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Concept
Water filter
Summary
A water filter removes impurities by lowering contamination of water using a fine physical barrier, a chemical process, or a biological process. Filters cleanse water to different extents, for purposes such as: providing agricultural irrigation, accessible drinking water, public and private aquariums, and the safe use of ponds and swimming pools.
Filtration
Filters use sieving, adsorption, ion exchanges, biofilms and other processes to remove unwanted substances from water. Unlike a sieve or screen, a filter can potentially remove particles much smaller than the holes through which its water passes, such as nitrates or germs like Cryptosporidium.
Among the methods of filtration, notable examples are sedimentation, used to separate hard and suspended solids from water and activated charcoal treatment, where the boiled water is poured through a piece of cloth to trap undesired residuals. Additionally, the use of machinery to work on desalinization and purification of water through the transposal of it into multiple-filtration water tanks. This technique is aimed at the filtration of water on bigger scales, such as serving entire cities.
These three methods are particularly relevant, as they trace back to centuries and are the base for many of the modern methods of filtration utilized today.
Water purification
Types of water filters include media filters, screen filters, disk filters, slow sand filter beds, rapid sand filters, cloth filters, and biological filters such as algae scrubbers.
Point of use water filter
Point-of-use filters for home use include granular-activated carbon filters used for carbon filtering, depth filter, metallic alloy filters, microporous ceramic filters, carbon block resin, microfiltration and ultrafiltration membranes. Some filters use more than one filtration method. An example of this is a multi-barrier system. Jug filters can be used for small quantities of drinking water. Some kettles have built-in filters, primarily to reduce limescale build-up.
Official source
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