What's Reverse Osmosis?

For many of us our last chemistry class was quite a while before. So before buying a models brackish water water method for your home or business you might be thinking about, "Reverse osmosis sounds wonderful. But what is it?."To understand what reverse osmosis is we first need to understand what osmosis is. If we were to ask a chemist this issue he or she might answer, "osmosis is just a specific type of diffusion involving water." That's great however it leaves us asking yet another question. What is diffusion? Diffusion is the motion of molecules from an area of greater concentration (i.e. an area where there is more of that particular substance, like water) to an of lower concentration (to an area where there is much less of that particular substance ).Like we said earlier, osmosis is really a specific type of diffusion regarding water. So generally osmosis is the process by which water moves from an of high concentration through a membrane (i.e. through an obstacle where some things can go through, like water, and other things can't, like salt compounds) to an of lower concentration.Like the title indicates, in reverse osmosis this process is stopped. By applying force to the water in the area of lower concentration it's pushed through the semipermeable membrane and into the area of greater concentration. And in this process the water is being blocked because, according to what the membrane is manufactured of, the membrane may filter sodium, chlorine, calcium, sugar, microorganisms, and other undesirable impurities.Thus, reverse osmosis can be employed for a number of useful features. It can be used to produce fresh drinking water out of seawater (desalination), and it can be used to filter out impurities in tap water into fresh drinking water.