Cation instantly turned red

Jimdba54 · Apr 2, 2022

I just added cation and anion to my RO system because I'm going thru mixed bed resin very quickly. The cation resin is purple, as soon as the water from my RO cartridge started filling the canister the resin started turning red/orange. Is this normal, it doesn't look like it. The resin is from BRS. I backwashed the RO cartridge for 5 minutes. My system in order Sediment, two carbon blocks(chloramines), 100 GPD RO cartridge (less than 6 mod old), cation, anion, mixed bed. Water coming out of the RO is 8ppm, slight color change in total/free chlorine strip test.

TIA

...JIM...

billyocean · Apr 2, 2022

Not sure. I run deionization resin before those

HuduVudu · Apr 2, 2022

Jimdba54 said:
I just added cation and anion to my RO system because I'm going thru mixed bed resin very quickly. The cation resin is purple, as soon as the water from my RO cartridge started filling the canister the resin started turning red/orange. Is this normal, it doesn't look like it. The resin is from BRS. I backwashed the RO cartridge for 5 minutes. My system in order Sediment, two carbon blocks(chloramines), 100 GPD RO cartridge (less than 6 mod old), cation, anion, mixed bed. Water coming out of the RO is 8ppm, slight color change in total/free chlorine strip test.

TIA

...JIM...

Test the TDS into the membrane (after carbon) and then TDS out of membrane. The difference should be close to the rejection rate of the membrane. If it isn't your membrane is bad. It doesn't take much TDS to nuke resins ... regadless.

Also you noted chlorine color change. Nothing will nuke a membrane faster than chlorine of some nature. Chlormines are real and you should be using the special carbon block for those. This is the one at BRS.

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Randy Holmes-Farley · Apr 2, 2022

At 8 ppm TDS, the DI resin should not instantly deplete. Perhaps the red/orange color you are seeing is not the expected amber color of a depleted resin, but just the color it gets with new water running through.