PURIFICATION, OF WATER

I am looking for information as to what kind of water purification package is best for a family of (4) trying to drink from a dirty river....with unknow chemicals.... a survial type kit... to be used ....when the city water is off....

The question depends on many variables, including person preference.
- Storing water is good, but takes up lots of space and needs to be rotated. With at least a gallon per Peron, per day. You are looking at 12 gallons minimum for 3 days. (only for cooking and drinking, no showers!) You also need to add chlorine or other things to keep the water good during storage. Also there is a risk of leakage during storage.

- Waterpurification equipment is much easier to store and you don’t need a lot of time to maintain it. It does require a lot of effort to use and you need to transport the water from a source to your home. (really no fun to drag 4 gallons of water and pump it through the filer/purifier each day). Keep extra containers handy. (make sure the purifier will work without electric power). The filter quality can be a issue. Normal filters will not remove chemicals or petrochemical products. Some have carbon element to absorb the chemicals, but they are ineffective for petrochemical products.

In general I would suggest both.

I tried the reply and noticed your question was a bit different from what I thought it was.

Things to look at for are:
- Pumprate or gravity fed (with the amount of water involved you need to be efficient in time and energy).
- Carbon filter to remove chemicals, filters with replaceable carbon granulate can be a nice feature if you want to make sure you are not using ‘used’ carbon, when filtering possible contaminated water.
- I prefer ceramic filters, because they can be cleaned. Some prefer the fiberglass versions, because they have a higher flowrate.
- Use a good prefilter to get all the debris out first, gravity fed is best.
- Make sure you have enough water containers to shuttle all the water around.

More on the filters them selfs: http://www.equipped.org/watrfood.htm#WaterFilters

Salesguy,

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-Blast

What I am looking for is a backup to my existing stored water (1gallon per person per day) in basement. Where we live there is 2 rivers near our house..but there is a lot of farm land also that feeds into those rivers. Planning on the worst..and living for the best. Your thoughts and suggestions are very welcomed.

> but there is a lot of farm land also that feeds into those rivers.

Depending on what's on the farm, you have more or fewer problems. If the farm has farm animals, you have biological waste - manure and urine - in the water. If it's farmland, you have fertilizer run-off in your water.

Biologically contaminated water can be made drinkable by boiling or by chemical purification (generally iodine or chlorine) or by filtering. I'd suggest googling
water purification
and reading through the search results for a great deal of in depth information. Louise and I bought a ceramic filtration system, and we'll use that and Britta carbon filters for the water we plan on getting from a stream.

Chemical toxins cannot be removed by any of those means. I'd suggest finding the department in your city or county that deals with water quality of the surface water and asking them specifically about your rivers. Often the people who work there chose that job because it's their passion, and they're often very happy to have someone ask about it so they can discuss it. Ask them what is in the water (if they know specifically) and what you should do to treat it. I'll bet they know.

Based on my own experiences, I would go with nothng less than a high quality reverse osmosis system.

I second the RO idea based in part on almost 30 years of experience in designing aspects of water treatment systems (but not drinking water systems).

The undersink models from Home Depot are quite adequate for most purposes, but do require some pressure to get any significant flow out of them.

I would follow the treatment steps generally used in municipal water treatment. Step 1, gravity settling; 2) primary filtration (silk handkerchief or the like; 3) secondary filtration (something like an outdoors water filter); 4) advanced filtration by Granular Activated Carbon or Charcoal (GAC); 5) addition advanced filtration by reverse osmosis; 6) UV disinfection. If you conform to flow rate to treatment time, you should be good to go. Most of this stuff is something you should be able to obtain in a residential capacity module or make yourself. Be aware that water pressure, preferably by manual pumping, will be required for a small upflow GAC tower and reverse osmosis. Municipal water treatment also generally involves coagulants and flocculants, oxidants (flocylic acid, potassium permanganate) and pH adjustment. Don't believe you'll want to try those at home.

I was under the impression that "water purifiers" such as the General Ecology, First Need Deluxe and the Katadyn, Exsteam XR, would remove chemicals as well, basically making post Katrina like flood water drinkable. Am I incorrect?

Storing water is almost always easier.

Wouldn't distillation be easier than all that filtering, treating and pumping stuff? It might be slow, but you could let it cook all day and wind up with plenty of purified water, right? Or do some impurities make it through the boiling/condensation process?

Besides which, the still could be used to produce grain alcohol for fuel and barter if SHTF.

Distillation is not without potential issues. Distillation will reliably remove contaminates that vaporize above 100C, like salts and minerals, but materials that vaporize at lower temperatures will come off before the water does. If the water is contaminated by alcohols and lighter petroleum products they will get through.

Generally, there are many finer points I'm skipping over and running a still is something of an art form, the timing of the distillation will go from the most to least volatile. In a commercial process or lab they they can finely separate the individual components by controlling the time and temperature.

There is also the matter of fuel use.

Any ideas on how long you'd have to boil the water before it would be safe to run it through the still, or any points to references I could read? The idea is attractive to me if I could make it work. Where I live there's no shortage of free wood, as long as you're willing to cut and split it yourself.

