A Basic Guide to Water Filtration and its System

Posted by Zeal Solutions on May 26th, 2019

Based on the research carried out by the World Health Organization in 2007, nearly 1 billion people do not have access to a proper drinking water supply. Nearly 88% of the 4 billion cases annually of diarrhea results from unsafe drinking water. Around 1 million people die of diarrheal disease in a year.

WHO itself suggests that 90% of the diarrheal diseases can be prevented if simple techniques of filtration such as chlorination and distillation are used for treating of unsafe water.

Water filtration is a general term used for the process of removal/reduction and filtering out the particles and matter such as bacteria, algae, and fungi as well as some other undesirable contaminants from the water. The main aim of water filtration is to have clean and safe water for purposes like drinking, pharmaceutical, and medical uses.

There are various ways by which water can be filtered. It can be filtered by a physical process such as distillation, sedimentation, and filtration, by chemical processes such as chlorination and flocculation, by biological processes such as active carbon and sand filters and by electromagnetic processes such as by using Ultraviolet light.

Types of filters

There are various filters which are available in the market for water purification. They all have different mechanisms as well as different functions but all have one common aim - provision of clean and healthy water supply. Let's see some of the commonly used filters with their short description:

Activated Carbon:

This filter is the most commonly used water filters. This filter uses activated carbon granules which attract and traps the impurities especially the chemical ones by absorption process.

Activated carbon granules are made up of charcoal which is porous in nature. This charcoal is created by burning the wood in a limited supply of oxygen. It has nooks on the internal surface area which helps in boosting up of absorption process.

Reverse Osmosis

The term 'Reverse Osmosis' reminds us of our science class during school days. Reverse Osmosis as we know is the process of forcing the contaminated water through a semi-permeable membrane at a pressure so that the water passes through it and the contaminants are left behind in the water. The main filter used in this process is the Semi-permeable membrane.

Ion Exchange

These filters are specially used for water softening. They remove limescale from the hard water hence making water more digestible.

These filters have zeolite beads containing sodium ions. These beads act as a filter which traps the contaminants and replaces it with the sodium ions. Believe it or not, this treated water is going to taste pleasant and softer than normal drinking water.

Distillation

Actually, this is less of a type of filter but a method which is one of the simplest of purifying the water.

This process involves boiling of water to that extent to make it steamy in order to kill the harmful bacteria present in it. The steam produced is then captured and cooled again into the water in a separate vessel. The boiling point of other contaminants is more than the boiling point of water so they will stay back when the steam separates and boils off providing you with clean water.