DIY Portable Hobby RO
This post will walk through the basic principles of reverse osmosis for maple sugaring, general design considerations for a DIY hobby unit, and an overview of multiple DIY portable hobby RO units i have built. I use Membrane Solutions 400 and 500 gpd membranes and am incredibly happy with their performance and quality. Here is a link to the Membrane Solutions Amazon store : General Principles: Reverse osmosis is a process by which pure water (called permeate) is created through filtration at the molecular level through semi permeable membranes, facilitated by an applied pressure (normally from a booster pump). This removes unwanted ions, particles, molecules, and even bacteria from the water output (permeate). The "waste" output (called concentrate) is full of all the items removed from the feed water. In maple sap applications the concentrate is what we are keeping and leads to less water to boil out of the sap, or, in other words, a higher sugar concentration
