Initial membrane flush

[highway]

Hey all,

I soaked my new MES membranes in sodium bisulfate right in the RO last Spring. This is the second year on them and I am wondering how best to flush and rinse them before starting this season with raw sap? I have heard that well water is not good for the membranes. Do I use raw sap and just dump the first 100 gallons or so? Sorry if this question has been addressed before, i couldnt find it in the search menu.

Hope everyone is ready to go, looks to be good next week.

ED

[ennismaple]

We typically run the RO with the first sap of the year for 10-15 minutes to flush out all the preservative.

[Rockport]

I use well water on my MES membranes and haven't had any issues ,actually hadnt heard it wasnt good for them but if you have good well water as in no iron and not real hard so to speak Its not an issue . I have heard of using the method of waiting a few days on city chlorinated water to let it dissipate. Also using the tablets to neutralize the chlorine. I am on the third year on my homebuilt RO and no issues... Good luck

[Russell Lampron]

I concentrate about 100 gallons of well water and rinse the membranes with the permeate.

[eustis22]

I bought a garden hose carbon filter from Boogie Brew to run my city water thru to remove the metals, then ran that thru my membranes after my wash

[WolfCreekMaple]

Iron will destroy your membranes and chlorine can degrade them as well. I didn't think about running raw sap thru! We are in the same boat this year

[JoeJ]

There is two big problems with using sap to rinse the storage solution from your clean membranes. First of all, you are going to immediately dirty your clean membranes rinsing with sap and you are going to waste a lot of sap if you rinse your membrane with the recommended amount of liquid. One gallon of water per gallon of output for the machine. A 250 needs 250 gallons of water, a 600 needs 600 gallons and so on.

Joe

[iby]

I learned something new the other day while washing my membranes. The permeate that comes out while washing should not go back into the permeate tank. I just assumed (stupidly) that it was pure, but in fact the permeate still had a ph of 12.... so now while washing or rinsing, the permeate is put into a temp tank until I’m finished and can neutralize it

[highway]

Well I used my clean well water to do the initial flush and everything seemed to go fine. The membranes are slowing down now as the season progresses. If I crank up the pressure to 200 psi I can only flow 1.5 gal min on the concentrate side and 2.5 gal min on the permeate side. I have rinsed and washed after every cycle and think I may need to do an acid wash? I have never done one before. Clayton at MES suggested using muriatic acid. This is only the second season on the three membranes and was hoping to get another season out of them. We only process 6,000 gallons a year through them. Hope to get another run today and tomorrow after the snow settles.
Hope your all doing well,

Ed