pre-warm sap before RO

[canaanmaple]

Anyone ever try pre-warming the sap somehow before or during the feed line to an RO to improve RO efficiency? Obviously the RO output of 35 degree sap runs at least 30% slower than 50 degree sap. THinking of ways to warm the sap before it gets RO'd as means of saving more time....hmmm

[ecp]

Thought about it all too much myself. I even tried to partner up with manufacturers to get a device that would work so that RO speeds could be improved. Many people will complain that they don't want warm sap, but my thought was splitting a water-to-water heat pump so that the infeed sap is warmed, and the rejected cooling is put into the concentrate (it would make it colder because of the ratio of sap to concentrate). Bottom line is nobody wanted to get behind it and I thought I'd waste more money on this frankin project than I would recover. So, I ended up just getting a larger RO which seems to be the route most people are going. While I do like the larger RO the 225 amp service for it was a pinch in the wallet where if they made something like I am talking about that wouldn't be needed. Flow rates might make this a little difficult, but I can tell you there is a unit out there that would do it at a decent flow rate.

[darkmachine]

I can imagine that you would want to use 'waste' heat to do any warming, otherwise it's a 'robbing Peter to pay Paul' situation. If you pay to heat the sap, then cool the concentrate, your efficiency gain has to outweigh your energy cost. I do like the idea of using the discharge permeate/concentrate to warm the incoming sap. I use a copper plate exchanger to heat my hot water from my outside wood stove, that might work. At the very least make the output and input closer to the same temperature. https://www.pexuniverse.com/brazed-plate-heat-exchangers

[fireant911]

Last year was my first year of using a Reverse Osmosis machine and only my second year of maple syruping so I do not have much experience! When I built my RO machine, I included an Ultraviolent Purifier after the five-micron filter and before the four RO membranes. I realize that there are conflicting views about any advantages to using ultraviolent light but, because of my very limited experience, I wanted to include one in my build. A dual-reading digital thermometer was also included as I was was curious about any temperature rise afforded by the ultraviolent light. Although I am currently away from my syuping log book, I think the temperature rise that I saw was around 7 degrees - the sap inlet temperature was, on average, 34 F and the outlet was 41 F. The sap was GREAT!

I used this "Bluonics Ultraviolet Light Water Purifier UV Sterilizer for Reverse Osmosis Drinking Water System 0.5 GPM" and "6802 II Durable Precision Dual Channel Digital Thermometer with 2 K-Type Thermocouple Sensor" as my temperature sensors. Both were purchased from Amazon.