Did I damage my watermaker?

[ThereAndBack]

So, I noticed the perfilter needed to be changed. Pulled the old one out and asked crew to install the new one, they did but they didn't fill the bowl with water. I started the watermaker back up to fresh water flush.

I noticed too late. So it sucked a lot of air but the pressure valve was fully open. How bad did I hurt my pump and filters? Haven't tried running since as this was after I had filled the tanks.

[SVHarmonie]

A liter or so of air? Not to worry. Doesn’t bother the membranes at all, and the pump will shrug that off.

[ThereAndBack]

Originally Posted by SVHarmonie

A liter or so of air? Not to worry. Doesn’t bother the membranes at all, and the pump will shrug that off.

Thanks for putting my mind at ease! I have read the manual and in threads where everyone talks about the danger of air intake. I know it is bad if it is sucking air bubbles while running and it made sense to me how that could be bad. But I had no idea how a big ole bowl of air would effect it.

[Tellie]

What watermaker model do you have?

[ThereAndBack]

Originally Posted by Tellie

What watermaker model do you have?

Rainman with the 115v PSU to 2xmembranes. It produces approx 40gph.

[a64pilot]

My belief is that as you had the valve wide open, most likely you didn’t hurt a thing.
It’s not good for the HP pump to pump air, but without it trying to build pressure and as it only did it for a few seconds, it’s unlikely to have hurt anything.
Feeding them air when they are trying to make 800 PSI is essentially cavitation, and that can damage a pump over time, preventing a pump from pulling a vapor bubble and cavitating is of course why we have boost pumps, same as why we do for our HP Diesel injection pumps.

I assume feeding a membrane high pressure air may tear one, but as I’m no watermaker expert I’m not sure.
I believe if your sucking air it will cause the pump to make noise and the pressure to fluctuate, it does on a hydraulic system and I believe a watermaker is pretty much a hydraulic system.