there is pure water on one side and salty water on the other).
The water pressure rises as the height of the column of salty water rises, until it is equal to the osmotic pressure. At that point, osmosis will stop.
Osmosis, by the way, is why drinking salty water (like ocean water) will kill you. When you put salty water in your stomach, osmotic pressure begins drawing water out of your body to try to dilute the salt in your stomach. Eventually, you dehydrate and die.
In reverse osmosis, the idea is to use the membrane to act like an extremely fine filter to create drinkable water from salty (or otherwise contaminated) water. The salty water is put on one side of the membrane and pressure is applied to stop, and then reverse, the osmotic process. It generally takes a lot of pressure and is fairly slow, but it works.
Packaged Chillers Non-expandable (integrated pump tank) 1.5Ton – 20Ton Single / Dual Circuits Single / Dual Pumps |
SAE Series Modular Chillers Expandable (pump & tank on separate skid) 1.5Ton – 200Ton Single / Dual Circuits |
SAR Series Split Chillers Expandable (Outdoor Condensing Unit) (pump, tank, evaporator on indoor skid) 1.5Ton – 200Ton Single / Dual Circuits |