Drinking water filters

Today, more than half the world is reeling under clean drinking water crisis. Three fourths of earth is water, but this water is anything but potable. The degree of chemical and physical treatments that it takes to produce water fit for consumption makes it an expensive commodity.

One would agree that even if one is a city dweller with a functional municipality, the clean water that one gets from the corporation can still not be drunk without some purifying mechanism privately applied.

Many people boil water prior to consumption, but most prefer to filter it, as boiled water tastes flat.

Drinking water filters are a popular household commodity. From simple filters to the high-end reverse osmosis (RO) and ultraviolet (UV) purifiers, the family man has it all.

Filters come in several shapes and sizes. Some may be attached to the kitchen tap and they filter water as it flows out. More complex purifying mechanisms like RO and UV cannot use this process – most of these come as wall-hanging apparatus or counter-top articles with a pipe attached to the tap and an outlet for the purified water.

A very American method of purifying water is by the usage of Fridge filters. Icemakers and water dispensers inside the fridge come with externally or internally attached filters. Of these, internally attached filters do not enjoy much popularity owing to the more complex procedure of their replacement. Amana, Samsung, Beko and Whirlpool are amongst the handful of companies manufacturing these internal fridge filters.

External fridge filters have more demand and hence more supply. LG, GE, Siemens, Atag, Kenmore, Maytag and Culligan, apart from the companies mentioned above, dabble in external fridge filters. These filters are simply screwed into the normal refrigeration systems.

Some of the popular water filters include Samsung fridge water filters EF-9603 or the \'Magic Water Filter\', DA29-00003B and Bosch CunoOCS CS-52 to name but a few.

Drinking water filters majorly employ charcoal or activated charcoal as the filtering agent. Carbon obtained from charred coconut husk or hard coal and lignite are used for these purposes. Activated charcoal is carbon treated in the laboratory to increase its porosity and hence surface area. Owing to this dramatically emphasised property, activated charcoal adsorbs odours and solid impurities very successfully. The advantages involved with charcoal are several:

• They are very economical compared to other filters

• They are easy to install and replace

• They do not remove essential dissolved minerals from water

However, charcoal filters are not entirely free of shortcomings.

• They fail to extricate dissolved impurities from the water

• Owing to the same reason, they also fail to sweeten salty water

• They require replacement after every six to nine months – their pores clog after a certain period of usage. If left unused for a long time, the residue trapped in their pores rots and allows fungus to grow on it. This causes the taste of filtered water to turn foul

Replacement cartridges for these filters are therefore in huge demand. Among the popular models are LG BL-9808 fridge filters replacement cartridges, Daewoo Fridge Filters DD7098 Replacement Cartridges, Atag fridge filters replacement cartridges and several others.

Charcoal can be used as a solid carbon block or packed tightly in the granulated form into sausage-shaped containers. Depending on the form of carbon, the flow rate of water through it is determined. Sometimes, nano activated silver is used in association with activated charcoal in fridge filters. Silver having antibacterial properties, rids the incoming water of its germ load. The size of the pores of the charcoal helps determine its capacity. Micron rating of the charcoal is employed for this purpose. A pore size of less than 0.01 micron renders the filter capable of removing viruses from the impure water. A pore size of 1 indicates the potency to remove Guardia and Cryptosporodium spores.

Other possible options to charcoal are nylon, polyester and polypropylene.

It is of great importance that we consume water of the highest possible purity – unclean water harbours dirt and germs that in turn give rise to food borne diseases like hepatitis, dysentery, diarrhoea and typhoid to name a few. Especially, the third world countries have a large population down with these very morbidities. Drinking water filters are a must for these areas.

Drinking water filters are behind millions of healthy families