Mark_M, I am not qualified to answer, but I am guessing the time required to cook off (evaporate) volatile pollutants would very much depend on what those pollutants are, and their concentration.

A qualified chemist would probably give you a set of calculated "cook off" times for different scenarios, but it would be of little use in the real world, where you don't know what or how much that is in the water.

Depending on which resource you read, any boiling water is OK to drink (from a microbe perspective). Others say roiling boil for 10 minutes, some say the boil time changes based on altitude (since the boiling point temp changes)... yada yada yada, you can find support online for any of those positions.

I pretty much think once it boils, it's good. I haven't met a bacteria yet that lives past about 180 or so.

Then again, I'm a filter man myself.

Or at least those who do can't survive or do any harm inside your body...

Getting rid of chemicals in the water is a totally different matter, for which you need some knowledge of chemistry beyond my current expertise.

Um... ditto.

Ray Mears shows an improvised water column filter i.e. PET bottle with the cut top off stuffed with charcoal, sand, peat and sphagnum moss etc. This is reduce a lot of chemical contamination.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TvE5jv4KPo

Boiling the water afterwards takes care of any of the nasties that are left.

Wow, that guy is the man!
Great video.

Alcohol has such a high affinity for water that no amount of boiling will remove it all. I think you need a centrifuge for that.

Yes, you are incorrect. Bio contaminants, yes. Chemicals, no.

HJ

"A lot?" I wonder if "a lot" would be "enough" (to make it safe to drink).

HJ

Many will remove suspended particles or chemicals, but not dissolved ones.

This is probably the best there is, but even it is not going to remove dissolved chemicals:

http://www.lifesaversystems.com/techinfo.html

But at $150 it's pricey.

A good and cheaper one ($60) is (although I wish it had a carbon filter in addition to ):

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Sawyer-Water-P...4#ProductDetail

It filters to .02 microns so it removes viruses as well.

Do they make portable reverse osmosis systems?

Are you sure? I think the Livesaver does have a charcoal component that will remove some chemicals. Unless I'm misreading it somehow.

If you're aiming at using a particular water source that is near to you, why not find out NOW what you are likely to be dealing with?

Contact your local water board and see if they have any test results on chemical contamination (it should be public info). Biological contamination can be taken care of with boiling, it's the other junk that's the danger. And 'the other junk' also includes water contaminants that come from natural soil.

If they don't have any test results, ask them why not? And ask them if they would consider doing some.

The last resort would be to have the testing done yourself, which could be expensive. But don't just take a jar of river water to a testing facility and ask for a basic test -- all you get for your $10 or so is usually a fecal coliform test.

Sue

Salesguy, I have the same issue. My solution, so far, is the deluxe version of the General Ecology hand pump "purifiers". GE told me, in a telephone conversation, that the filters(unused) have an indefinite shelf life. I did not independently corroborate this advice. I also use the Katadyn "purifier" bottles with the Virustat a addition, for lightweight kits. Finally, in the ultralight category, I use the straw "purifier" sold by BQ and others.

Yes, I believe the Lifesaver does have a charcoal filter. It and even others without one will remove some chemicals, but not if they are dissolved. For instance, none that I am aware of will turn salt water into potable fresh water.

Hikin Jim, thanx for the heads-up. But, here's why I made the assumption. The GE First Need site, under the category "Why are we different", states that the purifier removes many "organic and inorganic chemicals..". Now I'm confused. I looked at the research published on their site and it only covers biological contaminants. Hummm?

Anyone getting a water filter should make sure they are NSF 42 and 53 certified.

Here are some of the chemicals and percent reductions that NSF 53 certified filters meet:

Asbestos 99%
Benzene 99%
Carbon Tetrachloride 98%
Chlordane 99.5%
Chloroform (TTHM)* (surrogate chemical) 99.8%
Ethylbenzene 99%
Ethylene Dibromide (EDB) 99%
Lead (pH 6.5) 99.3%
Lead (pH 8.5) 99.3%
Mercury (pH 6.5) 99%
Mercury (pH 8.5) 99%
Toluene (Methylbenzene) 99%

Go to NSF.org for the longer more complete list.

"Distillation ... materials that vaporize at lower temperatures will come off before the water does. If the water is contaminated by alcohols and lighter petroleum products they will get through."

Just wondering... would there be any benefit to open, uncovered heating of the water so the vapors of those low-temp chemicals would leave the water first, then go to regular distillation. I'm talking if there was no other water to be had.

Sue

Yes. The other option is to discard the first 10% and last 15%of whatever is distilled over. Switch out the receiving container to collect only the middle portion of the fluid. Redistill the water a second time removing the same cuts if you are really concerned the water may be contaminated. You'll lose a fair amount of water but the water you do collect will be safe.

-Blast

Thank you very much, Blast!

I'm moving your info over to my saved into, very useful.

HEY, STEPHANIE M! See what I mean? These guys always know!

Sue

Katadyn Pocket

any thoughts on this unit. I am looking for a grab and go package. I like the filter life on it too.

For chemicals brita filters aren't a bad choice for a cheap easy to find solution. While they do not get rid of nasties They do take care of a handfulla chemicals. The only issue would be the slow drip method they work off of.