As the name suggests, the water purifier is a machine that purifies water to free it from harmful pollutants like pesticides, dangerous chemical compounds like nitrates and sulfates; metals and non-metal components like lead, fluoride, chlorine; and detergents.
There are two main variants of the water purifier today that are widely available in the market at varying water purifier price. They are:
- RO Water Purifier: The Reverse Osmosis (RO) purifier removes dissolved inorganic solids from water meant for domestic use. RO is a method of treating water by the use of pressure that forces water molecules to filter out through a semi-permeable membrane. This type of water purifier has at least 4-5 filters to achieve the purification process.
- The first filter that the incoming water is subjected to is the Sediment filter that removes dust, sediment and silt
- Followed by the carbon filter that removes chlorine and other chemical contaminants.
- The third and the most important filter is the RO membrane that is responsible for removing majority of pollutants and the water that comes out of this membrane is almost safe for drinking
- The last one is the post-filter that gives the final polish to the water to remove any taste or odor from the water. The water is now safest to consume.
Many newly constructed apartments in urban India these days provide for clean water after having purified it by running through a RO water purifier system.
Benefits of the RO water purifier are: delivers water that is free from any unwanted taste and odor; saves time, gas and money that would otherwise be used for boiling water or ordering for bottled water; removes about 99% of known 65 major impurities from water; easy to clean the system with few replacements required from time to time.
The main disadvantages of this type are firstly that it consumes lots of electric power to function and secondly it wastes about 50% of the water that is drained out with the contaminants.
- UV Water Purifier: In this type of water purifier, the contaminated water passes through an ultra-violet lamp. As the water is exposed to the ultra-violet ray, micro organism and deadly pathogens like bacteria and virus are killed.
The best part about this type of filter is that it uses environmental friendly technology to clean the water without use of any chemicals. It also uses minimal electricity with no wastage of water. It works very fast and is capable of providing clean water in minutes.
The disadvantage is that it cannot treat water that has higher levels of Total Dissolved solids and is unable to remove chemicals dissolved in the water like chlorine, lead, arsenic, fluorides etc. It also is unable to remove bad taste and odor from the water. Not to forget that the dead micro-organisms remain in the water.
The best water purifier in India is the one that uses combined technology of the above two types along with the TDS system and/or the Ultra Filtration method for delivering best quality of water for consumption.