Been a while since Ive posted anything on the blog I hope you wont be frustrated that this post is not related to aquaponic, rather its about the drinking filter I have for my house.
When we moved into our house back in August 2012, we didnt have a chunky budget to spend on a drinking water filter. When I was growing up, our house has been using what we call a Mineral Pot type of drinking filter.
Slow filtering but effective. How effective? Ill be demonstrating that to you later.
The filter we have was a normal Pensonic brand which costed us around RM80 from Giant a few years ago. The working principle is very simple, a gravity assisted filter with a main sediment filter made of porous ceramic which filters up to very small microns (I dont know exactly) and then it flows through activated charcoal to remove chlorine and other contaminants. After that it passes through the other mineral looking stone chips of which I dont know their functions exactly. But the water comes out good and very drinkable.
Upon installation, we observed that the filter produces clear water at the end and leaves all the rust and sediment stuck at the ceramic filter. Because we didnt have a point-of-entry filter, within 2 weeks of usage the rust trapped wouldve appeared so disgusting that we have to scrub it off periodically. I do this so that the filter wouldnt get stuck and lose efficiency.
After 2 years, I decided its time to change the ceramic filter and being me, I really wanted to crack open the filter and see for myself if it actually works. With a simple tap from my cleaver, the filter cracked open readily and voila!
Periodic scrubbing will help prolong the life of the filter but I guess two years is just too much haha! The outer layer appears brownish but the cross section of the filter layer reveals its secret, WHITE AS SNOW! Flow through porous medium is what I studied a lot in Petroleum Engineering, after all its what we deal with to produce hydrocarbon from porous formations underground.
I expected to see some discoloration in the inside layer of the filter because smaller particles could seep in and get stuck somewhere INSIDE the filter. But obviously that didnt happen! From what I know, there are two possible conclusion from this observation:
1. FILTER IS VERY EFFECTIVE: The filter filters out all the sediment and only particles as small as water molecules could pass through. If some sediment could pass through the outer layer, some discoloration in the cross section will be present to indicate some particles getting stuck in the inside layers.
2. FILTER IS EFFECTIVE, TO SOME EXTENT: The filter allows the smaller particles to completely pass through it without being stuck in the cross section. That means, the filter has very uniform pore space and hence anything that can pass will pass completely through the filter. (Very unlikely that this is the case since materials will have a range of pore sizes and will usually not be very uniform)
Anyway, my take is the combination of the two conclusions. Finer sediments that the filter allow to pass is carried on to the reservoir underneath, 99% perhaps?
The next step is to get a Chlorine Test Kit to measure the effectiveness of the filter to remove chlorine.
Thanks for reading!
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