Saturday, September 5, 2009

Water Purification Technology Terminates Contamination

By Derek Reeve

The problem with water purifying today is that new bacteria's are popping up all the time and the technology sometimes cant stop the new ones. However, you have to understand that water purifying has been around since 2000 B.C. and there isn't anyone whom has perfected the science of stopping all the bacteria known to man in the waters out there.

Long ago there were much simpler methods to getting clean water from distilling it themselves. Most people when reading something like this wonder exactly what type of resources and actually how they did purify water that long ago. Back in 2000 B.C they believed that the contaminants couldnt rise with vapor, so what they did was bring the water to a boil, and the vapor that was produced would travel upward through a copper coil and then when it cooled would come down as water.

Experts eventually realized that methods of water purification such as distillation had several drawbacks. The process was not a complete purification --some contaminants still ended being transferred in the steam. Another disadvantage was the high cost of this filtering procedure. Over time, distillation requires large amounts of energy and water for the process to work effectively.

Outside of the cost to distill the biggest problem was trying to figure out a way to get rid of all the contaminants that were in the water. There are so many different impurities in the water that most of these are sometimes hard to identify, and when they are will be split up into several different groups.

Most of the contaminants that are in water today are so small and so microscopic that there are special filtering systems just for them. These special filtering systems are so precise in catching all contaminants that they have pores that are 1 micron big. Now if you are sitting wondering how small 1 micron is, think that a strand of your own hair is 100 microns big, and thats how small they are.

If you think that is precise there are filtration systems out there that even go below 1 micron. This method of purifying water is typically called micro filtration and will actually be as precise a 0.05 microns.

There are several design options out there to filter water. A good counter top or under-the-sink filtration system can help. The most common water purification technology systems used in the U.S. are carbon block and granular carbon filters.

Granular carbon filters and carbon block systems remove certain chemicals that are dissolved in the water and then trap them. Nevertheless, other chemicals, like sodium or nitrate, are not affected by the carbon and do not get removed.

Through all the technology that has come out there have been many different attempts to have fully clean water. With that said the EPA has recognized activated carbon as one of the most effective forms of disposing of contaminants such as VOCs (volatile organic chemicals) and THMs (trihalomethanes).

With all the different types of filters out there, it can sometimes be hard for you to choose which one is best for you. The best thing to do is to make sure that you are knowledgeable about what you are removing and putting a filtration system in place to allow you to accomplish that. Most of the more modern day and most effective filtering systems use multi-media block filters.

In this day and age there are so many things in the water that can affect your health that you really need to pay close attention if you are drinking from the tap. The best thing to do is have the water checked to see exactly what contaminants are in there, and get a filtration system that will eliminate all the bad and leave all the good in the water.

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