Even though our planet contains a large portion of water, which is around 71%, the percentage of drinkable water doesn’t reach 3%. With the huge daily consumption of water, and lack of responsibility and awareness, the fact of losing all drinkable water is inevitable. From the concept of “necessity is the mother of invention”, people started to look out for the ideas of making sea water drinkable. Water purification is a process that takes more than one phase to convert the sea water to drinkable water. In this essay, I will write about the early history of water purification, development of water purification and present of water purification.
In 2000 B.C., ancient Greek and Sanskrit (Indian) writings illustrated purifying water by heating. The main purpose of water purification is to have better water taste for the reason that people could not differ between pure water and foul water. Also, people did not know if the water were free of contamination. (Enzler, S, 2011). “Centuries later, Hippocrates also believed good taste in water meant cleanliness and purity of that water” (The History of Water Filters. 2011). Hippocrates used his own crude water filter which was a cloth bag. He used the cloth bag to pour water after it has been boiled. This process will trap sediments that cause the bad taste and smell.
With centuries pass on, people created and developed methods for water filtration. In the 1800’s, the method of sand filtration was prompted to purify water. . At first, Scottish scientist brought the method of slow sand filtration to United Kingdom. The main disadvantage of slow sand filtration was requiring frequent cleaning. Due to the increasing desire of having pure water, “scientists in the United States designed a rapid sand filter in the late nineteenth century” (The History of Water Filters, 2011). “The rapid sand filter was cleaned by powerful jet streams of water, greatly increasing the efficiency and capacity of the water filter” (The History of Water Filters, 2011). The sand filtration was created to remove pollutants from storm water runoff, control from storm water quality, and provide limited storm water flow rate (Storm Water Technology Fact Sheet Sand Filters, 2011). It consists of three chambers. The first chamber removes floatable and heavy sediment. The second chamber filters the runoff pollutants through the sand bag. The third chamber discharges either direct to the surface or through the drainage system.
Nowadays, people are still developing and creating methods for the water purification process. In 2007, Abu Hussam created the Sono arsenic filter which helped to purify the ground water from the arsenic element. People earlier did not know that ground water contained arsenic which affected their health and shortened their lives. Also, desalination method removes salt from either seawater or ground water. The process required heating salted water and forcing it through membranes to remove unwanted salts (Eckhardt, G, 2011). Moreover, there is a major concern that the water provided from the municipal were contaminated with Iron due to the way it transported. This concern was aiming to eliminate any probabilities of contaminate drinkable water and may lead to ‘change the plumbing system.
In my opinion, the water purification process is a very essential to the humanity, and the life itself can change dramatically without it. This essay discussed about the early history, development and present development of water purification. People should be grateful for the enormous efforts of finding ways to provide drinkable water. Furthermore, scientists are still looking for new method to convert undrinkable water to the best drinkable condition.
References
Eckhardt, G. (n.d.). Desalination. The Edwards Aquifer Website. Retrieved November 8, 2011, from http://www.edwardsaquifer.net/desalination.html
Enzler, S. (n.d.). History of water treatment. Water Treatment and Purification - Lenntech. Retrieved October 30, 2011, from http://www.lenntech.com/history-water-treatment.htm
Future of Water Purification - Water Purification Methods - Waterfiltering.com. (n.d.). Water Filtering - Water Filter Products. Retrieved November 8, 2011, from http://www.waterfiltering.com/purification-methods/future-water-purification.html
Storm Water Technology Fact Sheet Sand Filters. (n.d.). Environmental Protection Agency. Retrieved November 7, 2011, from www.epa.gov/owm/mtb/sandfltr.pdf
The History of Water Filters. (n.d.). The History of Water Filters. Retrieved October 22, 2011, from http://www.historyofwaterfilters.com/
