The answer depends a lot on ...
Published by Robert Duff, UtraPure Water/ Wastewater Engineer at SUNY Polytechnic Institute - CNSE
The answer depends a lot on the quality of the raw water going to the treatment plant and what quality you are trying to achieve at the discharge. Ground water with calcium hardness should be softened before going to an RO system, and highly turbid water should definitely be pre-filtered. If your system doesn't have bag or cartridge pre-filters that may be the cheapest and quickest fix to extend RO membrane life.
1 Comment
Robert, one draw back to a softener pretreatment is the level of Sodium in the water. If it is too high the softener will be in a constant state of regeneration and the Hardness scale will not be removed effectively. In which case an anti-scalant will need to be injected into the supply stream.