Showing posts from January, 2020

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 a DIY portable hobby RO unit.   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 on a volumetric basis.  While increasing sugar concentration and reducing your time to boil are great, remember, the bacteria in your sap is being concentrated on a volumetric basis the s