The Benefits of a Water Filtering System
Filtration systems are vital to keeping things like water, chemicals and industrial manufacturing clean and free of contaminants. They help prevent foreign material from damaging machinery and other costly equipment.
For filtration to occur, there are four critical components needed. They include a filter medium, fluid with solids in suspension, driving force and the mechanism that holds the medium, contains the fluid and permits the application of force.
Water Filtration
Water filters use a variety of methods to remove dangerous chemicals and bacteria from your home’s water supply. The filtration process works to clean drinking water and can help you maintain healthy mineral deposits, eliminate bacteria, reduce harmful pesticides, and lessen heavy metals like lead, arsenic, and mercury. Water filters are a convenient and safe way to get clean water for drinking, cooking, bathing, and cleaning.
Most home filters use the principle of reverse osmosis, which forces contaminated water filtering system through a semipermeable membrane that allows only the clean water to pass while leaving behind all contaminants. This type of filter is effective, but it’s important to note that these systems waste three to 20 times more water than they produce.
The first step in most filtration systems is a five-micron sediment filter that blocks out larger contaminants such as sand, silt, clay, dirt, debris, and rust. It also helps to reduce turbidity, which is cloudiness or suspended particulates in water.
This is followed by an activated carbon and/or charcoal water filter that traps and binds with organic compounds and inorganic elements. This type of filter can also reduce chlorine and other volatile organic compounds that can negatively affect taste, odor, and color of your tap water. Deionization (DI) water filters are also used in many water filtration systems to remove dissolved salts and other chemicals that may affect the health of your family.
Air Filtration
Air filters, also known as air cleaners or purifiers, trap solid particulate matter like dust and mold from circulating in your home. They are usually made of fibrous or porous materials, and they can contain an adsorbent to remove gaseous pollutants like volatile organic compounds or odors from the air.
Particulate matter in the air can cause or aggravate respiratory illnesses, skin conditions and allergic reactions. Air filtering systems can reduce indoor airborne particle concentrations and, according to some studies, can lower symptoms and prevent disease progression in those with respiratory illness.
Most residential air filters are designed to be used in air conditioning and furnace ducts, where they filter out contaminants from household dust and other particles. They are usually rated by their Minimum Efficiency Reporting Value (MERV), which was developed by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers to rate the effectiveness of filters in capturing airborne pollutants.
MERV ratings range from 1 to 16, with 16 being the most efficient. Depending on their design, air filters may use one of two mechanisms to capture particles: impaction and interception. Impaction happens when the particles are larger than the openings in the filter medium. They sieve through the filter medium and crash into the fibers, which capture them. The rest of the particles are swept away by the airflow.
Chemical Filtration
Chemical filtration is the process of adsorbing dissolved pollutants in water or air. These include pathogens like bacteria and viruses, organic wastes, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
At the Aquarium, we use a number of different chemical filters including carbon, GFO, and synthetic polymers that adsorb particular dissolved contaminants. These adsorbants are trapped within the filter medium until it is exhausted then the contaminants are exported from the aquarium as a solid.
Mechanical filtration is also an important part of our overall filtration system. This includes a variety of filter pads, fleece rollers, and filter socks that physically trap debris that is too large to pass through the finer filters. It is important that this type of filtration is replaced or cleaned on a regular basis to prevent clogging.
It is important to perform a water quality test to see which contaminants are abundant in your aquarium and then choose the correct chemical filtration system to remove them. Activated carbon is an excellent general chemical filter that will deal with most of the chemicals you want to eliminate in your tank. It has thousands of tiny pores that act as a trap for pollutants. Other chemical filters like GFO and granular ferric oxide are more specific and only deal with certain contaminants like phosphate and silicates. Other chemical filtration products include purigen, zeolite, and ion exchange systems.
Gas Filtration
In some instances, a business may need to filter the gas used in its industrial processes. This type of filtration is designed to remove harmful, nuisance and toxic gases. It improves indoor air quality and protects equipment from corrosion and odors.
Gas-phase filtration relies on a combination of physical and chemical mechanisms to capture airborne contaminants. The specifics of this process depend on the size Filter cartridge consumables and parameters of the contaminant in question as well as how it interacts with the system/media in which it is captured. This interaction is commonly referred to as the capture mechanism.
There are six main gas phase filtration mechanisms to consider:
The physical mechanism involves solid particles (generally less than 1um in size) interacting with and sticking to the surface of a filter medium’s fibers. This happens when the particles are randomly contacted in Brownian motion and have an opposite electric charge to the surface of the fiber. Particles with this charge are glued to each other, and thus stick to the filter media’s surface. The resulting particle is then flushed away by the gas flow as it passes through the filter. This type of filtration is typically found in recirculation and pressurized applications. It is also common in manufacturing facilities, waste treatment plants and oil refineries. This filtration process can be used for many types of combustible gases including sulphur oxides, hydrocarbons, formaldehyde, hydrogen sulfide and nitric oxide.