Effect of Glycerin on Reverse Osmosis Systems

Yes, yes and no.

Depends entirely on your membrane selection.

Again, it would be helpful if we had more information. Is this a mixture of water & glycein or a mixture of glyceirn and water, meaning what is the respective concentrations. so, one needs to know the concentration, temperature you have available as well as the flow rate you need. Hope this helps.

The temperature is around 20 C and the flow is 20 m3/day. the concentration of glycerin is 6% and need to reach 12 %

Perhaps I don't understand exactly what you are trying to accomplish. If I read your reply correctly, you have a 94% water and 6% glycerin mixture and you want to reduce the water content in order to increase the glycerin content to 12% by way of the RO process.

you can't dehydrate glycerin without fouling in RO, the higher the concentration the less your system will operate, can't understand the principal behind the use at all, glycerin is a far higher viscosity than water, so has trouble with membranes (like oil would) sound like a binder to use for flocking residue or debris, helpful if it falls, not so helpful if it remains as a suspension.

if you are simply trying to powder glycerin, then air dryers like those use for powdered milk work fine, if you believe that the RO will remove the glycerin if it is in suspension then only at the membrane point where the fouling would occur as a result.

I agree with you completely. I was curious with his intent to only raise the content of the glycerin from 6 to 12%, which to me did not make any sense to me. It looked to me as if when he accomplished this he still had a high water to glycerin content, which as you clearly state will surely foul the RO membrane in a short time. I never got a reply to my question about the final concentration so perhaps I am not understanding the problem. would not be the first time!

tanks All

Exactly what I want is both water and glycerin as product but if I use thermal process ,I will lose the water and which chemical process I lose the glycerin. so I think I could use RO process at first because I could save more than 50% of water . then with thermal process I will dehydrate water.

what do you think?