If you’re unsure which drinking water purification system to use, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the options. When choosing a water purification system for your home, your primary goal should be to find a cost-effective solution. This implies that your installed system must include all the necessary water filtration tools. It should also not cost a lot to acquire them. Purification systems remove pollutants from water, like the smell, taste, sediment, bacteria, and hardness.
Here are the home’s most popular water filtration systems, each of which has pros and cons.
Activated Alumina Filter
This system helps to remove thallium, arsenic, fluoride, and selenium from water. It works by adsorbing them into a porous aluminum oxide (bauxite).
If your home has a filtering system for your water, this product is often used to make the water less fluoridated.
Before you use this method to remove pollutants, which includes chemical treatment and backwashing of the activated alumina media, you should complete the initialization process.
Pros:
- It can get rid of thallium, selenium, and arsenic.
- Effectively gets rid of 99 percent of Fluoride.
Cons:
- Aluminum might leach into the water if it is not evaluated correctly or the system is not operating optimally.
- You should use it together with other systems for water that’s safe to drink.
- Require regeneration agent cleaning on a regular basis
- Removing only a small number of pollutants
Reverse Osmosis Filtration
An RO membrane works in the reverse osmosis filtration process. It will help remove inorganic pollutants from the water and generate the purest drinking water possible.
This method only gets rid of (VOCs), chlorine, solvents, and some pesticides.
Many things can go wrong when you use high-intensity purification, like slower purification rates, a bigger price tag, and a lot of brine production.
A pressurized tank is usually included in the majority of reverse-osmosis purification systems. This is because of the system’s slow flow rate.
Because chlorine can damage the reverse osmosis membrane, a pre-filter of at least a single activated carbon filter works in every RO filter.
Pros:
- Filtered water has a low total dissolved solids value.
- It can eliminate bacteria, cysts, calcium, dissolved solids, mercury, lead, iron, and other pollutants.
- Due to the regular washing of the RO membrane, it has a longer life expectancy of two to three years.
- Purify and clean up drinking water to the highest standard.
- Provide the most effective filtering against the vast majority of water pollutants
Cons:
- This method alone cannot treat chlorinated tap water.
- The purification process generates a substantial volume of brine (wastewater).
- It needs water tanks to store the filtered water.
- Water purification takes a long time.
- It cannot get rid of VOCs, some organic chemicals and pesticides, chlorine, and solvents.
- Increased price
- By removing important minerals, you can reduce the pH of the water.
Ion Exchange
This process involves removing unwanted ions from water. After that, they are replaced with other alike electrical charge ions from the IX resin.
Metal removal, demineralization, deionization, and acid absorption are the most common uses in treating water for these methods.
Pros:
- Reusable over a long period of time
- Ability to remove more negatively charged pollutants, sulfates, fluoride, uranium, nitrates, and arsenic from the water.
- Suitable for the removal of dissolved inorganic pollutants
- Cheap
Cons:
- Expensive to run
- Bacterial growth is possible in the ion-exchange resin
- Hard to get rid of microbes, organic pollutants, and sediments
Sediment Filtration
This is a popular and simple system for purifying water. You can find it globally as it helps treat residential, industrial, and commercial water.
It does a great job when it comes to getting rid of things like heavy metals, dust, rust, silt, sand, and other big particles of water.
Pleated polyester or polypropylene are the most common materials for sediment filters, with a micron rating of between 1 and 100 microns.
The smaller the micron rating, the better the purification (capable of filtering out tiny-sized pollutants). However, the slower the water flows, the higher the micron rating.
Like RO systems and activated carbon filters, most household water purification systems use a sediment filter as a prefilter. This will help prevent the other filters from becoming clogged with big particles.
Pros:
- There is a wide variety of micron ratings available
- The replacement process is simple
- The ability to remove big particles and sediments from the water is effective
- Cost-effective
Cons:
- Drinking water that is both safe and pleasant to consume requires additional filters
- Can’t get rid of pollutants and chemicals smaller than 1 micron in size
Ionization
The water ionizer is also called an “alkali” ionizer. It is possible to adjust the pH of the water produced by water ionizers to suit your needs.
Pros:
- The ability to customize the pH level of water to meet your specific requirements
- Provide you with acidic water for external uses
- Antioxidant-rich alkaline ionized water tastes great
Cons:
- Costly
- It won’t get rid of organic pollutants, pharmaceuticals, and TDS in the water.
- Inadequate water filtering
- A water ionizer’s performance may fall short of what the manufacturer promises.
- Needs electrical power to operate.
Activated Carbon Block Filtration
A binding agent keeps the fine carbon powder of the activated carbon block together and static. This product is very effective at removing chlorine odor and taste, as well as a variety of other impurities.
This method makes water pollutants such as VOCs and tiny parasites easy to reduce. Because of the higher surface area provided by the high porosity, the powder form may absorb more pollutants from water and prevent water from channeling through it.
A narrow hole size also makes it resistant to the growth of bacteria.
Pros:
- The ability to remove a wide range of pollutants
- No synthetic chemicals
- Chlorine taste and odor removal is a snap with this product
- It doesn’t need a power source
- Long-lasting filter
- Adaptable to a wide range of applications and designs
- Retain the essential minerals you need
- Minimal change in pH levels.
