How do water purifications systems work?

Water purifiers have become an important component of everyday life in today’s polluted world. With advanced technology, the latest water purifiers can even make water taste better and preserve essential minerals while purifying the water. But, there are many types of water purifiers in the market today. Some of them use the Reverse Osmosis process, also known as RO, the UV ray disinfection, Ultra-Filtration/UF or sometimes, a combination of two or more methods mentioned.

What is the difference between each of these processes is something you need to understand before choosing the right water purifier, suitable for your home. Water quality tends to vary in different places and hence, it is important to understand the process to buy water purifiers that address water concerns you face in your area.

Here’s a brief explanation of each of the commonly used purification methods in water purifiers:

1)     Reverse Osmosis: Osmosis is a term everyone comes across as a part of study of basic biology. But Reverse Osmosis, as the name suggests is using energy to force water to pass through a membrane or a very fine water filter which traps impurities. The filtered water is made free of excess salts, nitrates and other particles in water. The unfiltered water is then drained away. This is an explanation of Reverse Osmosis in very simplified terms. But the RO process is less effective than UV purification systems that destroy bacteria and viruses.

2)     Ultra Violet/ UV Purification: This method involves the use of a UV lamp that produces rays called UV-C or Germicidal UV rays that eliminate pathogens like bacteria and viruses present in the water. These pathogens can cause harmful diseases and therefore UV lamps are specially required if you suspect your water to be infected or sourced from stagnant water sources like lakes or wells. UV filtration alone does not rid the water of solids and other organic matter dissolved in water. So UV purifiers usually have a pre-treatment process to remove silt and other organic matter present in water.

3)     Ultra Filtration: Ultra Filtration is similar to Reverse Osmosis as it involves forcing water to flow through a semi-permeable membrane. The semi-permeable membrane used for Ultra Filtration has smaller pores than the one used for Reverse Osmosis and hence can help remove bacteria and other pathogens to a better extent.

4)     Activated Charcoal/Carbon: Most common household filters use activated carbon or charcoal to filter out impurities. This extremely porous material can trap impurities with its large internal surface filled with nooks and crannies. It is effective to remove most common impurities and chemicals like chlorine, pesticides and industrial solvents. However, it cannot treat ‘hard’ water which is the removal of lime. Dissolved hard metals like sodium, nitrates and fluorine, and microbes like bacteria also cannot be removed using activated carbon filters. Another disadvantage is that these filters have to be replaced regularly and are therefore expensive in the long run.

The most common water purification methods are explained above in an extremely simplified manner. For thorough purification, it is advised to use water purifiers that use a combination of two or more of the above listed methods. It is especially important in rural areas where water does not go through any pre-treatment before reaching your taps. 

Sponsor Ads

• Ad Space Available - Rent it Now!

Report this Page

Created on Sep 22nd 2017 09:39. Viewed 834 times.

Share on APSense

Comments