Drinking Water Microorganisms - 5 Best Ways to Remove Microorganisms

In this article, I am going to discuss the five most popular treatment methods for domestic drinking water and their relative merits.

‘Safe water’ does not contain harmful chemicals or drinking water microorganisms in concentrations that cause illness. ‘Adequate water supply’ provides safe water in quantities sufficient for drinking, culinary, domestic and other household needs, in order to maintain personal hygiene of the household members.

WHO 1987, Technology for water supply and sanitation in developing countries, WHO, Geneva, technical report series no.742.

Commercial devices:

The point-of-use commercial devices as treatment for removal of drinking water microorganisms are increasingly becoming popular in many developing countries.

There are a number of devices that have been developed as home treatment methods for removal of drinking water microorganisms from public water supplies. Such devices use a variety of basic process concepts such as filtration for drinking water, adsorption, ion exchange, reverse osmosis and distillation to achieve a revised contaminant reduction.

1) Filtration devices have been designed to remove turbidity, particulate materials (such as asbestos) and certain type of colloidal color in water.

2) Adsorption by granular activated carbon is a chemical water treatment system used to remove tastes and odors associated with chlorine residuals, certain organic chemicals and chemical compounds produced by various microorganisms including actinomycetes, iron and sulfur bacteria, fungi and algae.

3) Ion exchange resins are used to exchange their ’soft’ sodium ions for the calcium, magnesium and iron ions in ‘hard’ waters. These systems may also remove nitrates and sulfates by freeing the water of mineral cations and anions.

4) Distillation units heat the water to a vapor, vents volatile impurities and separate dissolved solids in drinking water. Cooling condenses the purified water vapor back to liquid. Heating the water to boiling and inclusion of an air gap between the raw supply and the product water provides an effective barrier to microbial migration from contaminated source into the processed water. Generally, seawater was used in distillation process to obtain fresh water to use.

5) Reverse osmosis (RO) is another popular treatment principle in which the dissolved solids in drinking water are separated from the water supply by applying a pressure difference across a semi-permeable membrane. The semi-permeable membrane allows the water to flow through but prevents dissolved ions, molecules, solids and also many organisms and imparts a higher quality to the product water.

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Richard J. Runion is the President of Geostar Publishing & Services LLC. Rich loves net research & blogging. His new blog on Wastewater Treatment is fast becoming popular, as it is comprehensive and well-researched.

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