Various Ways to Treat Water to Make it Safe to Drink
There are different types of water treatment systems that can improve the quality of your water. These may or may not address your water problems. Therefore, you should discuss the available options with a professional to find out what is best:
- carbon filtration
- Inverse osmosis
- Distillation
- ultraviolet sterilization
- Ozone
- Demineralization by ion exchange
- softening by ion exchange
- neutralizing filtration
- Iron/oxidant filtration
- sediment filtration
- sand filtration
- Pot Feeders/Chemical Feed Pumps
If you find a system other than those listed above, it’s important to do your research first before purchasing. There is no all-in-one solution that can solve all water-related problems. Beware of vendors suggesting a certain technology that can address all kinds of water problems and does not require any maintenance.
Drinking water
If you want to improve the odor, taste, and clarity of your water, you can ask a point-of-use water quality improvement professional to recommend a system. The most common systems that can improve the quality of your water are the following. They can be used alone or combined with another:
sediment filtration
This method removes sediment from the water to improve its appearance.
carbon filtration
This can improve the smell, taste, and appearance of drinking water. Charcoal is commonly used to absorb chlorine and chloramines from city water. It is also recognized as a treatment technique to remove some organic contaminants, such as paradichlorobenzene, trihalomethanes, and trichlorethylene.
If there’s one thing carbon won’t be able to remove from water, it’s total dissolved mineral salts, or TDS. You should discuss the proper way to apply it with your water quality improvement professional. Where it is necessary to remove contaminants for health reasons, you must obtain verification from your dealer that they can provide the necessary safety measures.
Reverse Osmosis (RO)
This system takes advantage of the domestic pressure to separate the water from the dissolved mineral salts. Product water enters a holding tank via a special sink faucet. Reverse osmosis systems use a carbon filter, sediment filter, and semi-permeable membrane to produce good-tasting drinking water that is low in minerals and sodium. Most bottled water companies use RO to produce a high quality product.
Distillation
This process uses heat to evaporate the water. This leaves behind impurities that are rinsed to drain. The steam passes to its liquid state through condensation and is cooled to become distilled water. Make sure the product offered by your water quality improvement professional meets the standards of the United States Pharmacopeia or USP.
Bottled water
Bottled water, used for drinking and cooking, is typically delivered to homes or establishments in 5-gallon containers and is available from vending machines outside most markets or grocery stores in pre-packaged gallon containers.
Some of the bottled water for sale is tap/well water that has been treated by carbon filtration and/or reverse osmosis. The law requires that “spring” water come from a natural spring. It may or may not be treated, depending on its quality, but it must be disinfected by ozonation or ultraviolet sterilization.