RO Membrane: A technological light in the field of water treatment

In today's era of increasingly scarce water resources, how to treat water resources efficiently and environmentally friendly has become the focus of global attention. Among many water treatment technologies, RO Membrane (reverse osmosis membrane) has become a technological light in the field of water treatment with its excellent performance and wide application.

RO Membrane, or reverse osmosis membrane, is a semi-permeable membrane that achieves high-precision separation through pressure drive. Its principle originates from a wonderful phenomenon in nature: seagulls can take fresh water from seawater while flying. In the 1950s, American scientist Dr. S. Sourirajan discovered a layer of delicate film in the seagull's body when studying this behavior of seagulls, which can filter out salt and impurities in seawater to obtain fresh water. This discovery laid the theoretical foundation for the birth of reverse osmosis membrane technology.

The working principle of RO Membrane is to use the selective permeability of the semipermeable membrane to allow the solvent (water) to pass through the membrane under a pressure higher than the osmotic pressure of the solution, while the solute (such as salts, organic matter, microorganisms, etc.) is intercepted, thereby achieving the separation of water and impurities. Its pore size is as small as nanometers, which is one millionth of a hair (0.0001 microns), so only water molecules and some mineral ions can pass through, while other impurities and heavy metals are effectively intercepted.

The advantage of RO Membrane lies in its high desalination efficiency and water purification effect. It can effectively intercept pollutants such as dissolved salts, organic matter, microorganisms, heavy metal ions, etc. in water, and achieve a desalination rate of more than 95%. This efficient separation performance ensures the purity of the effluent water quality and meets the high standards of drinking or industrial water needs.

RO Membrane also has the advantages of relatively low energy consumption, mild operating conditions, compact system, simple operation, moderate maintenance cost and environmental friendliness. Compared with traditional desalination methods such as distillation and evaporation, the RO reverse osmosis process does not need to undergo phase change, so the energy required is significantly reduced. At the same time, its operation is carried out at room temperature, avoiding the problem of heat-sensitive material destruction that may be caused by high-temperature distillation.

Due to its excellent performance, RO Membrane has been widely used in many fields such as seawater desalination, drinking water purification, industrial water treatment, and sewage treatment and reuse.
In terms of seawater desalination, more than 60% of the world's seawater desalination projects use RO membrane method. The localization rate of China's 10,000-ton seawater desalination projects (such as Qingdao Baifa) has exceeded 80%, which indicates that China has made significant progress in reverse osmosis membrane technology.
In terms of drinking water purification, household RO water purifiers account for 85% of China's water purification equipment market share, with annual sales of more than 12 million units (2024 data). RO membrane technology provides families with safe and healthy drinking water with its high-precision filtration effect.

In terms of industrial water treatment, the power, chemical, and electronics industries all need to prepare high-purity water, and the RO membrane process accounts for more than 70% of these fields. In terms of sewage treatment and reuse, the proportion of "ultrafiltration + reverse osmosis" double membrane method in municipal water reuse has also continued to increase.