Water-purifying cup makes drinkable water from creeks and streams
cockrell.utexas.edu
cockrell.utexas.edu
Those don't require electricity, are as good at ridding the water of microorganisms, and also filter out many harmful non-biological contaminants.
It also filters the water much more quickly. As fast as you can drink it.
[1] Assuming you properly maintain it by backflushing every so often, which is quick and easy, but still necessary.
i think you would need more than the syringe and arm power backflush to really restore a good flow over years, but hey it's only 30 bucks and mine has been working for 4 years
As you say, they're inexpensive, so I don't sweat this too much.
Though necessary, is that the only metric needed to label water potable?
For instance, in the forests around where I live, there's very high lead levels in certain brooks and ground water reservoirs because of an old shooting range out there where no one ever bothered to clean up the slugs left behind.
In this case, it's still pre-alpha and unable to assure removal of enough viruses, bacteria, protists, and fungi to result in potable water.
In the category, LifeStraw and such are worthless apart from absolutely clear water. They don't have the pressure delta or surface area to do much. One hit of brackish water and you're tossing filters because they become completely clogged. If you want clean water, perhaps ~13 stages with large filters before reverse osmosis via electric pump.
Ideally, you do both. Personally, I'm comfortable with just the filter. In hundreds of trips into the wilderness, the only time I've suffered from contaminated water (giardia -- don't recommend) was when I accidentally drank some unfiltered water. Fortunately, I didn't develop any symptoms until I was back from the trip.
This filter makes non-potable water cleaner such that it won't kill you/make you seriously ill.
I'd hesitate to even say that much; there are a lot of dangerous contaminants (like organic toxins or heavy metals) which this filter won't touch.
> Does the ZeroWater® 5-stage filter reduce bacteria?
> The current system is meant to be used with municipally treated, potable water as the current filter will not remove microbiological contaminants.
> Does the ZeroWater® 5-stage filter reduce cryptosporidium?
> At this point ZeroWater® 5-stage filters have not been tested for the removal of cryptosporidium(microbiological cysts).
Both ZeroWater and Brita are explicit that their filters are meant to be used with water that the government has already deemed safe to drink.
The downside of mixed bed resins is that they are not selective and water with high dissolved content (TDS) will deplete the resin at very fast rate. Price per gallon is comparable to bottled water with moderate to high TDS. They are simple and very effective as long as the filter is replaced as needed.