Question:
Can the military's reverse osmosis water purification units be re-engineered for civilian use?

I put the following question on the Enviroment site and realized I should have put it in engineering. The concensis was that it would be too expensive when cheaper water is available, which I assume means bottled water trucked in. I'd still like to know if the units could be redesigned to be run more efficiently and be mass produced should potable water NOT be available.

The military claims that some of it's units can remove hazardous chemicals as well as radioactive waste.

The question was posed:Can the military's ROWPU be used for providing potable water anywhere?

I've read that, in Iraq, the Marine's Reverse Osmosis Water Purification Units have removed cyanide and mustard-gas agents from Euphrates River water and created pure safe drinking water. I realize the output of these units are limited, but, can they be used daily for community drinking water here, where we're warned not to drink our slightly radioactive well water

Answer: Like most engineering units reverse osmosis units are cheaper when one has one or two (to allow for outage) large ones rather than many small ones. I understand the pressure drop required (and hence the power consumption) depends on the concentration of salts and if this is low the power consumption can be very muched reduced. They have been considered for purification of brackish water in London on quite a large scale. The army would not be your only possible source of supply of such units as many are used in various parts of the world. For some suppliers see http://www.thomasnet.com/products/revers...

See the below link for discussion of removal of radium by reverse osmosis or ion exchange:http://www.scdhec.net/eqc/water/html/rad...