Skip to main content

Difference Between RO and UV Water Purifiers

Perhaps the only major difference between these two water purifiers is that a reverse osmosis purifier removes the dissolved solids in the water where as a UV does not.

Both the systems are equally effective at killing the bacteria and parasites in the water. However, the RO water purifier will also remove the dead bodies of these parasites where as a UV purifier will simply kill them, make them inert and the water safe for drinking.

The advanced reverse osmosis water purification systems also use UV along with RO to be more effective at killing the bacteria and parasites. This is because UV is thought to be more effective at eliminating more kinds of pathogens than just the RO filtration system.

The RO membrane can also develop small tears that can allow some bacteria to get through. The UV addition should take care of that possibility as well.

So the only job that a reverse osmosis water filter effectively does differently from the ultraviolet water purifier is that it removes the dissolved solids like calcium magnesium, copper, lead, cadmium etc.

Ultraviolet water filters usually comes with sentiment and active charcoal filter attachments. The sediment filter is capable of catching all the bigger dust particles as such as silt and rust whereas the active activated charcoal removes solvents like chlorine, organic compounds, bad odour, bad taste and many other solvents. These filters combined with the treatment through UV give the water that is largely safe to drink. The only exception is if you have dissolved the toxins in your water supply which the ultraviolet water filter will not be able to remove.

The question arises that does your water supply have any toxic solids dissolved in it? If you are drawing from an underground water supply or an old well or from a turbid surface water supply, yes you need a reverse osmosis system to purify the water as it may contain harmful dissolved solids.

It’s highly recommended that a well water supply be run through an RO water filter.

When the sales people come to your house, they carry a TDS meter and they will test the TDS of your regular water supply. One automatically believes that high TDS means that there are a high degree of dissolved impurities in the water. TDS does not imply impurities, although it can. And even if it is just salts, a higher limit than 500 is not recommended both according to Indian and US authorities.

Usually surface water sources should not contain excessive toxins. Underground water sources will absorb whatever minerals or compounds the water passes through from the layers of soil and rock above it. But the fact is that the surface water resources are also getting highly polluted due to industrial waste, human waste, pollution and general misuse.

Therefore, the high TDS levels may not just be from salts but also from all these undesirable sources. Underground water sources can also get contaminated and also naturally contain higher levels of iron, sulfur etc. This is one of the primary reasons why people prefer to use an RO water purifier today in their homes.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Change The RO Membrane In A Water Purifier To Reduce It's Water Usage

This is just something that I learned from experience and observation of having used a reverse osmosis water purifier for several years. In one of the previous posts I had spoken about the amount of water that reverse osmosis water purifier tends to discard for every litre of purified water that it dispels.  If you have read that post and you remember what I had written in it I had remarked on the considerable amount of water that is discarded during the purification process. I had also remarked that the temperature of the water has a dramatic difference on the amount of water that reverse osmosis water purifier discard. The colder the water, such as in the winter months, the more water tends to get discarded. However, there is another important reason and control factor that determines how much water is discarded by the reverse osmosis water purifier and that is the condition of the reverse osmosis membrane as well as other filters inside the water purifier. The older that the rev...

How Much TDS Should Healthy Drinking Water Have

How much TDS should healthy drinking water contain? What level of TDS is considered to be too low? All these are common questions that cross the mind when looking to source clean and healthy drinking water. The answer to all these questions is a slightly complicated one for the simple reason that no definitive information is available. In fact, to make matters more confusing, there seems to be conflicting and contrary points of view on the issue. But to make things slightly clearer right in the beginning, I'll tell you 3 main things. There is more evidence supporting that lower TDS levels in water DO NOT harm the health of a person, TDS levels above 500 are not desirable and above 1000 are considered unhealthy. There has been some criticism lately for drinking water that is low in TDS. The reasons given are that low TDS levels make the water acidic, do not provide the necessary salts and minerals that are naturally found in water and also leach the minerals out of the Body. ...

How Much Water Does RO Water Purifeir Discard As Waste Water

Most people are not aware of how much water gets wasted in their reverse osmosis water purifier. A company will claim 1:2 ratio but that is mostly not the case. Most ro water purifiers will discard 80% of the water. I have measured the amount of water that gets wasted as I collect all the extra water to be used for other household purposes. My reverse osmosis water purifier discards at least 4 to 5 L of water and that's in summers and when the membrane is new and unclogged.  Most people do not know that a reverse osmosis water purifying system discards a lot more water the colder the water gets. So it's not surprising for the amount of discarded water to double in winters. Another important observation that I have made is that even though the membrane life is 6000 L , there is degradation in its performance after the first 1500 L or so. It starts to discard a lot more water to filter each litre of clean water. This happens because all the filtered out TDS starts to clog the me...