A practical engineering reference covering 30 essential terms in reverse osmosis, seawater desalination (SWRO), brackish water RO (BWRO), high-pressure pumps, and energy recovery. Each entry links to relevant ForeverPure products, pillar guides, and FAQ answers used by commercial and industrial buyers worldwide.
Antiscalant is a chemical (typically a phosphonate, polyacrylate, or proprietary blend) dosed into RO feed at 2–6 ppm to inhibit precipitation of CaCO₃, CaSO₄, BaSO₄, SrSO₄, and silica on the membrane surface.
A booster pump is a low-pressure feed pump that raises pretreated water from atmospheric to 3–5 bar — enough to satisfy the high-pressure pump's NPSH requirement and to support an energy-recovery device's circulation loop.
BWRO is reverse osmosis applied to brackish water — feed sources between 1,000 and 15,000 ppm TDS such as inland wells, treated municipal wastewater, or river estuaries.
A cartridge filter is the final mechanical pretreatment stage upstream of the RO high-pressure pump, typically a 5-µm polypropylene melt-blown depth filter housed in stainless or FRP vessels.
Clean-in-place (CIP) is a controlled chemical cleaning procedure that restores RO membrane performance by circulating low-pH and high-pH solutions through the elements without disassembling the system.
Membrane fouling is the gradual deposition of particulates, biological matter, organics, or inorganic precipitates on the RO membrane surface, raising operating pressure and dropping permeate flow over time.
A multimedia filter (MMF) is a pressure or gravity vessel containing graded layers of anthracite, sand, and garnet that removes suspended solids and turbidity from RO feed water before cartridge filtration.
A pressure exchanger is a rotary ceramic energy-recovery device that transfers hydraulic pressure from the SWRO brine stream to incoming low-pressure feed water, with >97% efficiency.
Reverse osmosis (RO) is a water-purification process that uses pressure to force feed water through a semi-permeable membrane, leaving dissolved salts, organics, and pathogens behind.
Salt rejection is the percentage of dissolved ions that an RO membrane rejects, calculated as (1 − Cp/Cf) × 100, where Cp and Cf are permeate and feed TDS.
