On water filtration
I've been researching how to get clean, drinkable water from nature for a while now, and today I learned a breakthrough kind of information! So I am going to share it with all of you, in case you also need to get some clean water someday.
What needs to be filtered out of water so it would be drinkable comes in a few different categories. Visible contaminants are mud, sand, dead bugs, chemicals, heavy metals. Those are not as difficult to remove, you can do it at home. If you remove the accumulation of chemicals at the top layer, allow dirt and sand to settle down at the bottom layer, then put the rest of the water through layers of rocks, sand, cotton and activated charcoal, you'll get water without any visible particles of dirt. But a homemade filter won't be able to remove viruses and bacteria from the water, and this is where things get tricky.
Water in the nature, even rainwater, is likely to contain some amount of E.coli, Giardia, Legionella, Shigella, and these will make you sick. If the water isn't coming directly from an underground spring, you can't consume it without a risk of illness.
Usually the facilities that purify water have a few different purifying methods in order to remove dirt and trash, and then biological contaminants and bacteria. Bacteria can be removed by exposure to UV lights, by distillation, ozonation, adding chlorine, or boiling. Now boiling is the most accessible, but imagine having to boil water every time you want a drink. That isn't going to taste nice, and takes a lot of fuel to do. I looked into chlorine tablets, which make sure the water stays clean and doesn't develop bacteria when sitting around, and they're too expensive! It's not a great method. Distillation takes a lot of energy and specialized equipment, I don't think I can get my hands on ozone. There's also a few more complicated methods that require a whole lab.
Then I looked into commercial filters to see how they do, and they are of course, advertised to perfectly purify any water, but their target customers are people who believe tap water is unsafe and needs to be additionally purified from chlorine. So they're mainly used for filtering tap water, and I haven't seen any proof that they actually filter out bacteria, which made me believe this isn't a guaranteed virus and bacteria free water.
Then I found something that felt very promising; a way people have been filtering water ages ago: a ceramic filter. These are created by mixing small organic particles into the clay, then during the process of firing, the organic matter burns away and the clay around it shrinks, creating microscopic pores. Some of the pores should be as tiny as half a micron. This is enough for water molecules to pass through, but most bacteria is too big for it! So it works by creating such tiny spaces for water to go through, that bacteria is left behind.
I thought this was super smart, I could in theory make a clay filter, if I had a kiln to fire it in, which I don't, and I'm a long way away from making one. But in an emergency, I thought, I would maybe purchase a ceramic filter. They're environmentally friendly, can be cleaned and reused many times.
And then today I saw this video (sorry there is a guy in it) where a guy grabs some swamp water and puts it in a jar. He then cuts few grape vines, dips them in a jar, and bends them down so they're dripping water into another jar. He sends both waters to the lab for testing, and while swamp water has e.coli, grape vine filtered water is clean of it.
He then explains it's because vines have so many microscopic tubes, and not all are connected completely, some of the passages are so tiny the bacteria cannot get through. The same exploit as the ceramic filter! But of course plants can do it too, they just have the structure that blocks bacteria out, because plants are the best.
Apparently this has been tested in professional labs many times and has been proven to work, and I'm so happy science has gotten this far! It would work with grape vine and cyprus wood, I wonder what else! Any toxic plant would leak some poison in there so they are a no-no.
The guy confirms the grape vine method does not filter our viruses, but it's mentioned that leaving it in direct sunlight for 6hrs will expose it to UV radiation which will take care of viruses. But like what if its not sunny that day. You can only get virus free water in summer then?
Also since I'm talking about water filtration, I need to bring this picture up because it's been driving me insane.
I've been doing so much research and nobody ever mentioned this as a valid method of water filtration, but every time I look at this picture it makes me feel so dumb. Tell me this wouldn't work. Not for viruses and bacteria of course, but for sediment and sand and trash? Water travels up cloth but I don't think clay or sand would. I think doing this to water before even putting it into a filter would be so sparing and nice to the filter.
And a simple grape vine can do even better than this. All we need is plant.
Learning about water filtration gave me a lot of respect for what it takes to make water drinkable and delivered through a system of pipes to every person with a house, it is actually very formidable we as a society have managed to get that organized! And water towers are incredibly cool and neat and I like them as an exploit of gravity to create water pressure. I'm learning about how people are cleaning their ponds using plant roots to pull out nutrients and control the algae population, it's so cool!
