Without water filtration systems, the water we drink wouldn’t be safe for consumption. Governments across the world regulate and fund water filtration systems that keep microorganisms, chemicals, and other potentially dangerous substances out of tap water. Many people take control of their water’s purity into their own hands, too, by using at-home water filters in pitchers and on sink faucets. 

Although these water filtration methods are commonplace, a new generation of advanced water filtration techniques is changing the way water is purified. These methods can remove contaminants and other undesirable substances far more efficiently and successfully than the methods with which society has already become familiar. Currently, these methods are almost entirely used in industrial applications, but as their use spreads, they could eventually be found in homes too.

Today’s industrial water filtration techniques

Industrial water filtration, including that which the government regulates and funds, is generally a four-step process. Each step relies on introductory chemical and physical properties to remove contaminants from water, but with the volume of water that every individual water filtration plant treats, each step requires massive tanks not suited for at-home use. The first two steps of the process (coagulation and flocculation, and sedimentation) are also challenging to achieve at home, since they require the use of positively charged particles. Filtration and disinfection, however, are commonly achieved at home.  

Today’s at-home water filtration techniques

For those who have at-home water filtration systems, tap water first passes through at-home filters often made of charcoal, which is especially effective at trapping the minerals that many local governments mandate be added to tap water. These filters are commonly found in pitchers with designated slots to place the filter, directly on faucets, inside refrigerators, or occasionally inside water bottles designed for water purification.

Other less commonly used, but nevertheless widely available, at-home methods include solar disinfection, boiling, and the addition of chemicals including non-chemical stabilized oxygen. Purifying water via solar filtration takes far longer than with charcoal filter use, and boiling requires that the water be cooled to normal temperatures before drinking. The chemical addition methods can be dangerous if too much of the chemical is used, and the water’s taste can be dramatically altered. 

Advanced filtration improves on today’s techniques

Today’s most prominent, commonplace water filtration methods became so frequently used because they’ve long provided the most reliable decontamination available. Advanced water filtration methods, however, are beginning to offer viable alternatives, with superior filtration abilities, on a wider scale.

Advanced water filtration techniques include the following:

• Reverse osmosis, which moves water through a membrane with pores that block the passage of molecules larger than water. Reverse osmosis, which is the most commonly used advanced filtration method, produces water of especially high purity and is integral to desalination, water recycling, and wastewater treatment.
• Nanofiltration, microfiltration, and ultra-filtration, which are all membrane processes akin to reverse osmosis.All three processes operate on roughly the same on principle, though each is best suited for removing contaminant particles of different sizes. For example, microfiltration is best used with freshwater, because the contaminants found in it are of larger size than those found in saltwater, for which reverse osmosis is most often used.
• Water oxidation, which breaks water down before isolating it. Water oxidation splits all individual water molecules into two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. In the process, pure hydrogen and pure oxygen are isolated and collected. These elements can be recombined to create pure water.
• UV water purification, which uses UV light of exactly 254 nm frequency to reorganize the DNA of the microorganisms that often contaminate water. In doing so, UV light effectively destroys these microorganisms. UV water purification, despite the advanced science on which it relies, cannot remove non-living contaminants from water and can be ineffective on water that isn’t perfectly clear.

How TUAFI uses advanced filtration to generate and purify water

The water generated by TUAFI’s AWG factories goes through several advanced filtration systems. We use reverse osmosis, UV purification, and other advanced filtration methods to transform air into contaminant-free drinking water. Our factories produce 10,000 liters of clean drinking water every day, all of which passes through our advanced filtration system.

AWGs, which rely on drawing moisture from the air, don’t filter the air drawn into the machines. AWG factories under TUAFI’s auspices change that standard. The air we bring into our factories first encounters a bag filter that cleans the air before we convert it to water. We also use UV purification on this air to destroy microorganisms in the same manner as UV water purification systems for water. Once we’ve converted the air to water, we then pass the water through a series of reverse osmosis filters that purifies it. After mineralizing this water to meet local government regulations, we package and distribute this water in entirely biodegradable bottles to the communities most in need.

Our AWG factories employ state-of-the-art filters to tackle a crisis that’s both already happening and will only worsen as time passes. Click here to learn more about our AWG factory project on Fundable and observe how advanced water filtration techniques can solve the global water crisis.