- Affordability and excellent value
- Prevent the growth of bacteria
- An adequate rate of water flow
- Easily combined with other filtration methods for improved filtering performance
- Environmentally friendly technology
Cons:
- Cannot remove dissolved sediments and excess minerals.
- Won’t get rid of viruses
- There must be a separate sediment filter in order to make sure the filter lasts a long time and works well.
- It is impossible to achieve a high flow rate of water
Distillation
For years, this has been a popular water purification method. However, it is not as common or extensively used as the reverse osmosis or activated carbon filter, but it performs well in water purification.
Pros:
- No need to refill filter cartridges
- This method eliminates bacteria, excess minerals, and dissolved solids from the water
- Eliminate the vast majority of waterborne pollutants
- Water that has been thoroughly purified
Cons:
- Low production
- Expensive
- Remove the water’s vital minerals
- Require a lot of care and attention
- More expensive to run
- A tasteless distilled water
- Make use of electricity
- Using this method, boiling points below 100°C are hard to remove
- A lengthy procedure
Ultrafiltration
With ultrafiltration, water passes through a submicron semipermeable UltraFiltration membrane under hydrostatic pressure.
To eliminate microscopic impurities such as viruses, germs, and parasites while maintaining the important minerals, ultrafiltration membranes are the best option.
Only water with a low percentage of TDS can be treated using a UF membrane since it cannot remove dissolved solids from the solution.
It is possible to purify municipally treated water without using activated carbon. This is because the hollow fiber ultrafiltration membrane is resistant to pollutants such as chlorine.
When ultrafiltration is used to clean drinking water, many other technologies can help. These technologies include reverse osmosis, activated carbon, and sediment filtration.
Wastewater recycling processes and industrial applications often make use of ultrafiltration technology as well.
Pros:
- Rapid water flow
- Suitable for low water pressures
- Efficiently eliminate most pathogens and pollutants from water, such as turbidity, viruses, parasites, and parasites.
- High chemical resistance in the water
- Eco-friendly
- The water should be able to retain necessary minerals
- Installing and replacing items is a quick and simple process.
- Longevity of life (around two years)
- Filtration down to a micron size of 0.01 is consistently strong.
Cons:
- For example, it is ineffective against organic pollutants such as VOCs and cysts.
- It doesn’t get rid of dissolved solids such as fluoride, salts, and more
- Unable to eliminate the taste and smell of chlorine
Granular Activated Carbon Filtration
Remove chlorine smell and taste as an activated carbon block does.
Grains of loose activated carbon, which are bigger than carbon block powder, have a lower adsorption capacity but a higher rate of filtering water than block powder.
If you want to get rid of chemicals, chlorine odor and taste, and other contaminants from the water coming from your tap, you can use this filter before the carbon block filter.
When used in conjunction with a multistage filtration system, the large water flow rate makes it ideal for low-intensity and high-flow filtering applications.
Pros:
- Eco-friendly
- High flow rate and water filtration
- Effective in removing the odor and taste of chlorinated water
- It does not need a power source
- Long-lasting filter life
- Minimal change in pH
- Easily combined with other filtration methods for improved filtering performance
- Effective filtering of pollutants
- Retain the essential minerals you need
- No synthetic chemicals
- Costly
Cons:
- Cannot eliminate dissolved sediments and excess minerals
- Because of the reduced carbon granule density, bacteria may grow there
- Water channeling problems may arise as a result of granules of loose carbon
- It cannot eliminate viruses
- Filtration is less effective, especially against smaller pollutants
Ultraviolet Disinfection
In water treatment, it is common practice to use ultraviolet rays to eliminate microorganisms such as bacteria, Giardia, infectious E.coli, cryptosporidium, hepatitis, typhoid fever, coliforms, cysts, and viruses in water from rainwater, lakes, private wells, and streams.
You can also use it in municipally treated water to fight cryptosporidium-resistant germs like these.
Ultraviolet light is the best option to provide you with the inner peace that the water you drink every day is free of bacteriological pollutants, which might cause sickness 99.99 percent of the time.
There are many different types of ultraviolet lamps on the market, but they all have one thing in common: they’re an additional layer of protection.
Pros:
- The disinfecting procedure is swift and dependable.
- Eco-friendly and safe
- Solution for microorganisms that do not contain any chemical compounds
- Capable of eradicating 99.99 percent of waterborne microbes
- Efficient use of energy
- Easy to maintain
- Cost-effectiveness
Cons:
- Higher initial cost
- Need regular monitor of light tube and an ultraviolet lamp
- This method can only get rid of microorganisms in water
- Filter away particles and contaminants from water before it may use
- The purification of water cannot work on its own
- When particles remain in the water, their ability to kill bacteria reduces
- Work is dependent on the availability of electricity
Conclusion
There are a plethora of water purifiers on the market, making it difficult to make a decision. As a result, you should be able to narrow down your search for a water purifier based on this summary of each one. There is a water purifier for every need, so you don’t have to worry about not having access to clean water. Whether you’re looking for a long-term solution to purify your entire home’s water or just a portable system that you can take with you, this information will help you make an informed decision.
