this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2024
10 points (91.7% liked)

Water

100 readers
3 users here now

A space to discuss all about water, water reuse and its waste.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] poVoq 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Prions are way too large to pass the reverse-osmois membranes.

[–] reddig33@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

That’s a relief! Thanks for posting this.

[–] francisco 1 points 2 months ago

You're very right about prions. But there's more passing through reverse osmosis membranes than meets the eye.

Size cut-off is not the sole trans-membrane transport process. The material of some membranes allow the diffusion of some molecules - roughly, hydrophobic membrane materials allow diffusion of hydrophobic molecules.. its more specific than this, though.

There are targeted studies to assess the removal of micropullutants that show that some micropollutants can pass membranes even though their size is bigger than what would reasonably be expected to be retained.

I don't know anybody studying this with broad spectrum techniques that uncover unknown-unknowns.