Whether you’re drinking water out of the tap, from a tank, or you’re out surviving in the wild and sourcing your drinking water directly from a stream or river, it’s essential to treat and purify your water to free it from nasty pollutants that can do you a lot of harm.
Fortunately, it doesn’t matter where the water is coming from; there are plenty of universal ways to purify water, so it’s perfectly drinkable. To keep you in the know, and maybe even to save your life one day, here are four purification techniques you need to know!
1. Boiling Your Water
By far, the easiest, simplest, and most affordable way to purify water, you just boil it. At home or out in the middle of nowhere, if you need to clean your water, boil it, killing all the bacteria and germs that could have been in it. What you have left is fully drinkable water that won’t cause you any harm.
“This method works because germs, parasites, and dirt doesn’t evaporate, and will stay behind while your water turns to gas. You can boil the water in a pan or pot and leave boiling for 1-3 minutes, which should kill any nasties in the water” shares Ben Harper, a healthcare writer at Write My X and Next Coursework.
However, note that if you’re boiling at high altitudes, you’ll want to boil it for longer than this since water boils at lower temperatures. Therefore, to remove all the impurities, you can boil for up to ten minutes to guarantee the purification process.
2. Water Filtering
Water filtering is perhaps the most effective way of purifying water. Most filters for water will use a mixture of chemicals and physical barriers to filter through water and rid it from anything you don’t want to be drinking.
There are plenty of different types of filters, some small you can use at home, and then much larger ones that filter a ton of water you may be using. No matter the kind of filter you need, you can be sure you’ll find it available online, and for whatever task you’re trying to achieve.
Typically, filtering water is effective for dealing with small particles you want to remove, such as pesticides or Chlorine. This is also an effective approach because it takes a relatively small amount of power or energy compared with other purification methods.
3. Water Distillation
Similar to boiling water, distillation takes the same approach where you boil and heat the water you want to drink or use until it turns into steam or vapor. You then collect this vapor on another surface, allowing it to turn back into water which is then free from any bacteria, germs, or dirt it may have had before.
“Just like the boiling method, this works because water turns into a vapor at a much lower temperature than over chemicals, and dirt and bugs won’t evaporate at all. However, the problem with this approach is that it can be difficult to set up efficiently and can take a long time to treat and purify a large volume of water. Nevertheless, if you’re working with smaller quantities of water and want it purified thoroughly, this approach could be ideal” explains Mary Turner, a medical expert at 1Day2Write and Britstudent.
While distillation is effective, it does require a lot of power and energy to create the heat, making this one of the costliest approaches; which is another reason why it’s usually reserved for small-scale purifications.
4. Chlorination
This is a different type of filtering that was once used to treat home drinking water because of how effective it is. Swimming pools tend to be filtered and cleaned using Chlorine because it’s so good at cleaning out germs, bugs, and parasites. When filtering water with Chlorine, there are plenty of options you can think about, such as liquid Chlorine for large-scale applications, or chlorine tablets for cleaning smaller amounts.
If you choose to use chlorine tablets, you’ll want the water to be around 21° for the best and most effective results when it comes to diluting the Chlorine properly. However, there are some medical conditions, such as thyroid problems, which means you won’t be able to use these tablets, so always check first with your health manager or doctor.
Mildred Delgado is an up-and-coming lifestyle blogger at Coursework Help and AcademicBrits and aims to help homeowners and families live sustainably and healthily. She also to PHDKingdom.
