In the sap, I will call it "maple water", there are minerals dissolved in the water. Mostly sugar or "maple water" but also a variety of minerals beneficial for health. When you heat up Maple water, vapour is created and as the water is being evaporated, the water left in the basin will get more and more concentrated in sugar and minerals. The reason for this is because the sugar and minerals that are dissolved in the water are too heavy to rise with the vapour. So the vapour is pure water, without any minerals. Find a way to cool the vapour so that it condense back to water, and you have distilled water. Now after boiling the water long enough, the water in the basin will get so concentrated in sugar and minerals that it is now called maple syrup. But this process needs a lot of energy and needs a lot of fire wood. What if we could have the maple water much more concentrated in sugar BEFORE starting to boil it? You would need a lot less firer wood. This is where the reverse osmosis comes in. How reverse osmosis works. The maple water is pressurized through a semi-permeable membrane. The membrane is inside a stainless steel chamber. The water that whent through the semi-permeable membrane is now free of minerals just like distilled water and is called reverse osmosis water. As the water is pressurized through the membrane, there is water that is flowing continually between the membrane and the stainless steel chamber. This flowing water prevents the membrane from clogging up. This water is much more concentrated in sugar and minerals because a lot of it's pure water already whent through the membrane. In normal case when people make reverse osmosis water, the concentrated water would now be a waste product. But in this case we keep this concentrated water for boiling to further concentrate the water until it becomes maple syrup. Just a note! If you have bad tap water, such as arsenic, etc, it is a good idea to reverse osmosis your water because then your are drinking pure water free of arsenic, free of everything including beneficial minerals. But drinking demineralized water long term is not a good idea. It's not so much the fact that there are no more beneficial minerals in the water such as calcium and magnesium because we can get it from food. The calcium and magnesium in the water is responsible to make your water alkaline. PH above 7. Because reverse osmosis water or distilled water has no minerals, the water is acidic. PH below 7. Drinking acidic water long term is not a good idea especially if you have cancer. So the best water to drink is good well water or spring water free of arsenic, ecoli, etc. Hope you learned something. Cheers!

French River Springs that’s is so much more informative than I could have even hoped! You obviously are very familiar with reverse osmosis: from the video it sounds like you used it professionally for preparing water for sale? In the case of Maple Syrup production, does it basically do the first stage of concentration? From the video, from approx 2% to 8% sugar, with the consequential huge reduction in volume, hence saving in wood to boil off all that water? Cool! I certainly have a huge respect for Maple Syrup producers now, and understand why the proper stuff costs more. Thanks for your video, and reply.

Your welcome! And yes Dan uses the reverse osmosis as the first stage. I had a water bottling business for 16 years. I was selling natural spring water and reverse osmosis water. I closed my business on December 31, 2018 because hauling the water was getting too hard on my back. Now I do KZfaq videos and woodworking. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/bJl_hpSokra4lHk.html

Your welcome Nicole and yes it is a lot of work! Dan also has cut and split over 40 chords of wood just for one season!

Your welcome!

Maybe I can ask Dan if I can do a video of his honey operation this summer.

@@frenchriversprings that would be awesome

Oh boy. I better hurry up and finish the renovation before you come over. Lol see you next week!

Oh wow! I did not know that

S

Thanks and your welcome Peter