Case study What could be a potential problem within the case?

The potential problem that could be in the process of filtering water by the plant is that the plant use the process of reverse osmosis. The process of reverse osmosis of water filteration uses a semi-permeable, thin membrane with pores that are so small that only water molecules would be able to pass through it, while any large sized molecules like dissolved salts called as ions and any other kind of impurities such as bacteria would not be able to pass through this membrane. This process of filtration does eliminate contaminants that are dangerous for health and give water that is much cleaner than before. But it has some drawbacks too. Many, osmosis systems remove the good ions as well with the bad ions. Manganese, calcium, iron and fluoride, are beneficial elements and they might also be removed in this process. Using the water that is deprieved of all the essential elements is not a good idea, also it costs a lot, so it might not be proved to be as much beneficial. This type of demineralized water could be helpful in the sense that it would reduce the use of plastic bottled water that is a major threat to earth in that it does not get dissolved in the atmosphere and stays there for many years. Also if that water is consumed as drinking water it can give serious damages to the person consuming it. In that case it would affect the intestinal mucous membrane, and also the metabolism and mineral homeostasis would be affected by only consuming that distilled water. Another problem with this kind of water demineralization is that it makes a huge amount of waste  according to the studies, to produce water through the process of reverse osmosis, the machines have to expel the waste of the amount of four to eight times of the amount as the amount of waste they would have to expel in case of potable water. According to the research, a plant of RO that is able to produce two gallons of treated water a day, discharges a waste of the amount that is much more than the water that is purified or produced. On calculating the exact figures it was found out that the wastage was around eight to fifteen gallons of waste for only two gallons of purified water. So it is acting as more of a disadvantageous venture as compared to the benefit it is giving. Another factor is that the plant that is installed to purify water is fairly large in size. It means that the waste that is produced is many folds of the amount of water that is purified. The environment is already at stake and making it more vulnerable by dumping more and more waste in it is not a very wise decision.