Water Purification Technology

People have invented several technologies for water purification. The problem is that there’re different types of contamination and each of them should be considered separately. In other words when you know how water is contaminated, what is the contaminant it’s much easy to choose the right type of water purification technology.

While consuming water you should be aware of several important facts.
If you use water from private wells nobody but yourselves can test if the water is pure enough.
But even municipal water sources are generally checked for less than an hundred contaminants while people know about a hundred thousand contaminants.
If water is tested and considered safe it most often means that the water is safe for adult people. But pregnant women, children, nursing mothers may be at risk.
Some of the contaminants that are present in water are not considered harmful to health but they DO effect the taste and smell of water, change the colour of your teeth and skin, make harm to the pipes and sinks in your house.

Here you can find the most common technologies for water purification:
1. Distillation
During this process water is boiled, vapor is collected and contaminants are stored separately. Then the vapor is condensed and thus we have pure water. Distillation removes bacteria from water; such contaminants as lead, nitrate, sodium chloride are also removed form water. But distilled water is not very good for drinking as it contains little oxygen. Besides it’s quite a slow process and large amount of water and energy is needed.

2. Carbon Filtration
A carbon water filter is inserted in the tube the water is flowing through. This cartridge removes odors, different organic contaminants and harmful chemicals (hydrogen sulfide, chlorine, benzene, radon). But remember to change the water filter from time to time and don’t forget that most carbon cartridges can’t save you from heavy metals.

3. Ion Exchange
Water passes the layer of specially designed resin beads with a sodium coating. During the process ions in the water are replaced by some ions from the beads. Water becomes “softer” as metals and minerals (nitrate, fluoride, iron, calcium, sulfate) are removed. But ion exchange water filters are not very effective if you want to get rid of bacteria.

4. Microfiltration
When water flows through filtering materials with pores sediments and suspended substances are removed. But dissolved elements are not removed as they are smaller than pores.

5. Ultra Micro Filtration
That’s a process close to the Micro filtration but here we have a membrane as a screen that separates molecules. Some of the molecules can pass the membrane, others can not. Thus we have water of the highest quality.