What's the Difference Between RO Membrane and Ultrafiltration Membrane?

RO Membrane and Ultrafiltration

RO membrane has good desalination effect and is generally used for deep water treatment, producing pure water, and high-purity water systems. Ultrafiltration has a filtering effect on water quality with poor desalination ability, and can be used to produce mineral water, etc. RO membrane water purification equipment uses RO membrane technology. Its working principle is to apply a certain pressure on water, allowing water molecules and ionized mineral elements to pass through the RO membrane, and most of the inorganic salts dissolved in water, including heavy metals and organic matter as well as bacteria, cannot pass through the RO membrane, separating pure permeate water and concentrated water that cannot penetrate.

RO membrane water purification equipment not only removes impurities, rust, colloids, bacteria, etc. but also filters harmful radioactive ions, organic matter, fluorescent substances, pesticides, water alkalinity, and heavy metals from the human body, ensuring that no scale is produced when boiling water. RO membrane technology is actually a biomimetic technology.

Ultrafiltration water purification equipment uses a kind of ultrafiltration membrane technology. Ultrafiltration is a screen filtering process. Driven by the pressure difference on both sides of the membrane, the ultrafiltration membrane is used as the filtering medium. When the raw water flows over the surface of the membrane at a certain pressure, the numerous small micropores densely packed on the surface of the ultrafiltration membrane only allow water and small molecular substances to pass through and become permeate, while substances in raw water that are larger than the pore size on the membrane surface are intercepted on the inflow side of the membrane as concentrate, thus achieving the purpose of purifying, separating, and concentrating the raw water.

Depending on the rated pore size of the membrane, the filtering and purifying quality of the water obtained by ultrafiltration membrane technology is different. When using the rated pore size range of the membrane as a distinguishing standard, the rated pore size range of microfiltration membranes (MF) is 0.02-10μm, uf membranes (UF) range from 0.001-0.02μm, and RO membrane range from 0.0001-0.001μm. Each meter of uf membrane tube wall has about 6 billion micropores of 0.01μm. The pore size only allows water molecules, beneficial minerals, and trace elements to pass through, while the volume of the smallest bacteria is above 0.02μm. Therefore, bacteria as well as colloids, rust, suspended solids, sediment, large molecular organic matter, etc. larger than the volume of bacteria can be intercepted by uf membranes, thus achieving the process of purification.

Advantages of RO membrane water purification equipment

The effluent water quality of RO membrane water purification equipment is safe, can remove various harmful impurities in water, and has a good effect on sudden water supply events. The taste of the water is good, and it can reduce the hardness of the water. After boiling water, no scale will be produced on the container. Ultrafiltration water purification equipment generally does not require pumps, consumes no electricity, and has no electrical safety issues. It has few connections, low water pressure, and can usually be used with the normal water pressure of municipal tap water. The failure rate and probability of water leakage are relatively low. The structure is simple, and the price is cheap.