Gadget गुरू's Mouthpiece: DIY: Making your RO Water Purifier compliant to Indian Laws

Around mid-2018 when my old water purifier conked off, I went for a RO Water Purifier (Livpure Pep Pro++) knowing that the water from RO tasted sweet to your tongue. However I hadn't done much research on water purification techniques and water quality of the supply that I received in my Mumbai home.

Background:

From around early 2018 the activities around water conservation and ground water recharge had increased in India. In addition to that the Indian Supreme Court introduced a ban on RO Water Purifier systems setting a baseline on the TDS parameters which should be considered before deciding to buy RO systems - https://www.financialexpress.com/india-news/ban-on-ro-systems-to-continue-in-delhi-supreme-court-declines-to-stay-ngt-order/1772112/ . The Supreme Court ruled that you need an RO system ONLY if the TDS is greater than 500 mg/litre (500 PPM).

So what is TDS?

Water is a good solvent and picks up impurities easily. Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) comprise inorganic salts (principally calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, bicarbonates, chlorides, and sulfates) and some small amounts of organic matter that are dissolved in water.

For more information on water quality, please visit: https://www.water-research.net/totaldissolvedsolids.htm

Problem:

Since that ruling I kept feeling guilty on the amount of water that was rejected by my RO water purifier (70% rejected), also knowing that the water supply at my home had a TDS of 48 PPM, which actually doesn't require RO. I also noticed that my family members started falling sick more often over the past year as the output of RO water purifier had "0" PPM, which essentially means that every mineral and salt was being filtered.

Solution:

So do you think that your entire RO Water Purifier is faulty, no its absolutely NOT. The problem lies in the RO (Reverse Osmosis) Cartridge which is just one of the many other filtration cartridges present inside.

My RO Water Purifier followed the following filtration sequence:

TAP WATER => Sediment Filter => Pre-Carbon Filter => Anti-Scalant Filter => RO Filter (this filter has 2 output lines, one of the output line is the rejected water) filtered water => UV Filter => UF Filter => Post-Carbon Filter => FILTERED WATER.

So my RO Water Purifier has a 7 stage filtration process including the RO filtration. To make my RO Water Purifier compliant to the laws, what I had to do was a very simple task:

1. Connect the output of the Anti-Scalant Filter to the input of the UV Filter.

2. Remove the RO cartridge and realign the cartridges in my Water Purifier so that I could fit the outer housing.

So I took a spare pipe found in my stash, cut it as per length and connected the output of the Anti-Scalant Filter (Green olor cartridge shown in the picture on the right) to the input of the UV Filter (Silver color cartridge at the extreme left shown in the picture on the right).

While after taking the pic I had some teething issues fitting the outer housing, but I finally managed to successfully mount the outer housing by realigning the cartridges on the left (UV Filter, UF Filter, Post-Carbon Filter).