A Nifty New Invention – Reverse Osmosis Water Purification That Doesn’t Waste Water!
A reverse osmosis system that doesn’t waste water?
Traditionally reverse osmosis motorhome water filters waste a huge amount of water during the purification process, an average of 3 to 15 gallons of waste water for each gallon of clean water produced. This new system doesn’t waste any.
Obviously this is simply not great for water conservation. But Watts has invented a way of recycling the contaminated waste water, eliminating the water normally wasted. They just pump it into the hot water heater.
Watts Premier Zero Waste ZRO-4 Reverse Osmosis System
The Watts website claims their patented ZRO-4 Reverse Osmosis System is the first ever that doesn’t waste water. Instead of running the contaminated waste water down the drain like other RO systems, the zero waste system pumps the contaminated water in to the water heater. Typically one doesn’t drink hot water, and bathing washing and cleaning with it must be fine.
The instructions states that the ZRO-4 RO system has to be located at least 25 feet from the water heater. I wonder why. What would happen if the RO lessons nearer to the water heater than 25 feet? If anyone knows why it is a requirement please let me know! What about tankless water heaters?
If you ask me this is a brilliant idea for an invention. It’s simple, inexpensive and saves a lot of water. Probably has a very solid patent that would be difficult to get around, although I haven’t really studied the patents. They are easy enough to locate on Google’s patent search.
The amount of contamination of the waste water isn’t very high, and really should not pose an issue until you regularly eat up hot water, a thing that is pretty easy to avoid.
The Watts ZRO-4 reverse osmosis system reduces Arsenic (V), Cysts, Cyrptosporidium, Giardia, Entamoeba and/or Toxoplasm, Barium, Hexavalent, Chromium, Trivalent Chromium, Copper, Lead, Fluoride, Cadmium, Radium 226/228, Selenium, TDS, and Turbidity. It also has filters since RO systems can’t get every nasty from the water.
There are some potential issues with operating the machine with hot water demand systems plus some hot water recirculating systems. Since the RO system connects to the hot and cold water lines, any equipment that also connects to the hot and cold water lines present opportunities for problems.
Hot water circulating and hot water demand systems that pump water from the hot water heater to purge the cooled off hot water in the pipes, or that circulate tepid to warm water for instant hot water purposes could cause water to flow through the RO unit just like although the RO pump is running.
The flow of water although the RO system resulting from the operation of the recirc pump may raise the delivery time for warm water to achieve the fixtures. With the warm water circulating systems with the hot water demand type systems the cold water piping can end up full of contaminated waste water.
Watts even offers a retrofit version of it’s zero waste system which enables you to convert your existing system to a no waste system. The retro-fit system includes a solenoid valve in series with the pump useful for pumping the contaminated water into the hot water heater.
I don’t know if a demand pump would cause water to flow through the solenoid valve backwards or maybe not because I haven’t had a chance to test one, but it could be a viable solution for using both ZRO-4 and a hot water circulating or demand system… but someone needs to test it to be certain.
I think this was an excellent new invention and shows innovative and creative thinking.
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