Solutions to the momentum and diffusion equations are obtained for rotating disk systems with an imperfect semipermeable interface, with direct application made to the reverse OSmosis or hyperfiltmtion process of salt water purification. The equations are solved exactly, and o new tcchnique for solving the momentum equations is described. An approximate solution to the diffusion equation is olso obtoined which is also applicable to the energy equation, and is shown to be accurate for Prandtl and Schmidt numbers 1 1, for a wide range of interfacial mass transfer, for 011 wedge-type flows US well as the rotating disk system.One objective of this paper is to discuss the process of reverse osmosis, or hyperfiltration, in a rotating disk system; both exact and very accurate approximate solutions will be presented. The approximate solution developed is similar to well known solutions applicable for high Schmidt and/or Prandtl number systems. The solution developed herein, however, is applicable for lower Schmidt and Prandtl numbers (-1) and for a wider range of system geometries, including interfacial mass transfer, as will be demonstrated by application to flat plate, rotating disk and plane stagnation flow systems.A great deal of time, effort, and money is currently being expended to find means of insuring an adequate supply of pure water for future consumption. Among the potentially important processes for saline water purification, and especially appealing because of its simplicity, i s that of reverse osmosis or hyperfiltration. This process consists essentially of separating pure water from a saline solution by a membrane which is permeable to water but not salt, and by maintaining the pressure in &he saline solution sufficiently greater than that in the pure water so as to overcome the osmotic pressure, and to cause water to flow through the membrane from. the saline side to the pure water side. A major problem in this process is that the rejected salt accumulates near the membrane surface, thereby increasing the osmotic pressure and decreasing the driving force for pure water production. Analytical studies have been published which predict the polarization and water production to be expected in a constant pressure cell (11), in turbulent flow in round tube systems ( 1 3 ) and between concentric rotating cylinders (14), in laminar flow in parallel plate systems (2, 4, 5, 13), in tubes and annuli (6, 13) and in plane stagnation flow (18).A significant advantage of the last system mentioned above is that the defining equations may be expressed in terms of a single independent variable, which greatly simplifies the analysis. Further, incomplete salt rejection may be easily and exactly treated since the salt concentration at the membrane surface is a constant, which is not true of the other systems mentioned above. However, in real systems, such as a cylinder in cross flow, the area described by the stagnation flow equations may not be large. Another system having the same advantages is that of a rotating disk in an...