So much has been done to ruin the world and so little could be done to restore it. Even the most basic of all resources have become scarce because of contamination that could harm people’s body. One example of this is water. Although there are some who would gamble and use dirty water, there are still those who would want to be safe and use clean water. Thanks to technology, hope is just around the bend, especially now that we have the knowledge to produce pure water.
Pure water, or purified water, is water that has undergone processes to have its impurities removed. There are many ways to purify water namely distillation, double-distillation, deionization, microporous filtration, carbon filtration, electrodialysis , ultraviolet oxidation, ultrafiltration, or reverse osmosis. As processing of water became more advance, so are the methods used until it has come to this day where combinations of these methods are used.
Depending on what type of method used, you would yield varying kinds of pure water in terms of the level of purity.
The first method is called distillation. The kind of pure water produced by this method is water that has not more than 10 µS/cm electrical conductivity and less than 10 mg/L of dissolved solids. What happens in distillation is water is boiled then is later condensed. The steam produced in the process would go to a clean container. In this process, the solid contamination would then be separated from the water since solids cannot be turned into steam. The container from where the leftover is placed would assume a white or yellowish product. It is because of this product that the leftover container is required to be cleaned on a regular basis. The downside of distilled water is the fact that it does not assure you of bacteria free water. Risk of bacterial contamination is always present because the bottle used to contain the distilled water may not be sterilized.
The second method is the double-distillation. As its name suggests, double distillation is done through distilling the water twice.
The third method, which is believed to be a cheaper alternative to distillation, is the deionization. From the name deionization, deionized water is water from which its mineral ions were removed. Mineral ions in water consist of chloride and bromide for the anions and sodium, copper, calcium and iron for the cations. In order to remove these ions, the process of deionization makes use of ion exchange resins that bind then filters mineral salts from the water being purified. Deionization is a much quicker process and produces water with high purity. The downside, however, is that the process does not specifically target viruses, bacteria and some organic molecules. Thus, their removal would be more of coincidental if ever they get trapped in the resin. However, with the use of a strong base anion resin, it can potentially get rid of Gram-negative bacteria. It is also much cheaper because it can be done on a continuous basis through the use of electro-deionization.
The fourth method is the cluster of method that can also be used to make pure water. These methods include microporous filtration, carbon filtration, electrodialysis, ultraviolet oxidation, ultrafiltration, and reverse osmosis. These methods can be used as alternatives to the first three mentioned methods or they can be used together with the three first mentioned processes.
Hence, if you have the resources to make pure water available, why condemn yourself? Make sure that you stay healthy as possible and drink water that is pure and free from all the harmful organisms and particles that could put your health at risk.